NYC Mayor Eric Adams' indie spin is a big win for electoral choice

Mayor Adams’s decision to run as an independent in the November final election has been cast narrowly as nothing more than a clever ploy to increase his waning chance for re-election.The Democratic Socialist  mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, an Assembly member from Queens, was typical in characterizing  Adams as a “self-interested, disgraced mayor who has and always will put his needs before their own.”But the implications of Adams’ decision have been greatly under-appreciated in the week that has followed it, lost in a news cycle about tariffs wars and cast merely as personal. Adams, heretofore known as the first city chief executive to be indicted in office, has done something unprecedented and important.

 He will be the first incumbent mayor to bypass a party primary election completely.As a result, he has done far more than merely boost his own chances.

He is offering New York a political insurance policy against the threat of a far-left mayoralty that can result from the city’s flawed primary system, which locks out the second-largest group of voters — independents.It’s a system that can allow a low-turnout election to saddle the city with a chief executive unrepresentative of the electorate as a whole.In his announcement of his independent candidacy, Adams offered a shorthand version of those arguments.

As he put it, his independent run would give him a chance to “appeal directly to all New Yorkers.”That simple statement implies a much broader truth: New York City’s primary election system is an affront to democracy and lacks legitimacy.The city’s closed primary system, which shuts out independent voters, effectively disenfranchises the second-largest group of city voters from voting in elections with the greatest consequences.

These “non-affiliated voters” make up 23% of New York state’s 13 million registered voters.  More to the point, there are more than 1 million who are non-affiliated in the five boroughs.They g...