Appealing to blue-collar Black and Latino voters, former police officer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams won New York City's Democratic primary on Tuesday, making him the prohibitive favorite to become the next mayor.

As the country's most populated city, New York's mayoral race had drawn increased national attention in recent weeks for its crowded field of challengers to replace Bill de Blasio. Adams edged former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, one of the favorites after receiving the endorsement of the New York Times. An updated vote count Sunday showed Adams had received 403,333 votes (50.5%), compared to Garcia's 394,907 votes (49.5%).

Other top candidates included civil rights attorney Maya Wiley, as well as entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

Adams, 60, was raised in Brooklyn and Queens. His mother worked as a housecleaner, while his father was a butcher.

In a city that votes overwhelmingly for Democrats, Adams is expected to cruise to a victory in the general election in November against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels. Should Adams avoid a major upset in November, he will become the city's second Black mayor.

Crime has risen in the city and Adams, who served in law enforcement for 22 years and is a retired NYPD captain, has not been coy about his policy intentions as the next mayor.

In two recent interviews, Adams stressed safety and "making our city safe."

He has also recently made the rounds in national media to push a stronger message about policing and gun safety.

On Sunday, Adams spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper about how national Democrats have come up short in containing gun violence and reforming policing laws. He said Democrats have had misplaced priorities that focused on assault weapons over handguns.

"I believe those priorities, they really were misplaced. And it's almost insulting what we have witnessed over the last few years," Adams said on "State of the Union." "Many of our presidents, they saw these numbers. They knew that the inner cities —particularly where Black, brown and poor people — ... were dealing with this real crisis. And it took this president to state that it is time for us to stop ignoring what is happening in the south sides of Chicago, in the Brownsvilles, in the Atlantas of our country."

On his Twitter account, Adams posted an endorsing comment from Rev. Al Sharpton: "The way to support police reform is to support good policemen, and Eric is the perfect person to do this."

Early Sunday, Adams posted on Twitter that he spoke with renowned Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, potentially suggesting that police reforms in New York could have broader implications in 2022 after "defund the police" became a political talking point in 2020.

Republicans plan to make crime a key issue in the midterm elections, while many Democrats have distanced many "defund the police" comments. An Ipsos/USA TODAY poll in March found that only 18% of Americans supported the movement known as "defund the police."