At the end of last week, the New York City Democratic mayoral primary seemed set; it looked like Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams would be the winner. But something strange happened this week. When the ranked-choice ballots were counted (after the city remedied a weird flop in which it accidentally counted 135,000 “test ballots”), the results showed Adams’ lead was much narrower than predicted: With more than 124,000 absentee ballots left to be counted, he’s only beating former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia by fewer than 16,000 votes.
For some observers getting their first taste of what ranked-choice elections look like, the flawed counting in New York this week might not have made the best impression. But to others, there is a success story here. After months of lamentations that New York City would never be ready for a woman mayor, it’s ranked-choice voting that has brought a woman so close to the top political office in the city.
Some advocates of ranked-choice voting say that’s not a coincidence. There is evidence to suggest that ranked-choice elections are easier for nontraditional candidates, including women and people of color, to win. According to one report by RepresentWomen, an organization that advocates for election reforms to achieve gender parity in politics: “Over the last decade, 19 cities and counties used ranked choice voting to select local-level officials. … Overall, women won 48% of the individual seats up for election.”
“That’s about 20 points higher than the norm in our cities,” Cynthia Richie Terrell, author of the report, told me.
Why does ranked-choice voting help women? Terrell pointed to a few reasons. She said women, and particularly newcomers, are more comfortable asking voters to make them their second or third choice, which could end up winning them a seat under the ranked-choice voting system. Terrell also said that, in traditional winner-take-all elections, gatekeepers sometimes discourage women and people of color from entering a race in which there is already a woman or candidate of color running, citing a fear that it would split the “women’s vote” or “Black vote” and hurt the women and Black candidates already running. Ranked-choice systems, she says, seem to avoid that issue and encourage a larger, more diverse field.
Campaigning also isn’t a zero-sum game in ranked-choice elections, so typically, there are fewer negative ads. That might be particularly attractive to women candidates, who may otherwise be discouraged by the kinds of attacks they can face on the trail. (Studies suggest that women also face a higher penalty for campaign attacks.)
Did this happen in the New York primary? “There were certainly stories about people campaigning together and organizations endorsing multiple candidates for office,” Terrell said. She pointed to 21 in ‘21, an organization that works to achieve gender parity in New York City politics and went all-out embracing ranked-choice voting. The group had members use ranked-choice ballots to decide which candidates to endorse, and then educated those candidates on best campaign practices under the new system. “That’s just a great example of a grassroots organization … providing educational materials … to the candidates about good strategies, and how it's beneficial to find common ground with your opponents, essentially,” Terrell said.
There’s a bit of irony here. Earlier in the race, after several male candidates mentioned her name as a possible deputy and their second choice for mayor, Garcia called the recognition sexist. But under ranked-choice voting, being many voters’ number-two choice can actually help a candidate. And that’s a dynamic she thinks can help women in particular. Terrell said that women who win ranked-choice elections, such as San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Maine Governor Janet Mills, “seem to toggle back and forth between articulating their vision for the city or state and then saying, you know, ‘If you’re an Andrew Yang fan, I hope you’ll rank me second.’”
Another factor that might have worked for women and people of color in New York City’s Democratic primary this year? The turnout. It was the highest it’s been since 1989. “I suspect that more women and people of color are winning overall because you just have a higher portion of the electorate engaged and having their vote count toward representation,” Terrell said.
Good afternoon! I hope your week has been calmer than mine. I went to the emergency room last night because I had to have a foreign object removed from my eye. (Yes, I’m 31, and no, I couldn’t get it out myself.) And then when I got home, there was the first tornado warning I’ve ever gotten in eight years of living in Washington, D.C. I’m looking forward to a long, relaxing weekend! Thanks to Maya Parthasarathy for helping put this newsletter together.
ADVICE FROM RULERS
This week’s advice comes from a conversation between Playbook’s Ryan Lizza and senior Joe Biden adviser Anita Dunn.
“The best piece of advice I got was actually when I was an intern in Jimmy Carter's White House from the person I worked for, who was Jimmy Carter's Chief of Staff, the late Hamilton Jordan, a wonderful human being and one of the smartest political minds of anybody's generation. And Hamilton told me ... that it is better to make a decision and have it be wrong ... than to make no decision. And [that] no decision can be costly, that it eats up resources, and that it is worse than making a bad decision that you can fix. And he said, ‘If you're smart, and if you're good, out of 10 decisions, seven or eight of them are going to be good decisions, and the other two will be mistakes, and you fix them.’
“But I think women still to this day are often hesitant to raise their voices even when they can see that a decision that’s being made is a bad decision. … [Hamilton’s] basic thing was if you think you’re right and you think you’re a smart person, speak up. And so I would say to women, don't be scared to speak up. Don’t feel like you’re being stupid. You’re smart. So show your smarts and keep your organization or your candidate or wherever you are from making dumb mistakes.”
POLITICO Special Report
“Pelosi taps Cheney for Jan. 6 select committee,” by POLITICO’s Sarah Ferris and Nicholas Wu: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi has chosen GOP Rep. Liz Cheney to join the Democrat-led investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, a rare cross-aisle elevation of one of Donald Trump's most prominent conservative critics.
“The select committee on the insurrection will be led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who had previously crafted a bipartisan plan to establish an outside commission to lead the probe into the Jan. 6 violence. Senate Republicans blocked the investigation, leading Pelosi and her Democrats to establish their own panel, which won just two Republicans on the floor on Wednesday.
“Cheney, one of only two GOP votes for the select panel, has already seen her leadership credentials revoked after she publicly blamed Trump for inciting violence at the Capitol. Now, she could face more repercussions for accepting Pelosi’s appointment, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy privately warning some GOP members that they could lose their committee assignments if they serve on the panel at Pelosi’s request, according to multiple Republican sources.”
MUST READS
“‘Not a healthy environment’: Kamala Harris’ office rife with dissent,” by Christopher Cadelago, Daniel Lippman and Eugene Daniels in POLITICO: “The handling of the border visit was the latest chaotic moment for a staff that’s quickly become mired in them. Harris’ team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris’ chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year.
“In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue.”
“The Anti-Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement,” by Molly Jong-Fast in Vogue: “Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers debated whether they needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and limit payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that ‘resembled a remedial sex-education course.’ It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time. …
“The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…”
Number of the Week
Quote of the Week
From "Murkowski has the moxie to take on Trump. Will she?" by Burgess Everett.
Recommendations
WATCH -- “How the 'Zola' Team Created Its Legendary Twitter-Inspired 'Thotyssey,'” via Thrillist
READ -- “How Twitter can ruin a life,” via Vox
“Two women chatted in a bathroom. They soon realized they were each a match for the other’s husband, who needed a kidney,” via The Washington Post
Transitions
Randi Bryant is now chief diversity and inclusion officer at Freshworks. Previously, she was a DEI consultant at companies including Comcast and McDonalds. … Charlotte Clymer announced a one-year deal with Substack to further develop her blog Charlotte’s Web Thoughts. She most recently was director of comms at Catholics for Choice. …
Kathryn Mitchell-Thomas is now team chief for research and engineering in the office of the assistant secretary of Defense for legislative affairs. She most recently was a strategic comms consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. ... Veronica Bonilla will be director of media relations at BAE Systems. She previously was media director at the Aerospace Industries Association.
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