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- The New York City mayoral race is getting heated one day before the June 22 primary.
- Frontrunner Eric Adams saved some of his most personal attacks on Andrew Yang for last.
- The animus appears mutual, with Yang campaigning with a rival over the weekend to ding Adams.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The Democratic New York City mayoral primary has grown contentions and, at times, personal in its waning days.
Candidates have lobbed scorching words at one another, with frontrunner Eric Adams attacking rival Andrew Yang in his strongest terms yet on Monday.
Tensions were already running high, but a joint campaign appearance between Yang and former City Sanitation Commissioner Kathyrn Garcia over the weekend saw Adams go on the offensive.
"What is Andrew Yang still doing in this race?" Adams said in front of his Prospect Lefferts Gardens campaign office on Monday. "You know? I mean, listen, we know Andrew Yang is a fraud, he's a liar. We could care less about Andrew Yang."
-Shant Shahrigian (@ShantRS) June 21, 2021
After news broke that Garcia and Yang would appear together to "promote ranked choice voting" rather than as a co-endorsement, Adams accused them of deploying racially motivated tactics.
"For them to come together like they are doing in the last three days, they're saying we can't trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York when this city is overwhelmingly people of color," Adams said.
Adams later clarified that he meant a Black or Hispanic candidate.
For his part, Yang responded on Saturday by saying: "I would tell Eric Adams that I've been Asian my entire life."
Yang also took issue with Adams citing race in his campaign attacks.
"Imagine an administration that is led by someone who cuts corners and breaks rules and is constantly under investigation and then attacks whenever he's criticized and then invokes race as the rationale for any criticism that's directed toward him, and then you imagine hundreds of managers taking their cues from this person," Yang told The New York Times on Monday.
The debut of ranked-choice voting in New York City was touted by its proponents as an effective way to end negative campaigning by making candidates compete for the second and third choices of their rivals' supporters.
However, Yang and Adams have not let that get in the way of their burgeoning public feud.