Graydon Carter, the longtime chronicler of New York City’s glamorous set, is just looking for “somebody who can make the pipes work.”
Sarah McNally, one of the city’s top booksellers, said her employees would “hate” whom she was ranking first.
And Sonia Manzano, who spent 44 years on “Sesame Street” as Maria, understands her candidate has no charisma. That’s just the way she likes it.
With the June 24 Democratic primary just days away, the race for mayor has consumed New Yorkers and divided them into camps. Our famous neighbors, it turns out, are no exception.
The New York Times asked dozens of them to share their ranked-choice ballots. The results are not scientific and they diverge from polls of likely primary voters. But they illuminate how some of the people who write Broadway hits, run celebrated kitchens, fill television screens and shape the skyline view the city’s challenges and the crop of 11 Democrats vying to lead it.
Many chose not to tip their hands, invoking the principle of the secret ballot, or another sacrosanct New York rule: Do not risk offending the powerful.
“President Franklin Pierce is reputed to have said, ‘When I appoint one man to office, I make one friend and 100 enemies,’” said Eric Foner, the prominent Columbia historian. “In the spirit of Pierce’s comment, I have decided to keep my voting decision to myself.”
Here are the ballots of 20 New Yorkers who agreed to share.
Ilana Glazer
Stand-up comedian and actress
Ms. Glazer, the stand-up comedian and television star, spent much of the spring performing on Broadway with George Clooney in “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Like many progressive New Yorkers, she said she waffled between Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, the city comptroller, before settling on the latter.
“Zohran definitely has the vision for the future and messages it in a way that resonates with me,” she said. “But it’s Brad’s experience as comptroller and his plans to execute that I feel are most important.” Ms. Glazer, 38, said former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the front-runner, reminded her of a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain.”
Floyd Abrams
Superlawyer
Mr. Abrams, the renowned First Amendment lawyer, helped win two of the most politically consequential Supreme Court decisions of the last half century, in the Pentagon Papers and Citizens United cases. Now, he said he was looking for a “barrier” to protect New York City from President Trump.
“My view is that it is especially important to have a strong person who can lead the public and resist whatever demands are made of us,” he said. “I think that is Governor Cuomo.”
Mr. Abrams, 88, grew up in Queens and lives on the Upper East Side. He said he believed Mr. Cuomo would be the opposite of Mayor Eric Adams, who “owes his freedom to President Trump.”
Lynn Nottage
Pulitzer-winning playwright
Ms. Nottage, 60, is a towering figure in the city’s arts scene. She has turned out commercial megahits and critically acclaimed work. Her plays “Ruined” and “Sweat” made her the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama twice.
But Ms. Nottage, who grew up in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn when it was still largely Black and Latino, said she feared that the economic and cultural diversity that had made the city a magnet were “under siege.” “There’s a whole young generation of artists who are opting not to live in New York,” she said. “It’s going to have tremendous repercussions for the city, five, 10, 15 years down the line.”
She said she liked Mr. Lander’s “organizational skills and his knowledge of the machine in City Hall.” But she ranked Mr. Mamdani first, citing his “improvisational energy, organizing heft, real passion.”
Graydon Carter
Magazine editor
For decades as the editor of Vanity Fair and the newsletter Air Mail, Mr. Carter has been one of New York’s leading social arbiters, chronicling the powerful, the wealthy and the glamorous. But when it comes to Gotham’s next leader, he’s looking for something less flashy.
“It’s like having somebody run your apartment building, you want somebody who can make the pipes work,” said Mr. Carter, who also co-owns the Waverly Inn in Greenwich Village. “The gold standard was Mike Bloomberg,” he added. “If Mike’s not coming back than I would choose Andrew Cuomo.”
Nasim Alikhani
Chef
Ms. Alikhani’s acclaimed Brooklyn restaurant, Sofreh, had been open less than two years when the Covid pandemic upended the city’s dining business. Five years later, she wants nothing to do with Mr. Cuomo, the governor who led the state through a painful series of closures.
“To see him again on the ballot, it’s really frightening,” she said. But Ms. Alikhani, 65, who moved to the city from Iran in the 1980s, decided to rank Mr. Mamdani No. 1 for a similar reason as many New Yorkers: his narrow focus on affordability. “What made New York New York — our immigrants, writers, poets, everything — they were pushed out because they can’t afford the city,” she said.
Sarah McNally
Bookseller
Ms. McNally owns and operates a small bookstore empire, McNally Jackson, with five locations across the city. Earlier this year, New York magazine calculated that McNally Jackson was likely the third-biggest buyer of books in the city, following Barnes & Noble and the Strand.
“My staff will hate me if I tell you that I am putting Zohran second after Adrienne Adams!” the bookseller initially wrote via email, after listing Ms. Adams first. But Ms. Jackson later followed up to say that Ms. Adams, the City Council speaker, was “not rising to the occasion” and had fallen down her list; Mr. Lander was elevated to first.
She singled out a grievance with Mr. Cuomo: his feud with Andy Byford, the city’s former subway chief, whom Ms. McNally, 49, called “the single greatest mind in public transportation.”
Jeff Gural
Real estate titan
Back in 2021, when Mr. Cuomo’s governorship was in free fall, Mr. Gural called him a bully and “a disgrace.” Now, he sees the former governor as the best choice in the field.
“Even though he can be confrontational at times, we’ve seen what he’s accomplished,” said Mr. Gural, who owns part of the Flatiron Building and about 40 other city properties. “I can’t move my buildings, so I want to see the city thrive.”
Mr. Gural, 82, said the city would suffer from “candidates that are way too left for the majority of the city residents.” He said he liked Mr. Adams, but doubted he could win a general election as an independent.
Sonia Manzano
‘Sesame Street’ stalwart
Ms. Manzano, 75, helped raise generations of New Yorkers on “Sesame Street,” where she played Maria onscreen and won 15 Emmys as a writer. Her current show, “Alma’s Way” on PBS Kids, revolves around a 6-year-old Puerto Rican girl, who like Ms. Manzano, grew up in the Bronx.
She said she was drawn to Mr. Mamdani’s “outside of the box” thinking and his youth, but ultimately decided she preferred the low-key approach of Mr. Lander, a longtime government official. “He’s accused of not having any charisma,” she said. “That’s OK, I like no charisma; it means no drama.”
Sarah Sherman
‘Saturday Night Live’
Ms. Sherman, a comedian and “S.N.L.” cast member, said she had not been this excited about a candidate since Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign for president. She voted early (“not to brag”) and enthusiastically for Mr. Mamdani and his proposal to freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments.
“There is a housing affordability crisis and there is not a minimum wage to afford to live in the city,” said Ms. Sherman, 32, adding that the federal immigration enforcement in New York was “really, really scary. I hope it just convinces people to vote for him.”
Dennis Lim
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center is a fixture on the city’s cultural calendar each fall. As its artistic director, Mr. Lim, 52, leads the selection of dozens of new features and short films to screen. (He is also an occasional contributor to The Times.)
Mr. Lim, who lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, said he was supporting Mr. Mamdani’s cost-focused campaign because “affordability is at the root of many of the city’s problems.” Mr. Lim was also impressed by the assemblyman’s ability to mobilize New Yorkers in large numbers, “especially in the current climate of hopelessness and futility.”
Shaina Taub
Tony Award winner
Ms. Taub, 36, considers herself an “artist activist.” Her Tony Award-winning 2022 musical, “Suffs,” tells the story of Alice Paul and the women’s suffrage movement. So when she attended a recent mayoral forum hosted by the New York Civil Liberties Union, Ms. Taub was looking for a candidate with the whole package.
“I feel aligned in my values with a lot of people on this slate,” she said. “So my question becomes, who do I think could get elected and is a good storyteller on these issues,” including closing the jail complex on Rikers Island. Her answer was Mr. Lander: “He has expertise combined with being a mensch,” she said.
Fran Lebowitz
Humorist
Ms. Lebowitz, New York’s municipal wit, has heard the questions about her top choice for mayor, the former comptroller Scott Stringer. A short, middle-age Jewish man in glasses, he is not the swaggering type. But she has an answer to that.
“I say, ‘Yes, I agree, he’s not the young Gary Cooper,’” she said. “But New York is full of tall, handsome, charismatic men — they don’t have to be the mayor.”
Ms. Lebowitz, 74, likes Mr. Stringer because he is smart and the kind of no-drama government veteran who can put City Hall back in order after Mr. Adams, who she called “a crook.” Mr. Cuomo, she said, is “a thug.”
She said she saw the appeal of Mr. Mamdani (“the other guy whose name I can never remember”) and his proposal to open city-owned grocery stores. But, she added, “I am way too to old to vote for someone that far to the left.”
Dante de Blasio
Filmmaker and mayoral progeny
Mr. de Blasio, the son of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, has seen the job of leading the city up close. His top choice is Ms. Adams, whom he praised for leading the City Council through “budget fights, partisan battles and City Hall scandals.”
“All with a minimum of drama,” said Mr. de Blasio, who recently directed a short documentary about a violence interrupter program in Brooklyn. “She will be the adult in the room.”
Alia Hanna Habib
Literary agent
Ms. Habib, 47, represents some of the city’s most sought-after authors as an agent with the Gernert Company. But it was not that long ago that she was struggling to make rent. She said she settled on Mr. Mamdani first because of his narrow focus on the city’s costs and what she called fresh ideas, like city-owned grocery stores.
“In light of the Democratic Party’s losses in the last election, I want to use my vote to say I am here for bold proposals, I am here for big swings on economic issues on affordability, on housing, on child care,” she said.
Socrates Nanas
Restaurateur
Mr. Nanas first met Mr. Stringer when Mr. Nanas was a teenager working in his parents’ dry cleaning shop. Decades later, he owns Empanada Mama, a chain of Colombian eateries that sell 70,000 empanadas a week across the city. He would like to see Mr. Stringer as mayor to focus on public safety.
“I love the city; I want everybody to be safe in it,” said Mr. Nanas, who lives in Flushing, Queens. “It’s been a little tough for the last few years, but I think we’re making a good comeback.”
He said he liked that Mr. Stringer was “not so polarized,” though he said he might still decide to add Mr. Mamdani to his ballot.
Cynthia Nixon
Activist and actress
No one doubts what Ms. Nixon thinks about Mr. Cuomo, whom she ran against as governor in 2018. “I don’t know what else to say, he’s yucky!” she said recently.
Ms. Nixon, who stars in new seasons of “And Just Like That …” and “The Gilded Age,” plans to rank Mr. Mamdani atop her ballot to try to beat him. She said she first began talking with the assemblyman about Mr. Cuomo before the former governor even entered the race, and has lent Mr. Mamdani’s campaign a bit of star appeal since. But she spoke highly of a full slate of Cuomo alternatives. “We have a whole field of people who have really big, bold ideas for our city,” she said.
Kurt Andersen
Writer
As a founder of the satirical magazine Spy, and a radio host and writer, Mr. Andersen has been studying New York City for decades. But like many of his neighbors, he struggled with how exactly to order his ballot.
He tried asking A.I. chatbots to help game out the ranked-choice system, without much luck. He knew he would not rank Mr. Cuomo (who he called “thuggish” but “a decent governor”), but waffled on whether to include Mr. Mamdani (“I have real doubts about him being mayor of a city with a $100 billion budget, I just do”).
In the end, there was one thing that Mr. Andersen, 70, was clear on: “The bottom line is I have one person I would like to be mayor, and think would be a great mayor, and I’ve have actually known him a long time: Brad Lander.”
AnnaSophia Robb
Actress and model
“New York is a city of immigrants,” said Ms. Robb, who starred this spring in “Grosse Pointe Garden Society” on NBC. She said she was particularly impressed when Mr. Lander was recently arrested by federal agents as he tried to escort a migrant woman through immigration court.
“Politicians putting their bodies on the line, that is what they are supposed to do,” she said. But Ms. Robb, 31, said she had decided to rank Mr. Mamdani first because she believed he had “a more competitive edge.”
Harold Holzer
Historian and political hand
Mr. Holzer, 76, has worn many hats: prolific Lincoln scholar, longtime spokesman for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and current director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. But he met his first choice for mayor, Mr. Cuomo, as a young political aide to his father in the 1970s.
“Andrew has a reputation as a tough guy, to which I respond: We need a tough guy now — and besides, he also has real compassion and a great sense of humor,” Mr. Holzer said. He added: “This is no time for newcomers.”
Kenice Mobley
Stand-up comedian
Ms. Mobley may be more qualified than some to offer up her ranked-choice ballot. Last month, Ms. Mobley competed in a ranked-choice contest of her own against five other Brooklyn-based comedians at Littlefield, a performance venue in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. She did not finish first, but admitted she was less than fully prepared.
Ms. Mobley said some of her ballot choices were easy. She liked Mr. Mamdani and didn’t like Mr. Cuomo. She said she arrived at the rest of her choices after taking a quiz on The City, the local news website.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Dean Chang contributed reporting.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
The post An Actor, a Bookseller and a Chef Walk Into a Voting Booth appeared first on New York Times.
