Kathryn Garcia moves into second place as the race for mayor of New York narrows

Kathryn Garcia has moved an astonishing distance from Eric Adams in a race for the mayor of New York after a new counting of classified election votes that ended in what looked like a lead commander by the retired police captain and Brooklyn district president.

Adams led the Democratic Party’s bid for Garcia, the former head of the sanitation department, from 51.1% to 48.9%, with a margin of 15,908 ballots, according to updated data released by the board electoral. There are still more than 124,000 absentee tickets to process, which may not be completed until mid-July.

Maya Wiley, the leading progressive candidate, who took second place after the first round of voting, fell to third place.

“Even with today’s ranked election report, we still expect more than 120,000 ballots to be counted for absence and we are confident of a path to victory,” Garcia said.

The Democratic candidate is almost certain to prevail in the November general election in a city where Democratic voters far outnumber their Republican counterparts.

The contest is being watched closely, not only to see who will try to lead the country’s largest city in recovering from a devastating pandemic, but as a high-profile battle between the establishment of the Democratic Party and a progressive wing in ascension.

This year’s contest is the first time the city has used the classified election ballot, in which voters had the option to include up to five candidates, in order of preference, on the ballot. Candidates who lose are eliminated successively and their votes are redistributed until there are only two left.

After an initial vote count on election night last Tuesday, Adams got 28.8% of the vote in first place, with Wiley, the former mayor. Bill de Blasio, with 19.9 percent and Garcia with 17.8 percent.

Garcia, who would be the first woman mayor of the city, declared herself during the campaign as a meaningless pragmatist and manager, capable of making a difficult bureaucracy of the city work better. He enjoyed late support.

Both Garcia and Adams, who would be New YorkThe second black mayor, belongs to the moderate wing of the party. On the key issue of public safety, both have championed police funding, promising to reform the department and aggressively tackle a sharp rise in gunfire.