If he cannot maintain that, he will face former city Comptroller Bill Thompson, who has 26 percent, for a potentially grueling three-week, one-on-one showdown, with the winner advancing to face Republican nominee Joe Lhota, the former chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, in the general election on Nov. 5. Lhota, the ex-transit authority chairman and former deputy mayor to Rudolph Giuliani, defeated billionaire grocery magnate John Catsimatidis for the Republican nomination. The winner of the mayor's race in November will assume the helm of the nation's largest city which has been led for 12 years by Bloomberg. In the unexpectedly heated race for the unglamorous office of city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, repelled a last-minute comeback attempt by Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor over his use of prostitutes. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the early front-runner who was seeking to become the city's first woman and openly gay mayor, finished third at 16 percent, followed by current city Comptroller John Liu at 7 percent and Weiner at 5 percent. Mr. de Blasio, a white Brooklynite who frequently showcased his biracial family, built a broad coalition of support among nearly every category of Democratic primary voters on Tuesday, according to the exit poll by Edison Research. While the city's registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1, the Republican Party's recent success in mayoral elections has been largely attributed to a crime epidemic, the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks or other extraordinary circumstances. Later this week, election officials will recount all the ballots cast Tuesday. Addressing widespread concerns about the gap between the city’s rich and poor, Mr. de Blasio also proposed a tax on the wealthy to pay for universal prekindergarten — though his rhetoric made it sometimes seem unclear which was the end and which the means. In the event of a runoff, Mr. de Blasio would begin with an fund-raising advantage of about $400,000 over Mr. Thompson.
– As expected, Bill de Blasio will easily finish first in New York City's Democratic primary for mayor, reports the AP. What's unclear is whether he will get the necessary 40% to avoid a runoff with the second-place finisher. With 97% of returns in, de Blasio had 40.02%, Bill Thompson 26%, and Christine Quinn 15%. Trailing those three were city comptroller John Liu (7%) and, yes, Anthony Weiner (5%). The eventual Democratic winner will face former MTA chief (and Rudy Giuliani deputy) Joe Lhota in the general election in November. He won the GOP race over billionaire John Catsimatidis. There will be a recount of yesterday's ballots, and some 30,000 votes, including absentee ballots, still need to be counted a first time. A final result may not be known for 10 days and Thompson has made it clear that he won't drop out in the name of party unity: He chanted "Three more weeks!" at his election night event, referring to a time before a potential runoff, which polls show he would lose. Exit polls showed that de Blasio, the city's public advocate, did well with a wide swath of voters from different ethnic groups and locales, reports the New York Times. More so than the other candidates, he advocated a clean break from Michael Bloomberg, making a particular issue of Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy. The mayor interjected himself into the campaign when he accused de Blasio of running a "racist" campaign—in part because the candidate featured his Afro-sporting teen son in a TV ad. De Blasio is white, his wife is black, and he would be first city mayor with an interracial family, notes the Times.