Williams entered the race as a front-runner after his surprise insurgency campaign for lieutenant governor against the Democratic incumbent, Kathy Hochul, netted him 440,000 votes in New York City in a losing effort last year.
He used that momentum to argue that he had the support of voters who saw his history as an activist — including several arrests for civil disobedience — as evidence that he would be an unapologetic antagonist to Mayor Bill de Blasio when needed.
The public advocate serves as an ombudsman to the city and is second in line to succeed a mayor departing before the end of his term. It is also seen as a potential launching pad to higher office; de Blasio went from being public advocate to becoming mayor. So winning this citywide election, even one with a low turnout, could make Williams an instant contender for City Hall.
“I would call this race an education in New York City civics,” said a Democratic political strategist, Lupe Todd-Medina. “It had money, politics and sex. It’s a case study.”
With de Blasio openly flirting with a run for the Democratic nomination for president, the public advocate role may be more important than people know, said Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College.
“Any time you see a mayor eyeing something bigger on the horizon, this is a natural position from which you will get a major candidate,” she said. “That’s why it’s sad that there is not more interest in this race and higher turnout.”
At times, the contest was a referendum on de Blasio’s policies, the state of the city’s subways and a failed plan for Amazon to build a campus in Long Island City. And in the campaign’s final days, a previously undisclosed decade-old arrest of Williams became an issue.
Williams was forced to acknowledge that he had been arrested a decade ago on harassment and criminal mischief charges, and spent a night in custody after what he called a “verbal disagreement” with his girlfriend at the time. Charges were dropped and the arrest record itself is sealed.
But the arrest was leaked to the media, and Williams’ opponents used it to question his fitness for the office. Williams said he did nothing wrong, accusing his opponents of resorting to tired racial stereotypes by trying to paint him as an “angry black man” to discredit him with voters.
Indeed, some people who spoke with Williams brought up his other arrests, during protests of issues such as criminal justice reform. And he met a man who served as a juror on his trial for blocking an ambulance during an immigrants rights protest. Williams was found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to time served.
“I want to leave it to people’s judgment,” Williams said. “And people’s judgment is telling them that there’s nothing there.”
Candidates also made an issue of the lack of racial and gender diversity among the city’s leadership; in a remarkable display of diversity not normally seen in city elections, 12 of the 17 candidates are women or minorities, including Melissa Mark-Viverito, the former City Council speaker who was one of the perceived front-runners.
Although Mark-Viverito enjoyed more name recognition than many of her opponents, the election was the first test of her citywide appeal.
The candidates consisted of multiple City Council members blocked from running for their seats again by term limits and State Assembly members looking for a bigger stage. Other hopefuls included activists, lawyers and first-time candidates.
Turnout was expected to be low.
There were so few voters at the normally busy Public School 163 on the Upper West Side on Tuesday morning that the Manhattan borough president, Gale A. Brewer, and Williams, the Brooklyn councilman she endorsed for public advocate, realized they were in need of a higher-traffic location.
They quickly decamped to the subway station at West 96th Street and Broadway, to shake hands, hand out flyers and remind people of the special election that Williams, along with 16 other candidates, was participating in.
“When I vote in the morning, there are usually 100 or more people who voted before me. Today, there were 28,” Brewer said. “This is going to be a low turnout election.”
That was clear from the moment de Blasio called a special, nonpartisan election in the middle of winter to fill the seat vacated by Letitia James when she was elected New York state attorney general.
Whatever the turnout, the race to become the city’s public advocate has been an unpredictable, quirky and expensive contest.
By the time polls closed at 9 p.m., the city Board of Elections was looking at spending upward of $15 million to stage an election that is expected to draw one of the lowest voter turnouts in city history. The Campaign Finance Board delivered $7.1 million in matching funds to candidates — twice the amount of the office’s $3.5 million budget, for a position that some people have called to be abolished.
The large number of Democrats in the race was thought to possibly give an advantage to one of two Republicans in the race: Erich Ulrich, a councilman from Queens, who appeared to finish second Tuesday.
He was an unabashed supporter of the Amazon deal, is against congestion pricing and not in favor of closing the Rikers Island jail complex. He criticized de Blasio more vocally than his fellow candidates, and also obtained the endorsement of the city’s two tabloid newspapers.
Williams’ win only assures him of being in office for the remainder of the year. Another election will be held in November to fill out the final two years of James’ term; petitioning for a June primary started on the same day as the special election. It is unclear if Williams can consolidate enough support to scare off potential opponents from challenging him in the primary.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.