[colatkinson]

I can't speak to the other cities you listed, but living in New York I think the media narrative around Eric Adams's mayoral victory is... a bit overblown.

It's true that he won 67% of the vote in the actual election [0]. But this was effectively a foregone conclusion -- his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, was a man best known for owning 15 cats [1] and faking his own kidnapping [2].

The "real" election was the primary -- notably the first ever election in the city to make use of ranked-choice voting. Wiley and Garcia, the runners-up in the first round, effectively split the "progressive" vote 50/50. Morales was a significant progressive up until a few weeks before the election, at which time her campaign staff walked out citing poor working conditions, effectively ending her campaign.

Looking at the final-round vote tally [3], it was 404,513 for Adams and 397,316 for Garcia -- a difference of just 7,197. He won, but just by the skin of his teeth. The population of NYC in 2021 was 8,468,000, with 4,992,792 registered to vote [4]. That doesn't exactly paint the picture of a resounding victory and a mandate to crack down on ne'er-do-wells that the Post would have you believe. It starts to look a bit more like a perceived centrist barely squeaking through by merit of being the best-known/least-objectionable candidate.

This of course speaks to OP's point: do the public really crave a paternalistic figure who will come and "crack down on crime" (i.e. sign off on more... questionable overtime pay for the NYPD) or is there, for some reason, undue weight given to the narrative that just by happenstance sounds identical to SBA/PBA talking points?

[0] https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/results/new-york-city/mayo...

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/06/23/an-inside-look-into-curtis-sli...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-25-mn-1060-s...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/22/us/elections/...

[4] https://vote.nyc/sites/default/files/pdf/vote/2021/county_fe...