The Racie to Gracie 🐎

Weekend Horse-Race Reads & Post-Holiday Plans

If you’re reading this newsletter, chances are you’ve been tuned into the mayoral primary horse-race for a while, watching Andrew Cuomo’s domination and investigation, Eric Adams’s jumping the fence out of the Democratic primary, and Adrienne Adams’s late-breaking but assertive entry into the race.

But most New Yorkers—the roughly 25% of registered Democrats likely to vote in the primary, that is—won’t tune in until after Memorial Day. At that point, the candidates will be jockeying harder: ramping up their ads on the airwaves and sending canvassers to swarm farmers’ markets and subway stations. Basketball playoffs will be drawing to a close, but the race for Gracie Mansion will be entering its most meaningful stretch—with both contests, hopefully, promising a New York that can have good things.

Critically, it’ll be prime time for you to get the word out to your networks—and we’ll be providing a ton of ways to get involved: 

• Sign up for our Abundance Day of Action on Saturday, May 31.

• Continue the conversation at our Mayoral Debate Watch Party on Wednesday, June 4.

• Sign up if you’re interested in joining our relational organizing pilot, helping us test the efficacy of new persuasion tactics in lower-salience down-ballot races.

In the meantime, for those who need a quick catch-up on the state of the race, it’s been a news-heavy season, but the polls haven’t moved much. 

Will next month’s race be a photo finish?

The ex-governor continues to hold a commanding lead with about 40% support, even as his opponents skip attacking each other to aim their fire fully at him. Left-wing Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is in a solid second place, but not close enough to catch Cuomo in a ranked choice simulation. (A reason he’s uplifting his opponents, in hopes they can collectively take the front-runner down.)

The only other candidates scraping ten percent are Comptroller Brad Lander, who has maxed out to the spending cap, and Speaker Adrienne Adams, who has qualified for matching funds. Still, neither has been able to bring down Cuomo’s numbers significantly or stem Mamdani’s high-vibes rise—and no one else has been able to make a dent. 

It’s the beginning of the end, and time is running out.

---

If you want to go deeper into the state of the horse-race over the long weekend, here’s some content we recommend.

• Where They Stand: There isn’t much in the way of high-quality voter resources spanning across issues, but the New York Times has a quick rundown of candidate positions. Issue-specific orgs and publications are offering a bit more detail on policy areas from class size to housing.

• Pick your Pony: The City has a nifty quiz to help you find the candidates most aligned with your views. (Unfortunately, it collapses a lot of nuances. For example, candidates are credited with wanting to “expand development rights in every community district” whether their plans call for tens of thousands of homes or a million).

• Deeper Dives: If you want to get really in the weeds, we’ve been enjoying Ben Max’s double-barreled podcast recap of Andrew Cuomo’s record as governor, New York’s profile of Zohran Mamdani, Michael Lange’s conjecture that only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez still has the power to shake up the race, and the New York Editorial Board’s in-depth interviews with every leading candidate.

See you on the other side of Memorial Day weekend, when the home stretch comes into sight.

Will it be a photo finish, or will Cuomo lap the field? Time, and all of us, will tell.