Inside the quiet race for New York City's second-most powerful position

The second-most powerful person in New York City politics is not elevated to the role by the voters of New York City. The speaker of the New York City Council, currently Adrienne Adams, has the authority to set the council’s agenda, which means she has unmatched influence on what becomes New York City law. With a little maneuvering, she can convene a commission to change the city charter, subpoena members of the mayor’s administration and override mayoral vetoes. She can schedule the council’s meetings, hire its central staff, choose its committee chairs, dispense its discretionary funding and negotiate the city’s budget on its behalf. She chooses who sits on the Land Use Committee, which gives her power over what gets built in New York City – and what doesn’t.

The speaker’s annual salary is currently $164,500, $16,000 more than her colleagues. The speaker has a huge, well-paid staff and a big City Hall office, for which art can be borrowed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in addition to a spacious suite at 250 Broadway – both with private bathrooms. She is ferried around the city in a black SUV accompanied by a full-time police detail. She holds immense sway over the members of the council, setting their operating budgets and determining which committees they sit on. She decides which members are part of the council’s leadership and who is on the team that negotiates the city’s budget. She can decide which offices go to which members and choose where members sit in the chamber

As the city stumbles through the most unpredictable mayoral election in recent history, a much more subtle race is underway to succeed her. In some ways, the race is simple. There are 51 members in the body. You need 26 votes to win. As the City Charter puts it: “The council shall elect from among its members a speaker and such other officers as it deems appropriate.” But to understand the race for council speaker is to understand the lumbering, transactional, redundant, at times corrupt and at times beautiful system through which power flows in New York City. Every speaker race is unique. Campaign finance laws and term limits have shifted. The date of the primary election has moved, and the influence of county machines has waned. There is no surefire way to win, yet it’s a process that candidates approach with relentless strategy. “It was a very intense 2 1/2-year period where I worked my butt and my brains off by being in every corner of the city,” said Corey Johnson, who was elected speaker in 2018.


This “deal,” as some participants call the speaker selection process, is a yearslong conversation that involves political influencers across the city, and it plucks the strings that connect them to one another. But the outcome – hashed out at a beachfront hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico – can almost be a fluke. Everyone and no one decides.



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