On a night when tough-on-crime questions were on ballots, two of the biggest decisions for more policing came in the New York City mayoral race and in a Minneapolis referendum, with most other, similarly pro-police candidates in other cities also doing well.
The Minneapolis referendum to replace the city’s police department and its required minimum of officers with a new Department of Public Safety failed on Tuesday. The ballot question required 51% of the vote to pass but failed 44% to 57% with 133 out of 136 precincts reporting, according to Fox News.
In Cleveland, however, a ballot question on creating a civilian commission to hire and fire police officers is at 58.5% for and 41.5% against, with 83% of precincts reporting, Spectrum News reported.
The city’s Democratic mayoral candidate, Justin Bibb, who supports the initiative, is also in the lead at 61.8%, over his opponent, GOP candidate Kevin Kelley, at 38.2%. Bibb declared victory Tuesday evening, with Kelley conceding at about 10:30 p.m., according to WKYC.
Increasing violent crime over the past two years and who among those up for election this year was on the minds of voters, including those who argued efforts to “defund” police departments in the aftermath of the 2020 social justice protests had made their communities too unsafe.
Also on Tuesday, New York City elected Democratic mayoral candidate and former New York Police Department Capt. Eric Adams, who vowed to be tough on crime. However, the city also elected Alvin Bragg as its first black district attorney. Bragg has promised to not prosecute those who resist arrest and to be generous with bail.
For Boston’s mayoral election, Michelle Wu, who supported cutting the police budget by 10% last year, won against fellow City Council member Annissa Essaibi who accused Wu of wanting to defund the police.
In Buffalo, N.Y., Democratic incumbent Mayor Byron Brown, who lost to democratic socialist India Walton in their party’s primary, appeared to be in the lead as a write-in candidate, with 98% reporting and write-in candidates leading Walton 59%-41%, according to WIVB. The news outlet noted that it could take weeks for all the write-in votes to be counted.
Atlanta’s mayoral race saw Felicia Moore, who promised to hire 250 police officers to her opponent and former Mayor Kasim Reed’s vowed 750 police officers, in the lead and likely to head to a runoff election with over 95% of Fulton County reporting, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Moore was at 40% of the vote and the next two candidates, Reed and Andre Dickens, were tied at 23% of the vote with less than a thousand votes between them, according to Fox 5.
