New York has been a Democrat city for decades but that does not guarantee Eric Adams victory in Tuesday’s election.
Businessman Michael Bloomberg won the race in 2001 as a Republican and was re-elected again before becoming an independent - and his predecessor Rudy Giuliani was also another successful mayor on the GOP ticket.
Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg speaks at a campaign event in Raleigh
© AP Photo / Gerald Herbert
But this week’s election is really Adams’ to lose.
So who is he?
Adams, 61, a former captain in the New York Police Department, is the president of the borough of Brooklyn.
Tough Childhood
His parents, like many black New Yorkers, moved to the city from the Deep South in the 1950s and his first home was a rat-infested tenement in the Bushwick neighbourhood of Brooklyn.
As a teenager, he ran in a gang and was beaten up by police officers.
But by 1984, he had turned his life around and graduated second in his class at the police academy.
He served for 22 years in the New York Transit Police and the NYPD and was a first responder at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
In 2006, he retired and was elected that same year to the New York State Senate.
He served four terms and then became President of Brooklyn, one of five New York boroughs.
Adams is unmarried but has a son from a previous relationship and lives with Tracey Collins, a senior education executive.
He has been a vegan since 2016, when he was diagnosed with diabetes.
Moderate Democrat
Adams won the Democratic primary earlier this year by positioning himself as a moderate, as opposed to the leftists Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales.
Last year, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, some Democrats were pushing an agenda of “defunding” the police but Adams had no truck with that.
Adams told the New York Times: “I don’t hate police departments. I hate abusive policing, and that’s what people mix up.”
Violent crime is rising in New York, so the 8.8 million voters were not susceptible to the “defund the police” agenda.
Too many of them still have memories of the lawless days of the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s when criminals ran amok in New York and a crack cocaine epidemic plunged the city into chaos under a Democrat, Ed Koch.
Crime has been a key topic on the political agenda in the city which suits Adams’ opponent, Curtis Sliwa, a founder of the Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol in the 1980s.
Adams has repeatedly called Sliwa a “clown'' who once faked his own kidnapping.
But crime is by no means the only issue.
Coronavirus Controversy
New York has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic over the past 18 months and the outgoing Mayor, Bill de Blasio has had his fair share of critics for the way he has handled it.
De Blasio, recently issued an edict that police officers, firefighters and other key workers should get vaccinated against COVID-19 or be placed on unpaid leave.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks during the opening of the Broadway vaccination site amid coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in New York City, U.S., April 12, 2021
© REUTERS / Jeenah Moon
It was a controversial move but Adams supports it, although he insists he would have more talks with the trade unions about it.
Adams has also faced questions about whether he actually lives in the city.
News reports have suggested he spends much of his time at an apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
During this week’s debate, Sliwa told Adams: "I'd like to know where you actually live because you keep faking that".
Adams sidestepped the question neatly.
If he wins Adams will not be the first African-American Mayor of New York - that was David Dinkins, who served two terms between 1990 and 1993 and was ousted by Giuliani.