Earlier this month, Eric Adams breezed to victory against nominal Republican opposition. In January, he will be sworn in as New York’s 110th mayor, inaugurating a new and unpredictable era for the city. Adams, a former police captain, ran as an unabashed law-and-order moderate, promising to tame rising leftists in the five boroughs. An ally of the real estate industry and the police, he will not be easily combated.

But the Adams victory is not quite the end of election season in New York. One more race must be decided. No voters, though, will get to weigh in. It is, in many ways, the ultimate insider’s contest.

Just as Adams takes office in January, the New York City Council will elect a new speaker. The speaker is the city’s second most powerful elected official, the governing partner with a much stronger mayor. The speaker leads the fifty-one-member legislature, largely Democratic, and shepherds bills into law. Most crucially, the speaker hashes out the municipal budget with the mayor, which now accounts for nearly $100 billion in spending. The city, with a population close to 9 million, outspends most states.