By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2025-03-09 14:22:35 | Updated at 2025-03-09 22:26:38
8 hours ago
The water’s still cold, but everyone’s jumping in.
With City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ launching her 11th-hour bid Wednesday, the messiest New York City mayoral primary in living memory now pits an incumbent mayor against a former governor, a current council speaker, both a sitting and a former comptroller and a hodgepodge of progressives.
Who will bring order to the chaos?
Though formally in the hands of voters, Gotham’s real electoral power rests with the city’s special interests, and particularly with its unions.
The big players’ memberships number in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and their influence can decide who stays afloat and who’s dead in the water.
Kingmakers include 1199 SEIU, the health-care workers’ union; the 32BJ building-workers’ union; District Council 37, the largest municipal-employee union; the Hotel Trades Council, representing hotel workers; and the United Federation of Teachers.
Rank-and-file members have split from labor leadership and moved to the right at the national level, but in city races, union endorsements still make a big difference.
For one thing, New York’s workforce is far more unionized than the nation as a whole.
About 20% of the city’s total labor force belongs to a union — double the national rate.
Among government employees, the gap is even wider: 95% of the city’s 354,572 government employees were part of a public-sector union as of 2023, compared with just 25% of federal employees.
Everyone wants a friend in Gracie Mansion, but no one more than the city’s public-sector unions.
Unlike federal workers’ unions, who negotiate with multiple agencies, almost all city workers bargain only with the mayor, giving them the strongest incentive to back candidates who’ll offer them richer deals.
For city unions, the mayor’s race isn’t just about policy or personalities — it’s about paychecks.
In city elections, the vast majority of public employees — up to 88% — choose whichever candidate their union endorses.
They’re also pressed to volunteer to collect ballot-petition signatures, knock on doors and get out the vote for the union’s pick, making endorsements electoral game-changers.
In the 2013 mayoral primary, 1199’s blessing transformed lagging lefty Bill de Blasio from a frog to a prince, launching him to an eventual two terms in office.
Eric Adams in 2021 leveraged three big March endorsements — from the HTC, 32BJ, and DC 37 — to gain the front-runner’s mantle.
The city’s dismally low-turnout closed primaries can be swayed by just a few thousand votes.
In the 2021 primary, when 942,031 out of 3.76 million registered Democrats voted, Adams eked out a victory by a margin of just 7,197 final-round ranked votes — then cruised to City Hall in an easy general election.
Adams has made good on repaying his backers, doling out generous contract renewals and migrant hotel deals during his tenure.
But those same unions haven’t rushed to line up behind the vulnerable incumbent.
Instead, 32BJ and DC 37 leaders reportedly gave their encouragement to Speaker Adams before she took the plunge.
From the union bosses’ perspective, it’s a strategic dilemma: Do they avoid former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s well-documented wrath by clearing his path to victory, or do they gamble on a challenger in hopes of getting a better deal come contract time?
The carpenters’ union — which supported Adams in 2021 — has already placed its bet, giving Cuomo the nod before he even announced his candidacy.
And on the same day he made his formal entry, Cuomo visited 32BJ’s headquarters.
On Thursday, Teamsters Local 237, representing about 25,000 city-government workers, backed Cuomo as well.
As the first public-sector union endorsement, it’s an important bellwether: It signals that city employees won’t be voting as a monolith for either Adams come June, narrowing their paths to victory.
Meanwhile, the race’s progressives — like current Comptroller Brad Lander, socialist firebrand Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and state Sen. (and Senate Labor Committee chair) Jessica Ramos — have been notably absent from the kingmakers’ rumor mill lately.
The United Auto Workers Region 9A, which endorsed all three in December, has laid out the most viable strategy for a hard-left upset: leveraging ranked-choice voting.
Ranked-choice will allow unions to hedge their bets by endorsing multiple contenders. The UAW is now urging its members to not rank either Cuomo or Mayor Adams, giving their preferred progressives a better shot at victory.
The city’s nearly 200,000-strong teachers’ union has yet to place its wagers in this year’s race, but the UFT hasn’t backed the winning horse in a contested primary in decades.
Given its far-left bent, the teachers’ union could follow the UAW’s lead and try to keep Cuomo and Adams entirely off its members’ ballots as part of a ranked-choice progressive coalition.
No matter how the endorsements shake out, whoever wins will have significant debts to repay to the true powers behind the throne — and city taxpayers will ultimately bear the burden.
It’s good to be the king, but it might be even better to do the crowning.
John Ketcham is director of cities and a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
