Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed a candidate ahead of the June 22 Democratic primary election for mayor of New York City.
Maya Wiley, the former counsel to the city’s current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund “has been dedicating her life” to social justice, Ocasio-Cortez told supporters on Saturday.
“Maya Wiley is our No. 1 choice,” the New York congresswoman said, referencing the city’s ranked-choice voting system.
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Ocasio-Cortez praised Wiley’s “informative life experience” as the daughter of civil rights activists who then became an attorney for the ACLU and the NAACP in her own career.
“With Maya Wiley, we have a candidate that grassroots movements can work with, can inform, and can shape because she comes from it, and she understands and appreciates the importance of grassroots organizing not just in supporting, but in leading movements,” she said.
The representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District alluded to the fact that New York City is holding a ranked-choice primary, which will allow voters to prioritize their choice of candidates within the crowded field in a way that Ocasio-Cortez says requires strategic thinking.
“We will vote for Maya No. 1, and we will rank in a way that maximizes the possibility of a New York for the many, and in coming days and weeks, we can talk about, coalesce, and develop our strategy for how we’re going to do that,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez signaled she may make endorsements for candidates to be ranked second and third. In the ranked-choice voting system, New York City voters will list candidates in order of preference for up to five spots, and if no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, then the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, at which point the second-choice votes for the newly eliminated candidate are included in the new tally. The process is repeated until an outright winner is declared.
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On Wednesday, eight candidates for the Democratic nomination participated in the cycle’s first in-person debate. While polling of the race has been unreliable, news outlets suggest 2016 presidential contender and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and former commissioner of the city’s Department of Sanitation Kathryn Garcia lead the pack.
The Democratic primary election will be held on June 22, followed by a general election on Nov. 2.
