8 newyork| february1–14, 2021
inside: Using Zoom to run Zoom / 28 years old with $10 billion in crypto / Overhauling Twitter, for real this timePHOTOGRAPH:YANAPASKOVA/THENEWYORKTIMES/REDUXThe City Politic:
David Freedlander
A Mayoral-Race Mystery
Why is the Black front-
r u n ner ge t t i ng snubbed
by the Black political
Establishment?
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams outside the Brownsville Recreation Center on July 28, 2019.eric adams has spent 14 years in office, the last seven as the
Brooklyn borough president, and is the leading Black candidate in
the New York City mayor’s race. Black voters will likely make up
more than 30 percent of the Democratic electorate, but a big ques-
tion hanging over the Adams campaign—which has raised mil-
lions of dollars—is whether he can lock down support from the
city’s most powerful Black leaders. Or whether he’s even trying.
The race itself is shaping up to be the most volatile in years; not
only is this the first time the primary will be held in June, three
months earlier than usual, but it is also the first citywide election
under the city’s new voting law, which allows voters to pick not one
but five of their favorite candidates, ranking them in order of pref-
erence. Adams’s early polling position is largely owed to the over-
whelming support he has received from the base of the city’s Black
Democrats, unsurprising since voters tend to fall along strict racial
and ethnic lines. But there remains an influential cadre—more