Early voting for the highly anticipated mayoral primary in New York City kicked off this weekend, and most voters will see a redesigned ballot for the first time. Many found a fun way to practice voting in recent weeks.
Voters across the nation's most populous city will be able to rank their top choices for mayor, as well as other municipal offices. The outcome of this election and voters' attitudes toward ranked-choice voting could influence whether the alternative voting method is adopted elsewhere in the United States.
New York City voters will rank in order of preference up to five candidates for mayor, comptroller, borough president, city council and public advocate. In the case that no candidate receives majority support, the election goes into an instant runoff in which the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and that person's support is redistributed to voters' second choices. This continues until one candidate crosses the 50 percent threshold.
To educate voters about the new process, local officials, the media and reform advocates launched fun information campaigns, often involving popular foods or fictional characters.
Ahead of the primary that will help determine his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio asked New Yorkers to practice using the new voting method by ranking their favorite pizza toppings. (Spoiler alert: Pepperoni was the definitive winner.)
The Gothamist, a local media outlet, held its own ranked election asking readers to choose their favorite fictional mayors of New York City. The contenders came from TV shows and movies, such as "City Hall," "The Taking of Pelham 123," "Sweet Home Alabama," "Ghostbusters," "Futurama," "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" and "The Dark Knight." Ultimately, Mayor Lenny from "Ghostbusters" received the most votes overall. The Gothamist also had readers vote on their favorite books about New York. "The Catcher in the Rye" won that contest.
Reform organizations like the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center and FairVote have also used ice cream and other foods to explain how ranked elections work.
Some New Yorkers used RCV, as the system is known, earlier this year for special elections to fill City Council seats. But the citywide primary is by far the biggest test for ranked-elections, which have been used statewide in Maine and select cities around the country.
On Monday, the third day of early voting, the new system appeared to be running smoothly and wait times were under 20 minutes across the city. Just under 50,000 New Yorkers cast their ballots over the weekend during the first two early voting days. This turnout is unsurprisingly much lower than the first day of early voting for the presidential election last fall, which saw almost 94,000 ballots cast.
It remains to be seen who out of the 13 Democratic candidates will come out on top. Some of the contenders include Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, former Wall Street executive Raymond McGuire and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to de Blasio.
The two Republicans vying for mayor are Curtis Sliwa, a radio talk show host and founder of the nonprofit Guardian Angels, and Fernando Mateo, an entrepreneur and activist.
Early in-person voting ends June 20, and primary day is June 22. Results will likely be finalized in early July after all the mail and provisional ballots are counted.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.