City Comptroller, Public Advocate Get More Votes Than Mayor

NEW YORK, NY — Bill de Blasio easily beat his opponents to become mayor Tuesday – but Democrats in other city races were much more popular.

The incumbent easily beat Republican Nicole Malliotakis. But his vote tally trailed well behind those cast for candidates looking to fill other city positions. City Comptroller Scott Stringer easily won a second term with 801,287 votes – almost 75,000 more than the 726,361 that carried the mayor to re-election.

And Public Advocate Letitia James won another term with 775,749, outpacing de Blasio — her predecessor — by more than 49,000 votes.

The numbers follow a pattern. Stringer got 827,562 votes and James 814,879 in 2013, outdoing de Blasio's roughly 795,679. And de Blasio was elected public advocate in 2009 with 724,629 compared with then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 585,466. Then-Comptroller John Liu bested both of them with 750,334 votes.

Politicos have floated Stringer and James as potential candidates to succeed de Blasio in 2021. Stringer reportedly considered challenging the mayor in this year's primary, but decided not to enter the race.

But Tuesday's vote totals form a molehill that shouldn't be made into a mountain of predictions about the next mayoral race or even de Blasio's second term, political experts said.

"It's at best a point of pride amongst the three of them as to who got more votes," said Evan Stavisky, a Democratic political strategist and partner in the Parkside Group, a consulting firm. "But it truly has no implication for the rest of the city or for city politics."

All three incumbents this year faced little-known opponents in a low-turnout election that heavily favored Democrats. The mayor's opponents were able to get their message out and win some votes in a closely watched election, experts said. James' and Stringer's, not so much.

De Blasio defeated Republican state Assemblywoman Malliotakis and a handful of third-party candidates. Though it was never competitive, the race drew some national media coverage given de Blasio's efforts to establish himself as a major progressive leader.

But the races further down the ballot got scant attention. Stringer beat Republican Michel Faulkner, an NFL lineman turned pastor. James defeated J.C. Polanco, a lawyer from the Bronx who served on the city Board of Elections under Bloomberg.

Faulkner and Polanco never got the chances Malliotakis had to publicly argue why they should replace the incumbents, Stavisky said.

Stringer and James, meanwhile, remained popular, familiar faces to voters. Stringer was the Manhattan borough president before becoming comptroller and James previously served on the City Council.

“The positions they occupy are less controversial than the mayor's," said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political strategist who worked on Bloomberg's campaigns. "The mayor is seen as the office to watch in city politics and absent a scandal with the other city offices, those people tend to remain highly popular."

If Stringer and James vie for de Blasio's job in 2021, they'd have to run against each other in a competitive Democratic primary that would be completely different from this year's low-turnout general election, experts said.

"This election is likely not reflective of a highly contested, high-turnout mayoral contest, which the two of them, based upon these numbers, indicate that we'd have," Sheinkopf said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the total number of votes John Liu received in 2009. It was 750,334, not 704,533.

(Lead image: City Comptroller Scott Stringer won more votes than any citywide candidate — including Mayor Bill de Blasio — in Tuesday's general election. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)