Remember a few days ago when his lead in the Democratic primary looked insurmountable, and he declared himself “the face of the new Democratic Party”?

Can he still be that face if he ends up losing?

Better start thinking about it. Because after tallying the ranked-choice results among various candidates, NYC reported this afternoon that former de Blasio sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia is just a few points behind Eric Adams with many absentee ballots still left to count. There’s reason to think Garcia might lead Adams considerably on those ballots, by enough of a margin to actually make up the difference between them.

It’s very unusual for a candidate who led by as much as Adams did in the first round of counting not to win. But Garcia made a last-minute alliance with Andrew Yang in which he asked his voters to make her their second choice. That may have paid off for her. As I write this at 6:30 ET, she’s suddenly the favorite to win in betting markets and among professional election analysts alike.

How’s Adams handling the news? Not well. Not well.

That’s the same Eric Adams who posted this last November:

It shouldn’t matter which side of the aisle you’re on — if you believe in our Democracy and in the peaceful transition of power, then you have an obligation to speak out against Donald Trump’s dangerous, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. https://t.co/O0DPdTv8Uo

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) November 11, 2020

It would be a phenomenal troll by Trump if he issued a statement expressing solidarity with Adams in his pursuit of “election integrity” in NYC.

As messy as this is getting, it could get even messier. A few days before the vote, Adams accused Garcia and Yang of racism by teaming up against him, a claim even our liberal media scoffed at. Adams can make this ugly if he wants to. But … is it possible that he has a valid complaint? That something really has gone wrong in the tabulations? The city Board of Elections posted this within the last hour:

We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report. We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience.

— NYC Board of Elections (@BOENYC) June 29, 2021

It wouldn’t be surprising for NYC to screw up a ranked-choice tabulation. Not only is the system complicated and brand new to the NYC BOE, New York has a notorious reputation for counting votes inefficiently. A major mistake unfortunately can’t be put past them as they’re famously bad at their jobs. On top of that, other observers have noticed that something seems fishy in the data released today:

Unfortunately, I don't think Adams' statement is as Trumpian as it seems at first blush. Something extremely odd happened with the 140k in-person votes not counted on election night — the leading candidates gained a normal amount of votes, while the lesser-known ones gained… https://t.co/kdFGuNap5C

— It’s-a Tyler Dinucci 🤌🏼 (@TylerDinucci) June 29, 2021

Maybe Adams has a point — not that the election is being “stolen” from him but that it’s run by incompetents who can’t do math and need to recheck their numbers.

To make matters even worse, with so many absentee ballots outstanding it’s technically possible that Adams and Garcia won’t be the last two candidates last standing. Maya Wiley, the progressive choice, trailed Garcia very narrowly in the next to last round of counting. In theory she could make up that difference by beating Garcia in absentee ballots by a wide enough margin. That’s probably not going to happen, but it’s not assured. So why is NYC even bothering to issue preliminary counts showing the race boiling down to Garcia and Adams?

It’s a royal mess. Stay tuned for updated numbers, assuming the Board of Elections manages to figure out how to count tonight.