6/27 Primary Preview
unusually sleepy for a New York primary
We can’t title this “New York Primary Preview” because there’s a single LA city council special election at the very end of this thing. Sorry.
New York City Council
The New York City Council is up for an abbreviated two-year term due to redistricting. The winners of these elections will only serve until 2025, when a regular election will decide a full four-year term.
District 1 (Financial District, Chinatown, Tribeca)
Christopher Marte (i) vs. Ursila Jung vs. Susan Lee vs. Pooi Stewart
Chris Marte ran for this seat in 2017 and 2021 as a leftist-NIMBY fusion candidate, losing the first time and winning the second time. On the Council, he’s often fallen in line with Eric Adams like most of his fellow non-DSA self-described progressives, but he stayed in the city council’s progressive caucus after new, stricter membership requirements prompted 15 of his colleagues to leave it, which definitely counts for something. Ursila Jung and Susan Lee are both looking to exploit Marte’s consistent weakness in Chinatown with campaigns focusing on crime and opposing any changes to the city’s Gifted & Talented programs. They’ve cross-endorsed one another, but Lee is the more serious threat to Marte’s reelection; she has the endorsement of several influential labor unions, most importantly DC37, which represents city employees. Substitute teacher Pooi Stewart isn’t running much of a campaign and thinks you should vote for Marte.
District 2 (East Village, Lower East Side)
Carlina Rivera (i) vs. Allie Ryan
In the ongoing housing wars of Lower Manhattan, there’s this image many on the YIMBY side have of their opponents as the first wave of gentrifiers in a now almost-entirely gentrified area, who view themselves as a working class vanguard instead of as the members of the upper middle class they actually are, and oppose any threat of change they and their similarly comfortable neighbors face from development without taking into account how it will affect others, or New Yorkers of the future. It’s a mostly unfair image for the group as a whole, but that type of person does exist. For instance: Allie Ryan. She opposes electric bikes, congestion pricing, Open Restaurants, Local Law 97 (mandating old buildings meet environmental standards), rooftop parties, tall buildings in Lower Manhattan, and phasing out the Gifted & Talented program (she opted for a private school for her daughter once G&T changes began). Barely distinguishable from your garden variety suburban HOA president.
Ryan ran against Carlina Rivera, perhaps the city’s most prominent YIMBY councilor after her failed congressional bid last year, in 2021 as an independent. She earned only 11% of the vote, which is probably why she’s running as a Democrat this year. Rivera is no conservative, but there’s a reason the progressive groups went to Yuh-Line Niou in that congressional race, and we’d love to see someone run to her left. Unfortunately, Ryan wants to make this race a referendum on the existence of upzonings, and perhaps those damn e-bikes and scooters.
District 9 (Harlem)
Inez Dickens vs. Yusef Salaam vs. Alfred Taylor
Welcome to probably the most exciting Council race in the city you’ll find in this sleepy Council election season. The surprise retirement announcement of incumbent socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan was only the beginning, and only exacerbated the political fractures at play, which increasingly looks like Assemb. Inez Dickens and the city's moderate establishment vs. Assemb. Al Taylor and exonerated Central Park 5 member Yusef Salaam. Dickens, raised in a family of politicians, has been in politics since the 70s, though she didn't run for public office until 2005. She’s one of the wealthiest members of the legislature, and a slumlord who has thus far managed to get elected despite that (she won reelection by a 60-30 margin against a housing advocate in the primary last year), but last year she wasn’t attempting to evict a tenant during the election. Late in the election, she unveiled an Eric Adams endorsement, confirming just how much worse than Taylor and Salaam she is.
As for Taylor and Salaam, they’ve made a cross endorsement of each other, but the general sense is that it was really Salaam who benefitted from that. Taylor’s assembly district doesn’t cover much of the council district, and he’s struggled with both labor and community endorsements. He’s seemingly headed for third place, and that means his voters’ second choice matters immensely. Yusef Salaam, the only candidate to run as a proud progressive (though not a socialist like Richardson Jordan) was not a natural beneficiary of those second choice Taylor voters, given that Taylor is in between the Dickens and Salaam ideologically. Unlike other progressives in the city, Salaam isn’t running with the help of the progressive infrastructure, like the Working Families Party, instead focusing on his personal story and support from Black political leaders.
District 10 (Washington Heights and Inwood, Manhattan)
Carmen De La Rosa (i) vs. Guillermo Perez
It’s not easy to get on the ballot in New York, which makes true perennial candidates rarer. Guillermo “Ali” Perez is only on his fourth race, so we’re not totally ready to apply the label to him, but, at the same time, this is his website. His best result in any race was 23% of the vote. So, you know, borderline.
Anyway, Carmen De La Rosa is going to win reelection easily.
District 12 (Wakefield, Co-op City)
Kevin Riley (i) vs. Pamela Hamilton-Johnson vs. Aisha Hernandez Ahmed
Andy King made history in 2020 as the first member of the New York City Council to ever be expelled by a vote of his own colleagues. King earned the dubious honor through over a decade of sexual harassment, crudely misogynist and plain fucked-up remarks, conflicts of interest, kickbacks, and more, detailed in an exhaustive investigative report compiled by the council’s ethics committee in support of its recommendation to expel King. Kevin Riley, a district leader and aide to state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, won the special election to fill King’s vacant seat after his expulsion, defeating community activist Pamela Hamilton-Johnson. Hamilton-Johnson ran against Riley in the 2021 Democratic primary, losing 59-41 in the final round of ranked-choice voting; not bad against an incumbent, but far from victory. King looms larger over Riley’s hopes of winning a second two-year term. The ex-councilman tried to get on the ballot himself, arguing that his expulsion before he completed his second four-year term meant that consecutive term limits didn’t apply to him and he could run for a third term; he won at the trial court level, but was thrown off the ballot after an appeal by the city board of elections. In his absence, King’s operation is behind his former chief of staff, Aisha Hernandez Ahmed.
District 13 (Throggs Neck, Morris Park, City Island)
Marjorie Velázquez (i) vs. Irene Estrada vs. Bernadette Ferrara vs. John Perez
Marjorie Velázquez was a promising progressive in June 2021 when she coasted into office, having cowed ethically-challenged conservative incumbent Mark Gjonaj into an early retirement after she nearly beat him in the 2017 primary. Then District 13, which includes the Bronx’s most conservative neighborhoods, lurched hard to the right, voting for red beret-clad Republican subway vigilante Curtis Sliwa at the same time as it elected Velázquez in November 2021. Most of Velázquez’s progressive commitments suddenly shrank into the background or got scrapped entirely, and she became a pretty standard Democratic city council member. (We have to note that this is still so much better than Mark Gjonaj.) Republicans, meanwhile, began preparing to make a serious run at Velázquez, eager to win their first Bronx seat on the city council since 1983. Velázquez’s seat could fall to a Republican in November—or today, in the Democratic primary.
Bronx Community Board 11 Chair Bernadette Ferrara is a conservative Democrat and very recent Republican, a message that Velázquez’s allies in organized labor have been pushing relentlessly. She was registered as a Republican as recently as 2020, and she opposes same-sex marriage and trans rights. Former Democratic district leader Irene Estrada isn’t an ex-Republican, but she’s Sliwa’s endorsed Democrat in this race. Both are running extremely conservative campaigns, focused on crime and Velázquez’s support for a pair of rezonings which will bring affordable housing and supportive housing for the formerly incarcerated to the district. Either one would be a return to the Gjonaj days at best. John Perez is a repeat candidate who isn’t running much of a campaign.
District 14 (University Heights)
Pierina Sanchez (i) vs. Rachel Miller-Bradshaw
Pierina Sanchez is a former Republican who eventually fell in with the Bronx machine and remade herself into a regular liberal Democrat. While she’s not the most progressive member of the council, it’s not clear if there’s much appetite for a candidate to her left—DSA tried here in 2021 and got nowhere. Instead of a progressive who might get our hopes up, she’s being challenged by Rachel Miller-Bradshaw, a Democratic party activist and Female State Committee Member for the 78th Assembly District with a history of trying to block homeless shelters from opening near her co-op building. She’s gotten nobody to defect from the Bronx machine for her, and hasn’t raised much money, which means she’s cooked regardless.
District 22 (Astoria)
Tiffany Cabán (i) vs. Charles Castro
Tiffany Cabán may have famously lost the Queens DA primary by only a few dozen votes, but when she ran for Council in 2021, she became one of two DSA victories that year, and quite easily so. Since then she’s proudly represented perhaps the city’s most left-wing neighborhood as a proudly left-wing politician. She’s become a regular target of ire from Mayor Eric Adams, and if you thought that that might mean a serious challenger to her, you’d be wrong. Charles Castro is a disgraced ex-cop, fabulist, and former staffer of even more disgraced former City Councilor Hiram Monserrate (see Queens DA for more on him). He couldn’t even get the bitter anti-socialist contingent in city politics to support him, and that’s the lowest of bars.
District 23 (Glen Oaks, Queens Village)
Linda Lee (i) vs. Steve Behar vs. Rubaiya Rahman
Linda Lee’s district literally borders Nassau County. The fact that she had Queens machine backing in 2021 and still only beat DSA’s Jaslin Kaur 54%-46% speaks to a fantastic campaign by Kaur, but also to the slowly dwindling base of actual machine voters. After Kaur declined a rematch, and only two short years later, you would think that Lee was safe for reelection, but not everyone feels comfortable taking that for granted. Jeff Leb, head honcho of centrist Super PAC spending in NYC, is putting $100,000 into ads attacking Lee’s opponents who are both running to her left, albeit less so than Kaur was. Steve Behar, a former Council staffer, ran for this seat in 2021 and placed a respectable but still quite distant third at 13%, before the ranked choice ballots were tallied in 2021. Nonprofit director Rubaiya Rahman is a first-time candidate involved with South Asian political organizations in the city. Both are criticizing Lee for voting for the infamous 2023 budget that defunded schools.
District 25 (Jackson Heights, Elmhurst)
Shekar Krishnan (i) vs. Fatima Baryab vs. Ricardo Pacheco
Shekar Krishnan, first elected in 2021, is generally seen as one of the more progressive non-socialist members of the Council. He’s done a fine job in the Council, and would probably be favored for reelection regardless of his challengers. Even with that circumstance in mind, he wound up with a weak pair of opponents. Fatima Baryab was also in that 2021 primary, where she took 10% of the vote, and then ran as an independent, a campaign that was also a resounding failure, and ended with accusations (that sure seem credible to us) that the campaign hired a bunch of homeless people to do election day canvassing and tried to not pay many of them. Ricardo Pacheco is an ex-cop and President of the Jackson Heights Co-Ops Alliance. He devotes a significant portion of his issues page to explaining why it’s not fair to call him “anti-Open Streets”, which is always a great sign for any candidate.
District 26 (Sunnyside, Long Island City)
Julie Won (i) vs. Hailie Kim
The District 26 primary last cycle was perhaps the most crowded in the state. Not only were there 16 candidates, but no one even got 20% of the first-round vote. From that perspective it makes a lot of sense for one of the candidates who lost to Julie Won to try again, this time with the guarantee of much more face time with voters. Hailie Kim was a socialist candidate who ran without the backing of DSA, and honestly just crowded out by the massive field, and finished in eighth place. In that race, Julie Won ran as a progressive, though she notably declined to sign the police defunding pledge, but once in office quickly voted for the aforementioned school defunding budget. It could be Kim’s time to shine, but there’s an unfortunate lack of appetite among progressive orgs to fight for her. DSA isn’t doing Council campaigns this year, and the Working Families Party, despite overruling their Queens chapter to endorse someone other than Won in 2021, has endorsed Won this cycle.
District 29 (Kew Gardens, Richmond Hill)
Lynn Schulman (i) vs. Ethan Felder vs. Sukhi Singh
Keeping with the theme of Councilmembers being challenged over their votes to defund the city’s schools, Lynn Schulman is in the same boat. You would expect her to be quite well insulated in historically moderate central Queens, but in 2021 she only defeated progressive Aleda Gagarin by a 60%-40% after RCV votes were tallied. That result must also have spooked Jeff Leb, who’s dropping $100,000 of his Super PAC’s money on her. SEIU attorney Ethan Felder is an odd candidate—simultaneously a man running to Schulman’s left on many issues who was friendly with progressives in the past, but also a man who ran against a moderate Assembly incumbent in 2022 for not doing enough to push back against BDS and crime. Also not an all-around progressive candidate is Sukhi Singh, who opposes education funding cuts, and wants to expand rent stabilization, but has expressed some conservative opinions on social media. Traditionally a Jewish district, the 29th became more South Asian in redistricting, which could provide an opening for Singh.
District 34 (Bushwick, Williamsburg, Ridgewood)
Jennifer Gutierrez (i) vs. Paperboy Prince
Eric Adams Please Get Out of My Room - Paperboy Love Prince (Music Video)
Aw, we love Paperboy. They’re not winning, but, you know—fun character, hope they keep up the yearly candidacies.
District 41 (Brownsville)
Darlene Mealy (i) vs. Reginald Bowman vs. Isis McIntosh Green vs. Joyce Shearin
Darlene Mealy may have three opponents, but the only one with a chance against her is Isis McIntosh Green. Mealy, a former council member, defeated incumbent Alicka Ampry-Samuel in 2021 to return to the Council, and, in doing so, set herself on a collision course with Assemb. Latrice Walker, who represents much of the same area. Walker’s chief of staff, Isis McIntosh Green, should be assumed to have similar politics to her boss, which is to say better than anything from moderate, Eric Adams-aligned Mealy. Unlike most challengers, McIntosh Green has (presumably with Walker’s help) been able to marshal some labor support, including IUPAT, RWDSU, carpenters, nurses, and CWA. Mealy is an absentee council member, which should be an opening for McIntosh Green, but Mealy was an absentee council member before, and Mealy still won before.
District 42 (East New York)
Charles Barron (i) vs. Christopher Banks vs. Jamilah Rose
It’s hard not to see this as the last hurrah for Charles and Inez Barron and Operation POWER, their political organization. The Barrons have been in office since the 90s, swapping an overlapping Assembly and Council district between themselves to comply with term limits, and improbably surviving as outright open leftists in some of the most moderate Black-majority neighborhoods in the city. Charles has made no effort at mainstream respectability either—famously, Robert Mugabe spoke in front of the Council at his invitation, and he endorsed the PSL candidate for mayor at least once. It’s a genuinely remarkable story, but after decades cracks have begun to show in the organization’s power. Charles Barron’s most recent move back to the Council in 2021 was unexpectedly close, with Barron only prevailing by 5%, and Smith’s decision to retire rather than run for the vacant assembly seat that resulted resulted in humiliation for Operation POWER, when the first non-Barron candidate they attempted to elect lost 73%-27%.
Charles Barron is now running for reelection, and while he does have the advantage of incumbency this time, Christopher Banks is a strong opponent. Backed by Eric Adams, Chris Banks has outraised the incumbent and managed to pull in some big labor unions. While he takes policy positions to the right of Barron, his main message is that he can work with other Black leaders in the city like Eric Adams and Hakeem Jeffries, while Barron can’t. Simple, but potentially effective.
Bronx DA
Darcel Clark (i) vs. Tess Cohen
Darcel Clark is an overly carceral DA in a borough suffering from over-policing and over-incarceration. We’d love to tell you, then, that her opponent, progressive Tess Cohen, has a chance, but she’s a white woman running in the Bronx without any help from the Bronx machine.
Queens DA
Melinda Katz (i) vs. Devian Daniels vs. George Grasso
Melinda Katz leads an office that has repeatedly fought to keep people in prison in the face of convincing evidence of their innocence and critical flaws in their original convictions. She defeated DSA’s Tiffany Cabán, now a member of the city council but then a little-known public defender, by less than 100 votes four years ago, but this year, both of Katz’s opponents are, somehow, arguably worse than the district attorney.
Devian Daniels is a part of Hiram Monserrate’s political operation, and Hiram Monserrate is an unkillable political cockroach if ever there was one. From hawking Scientology quack medicine as a cure for 9/11 while on the city council to caucusing with Republicans in the state Senate for personal gain, from slashing his girlfriend with a glass bottle and getting expelled from the state legislature to getting convicted on federal corruption charges and doing 21 months behind bars, nothing has been able to keep Hiram Monserrate down. The city council went so far as to write a law prohibiting former legislators from running for municipal office if they’ve been convicted of corruption, clearly intended to shut down his planned 2021 city council campaign. (Though since this is New York City, this law can be expected to apply to other aspiring comeback crooks with some regularity.) Monserrate was elected to a district leader post in 2018 and runs an active Democratic club in East Elmhurst, and tried (unsuccessfully) to get around the law prohibiting him from running for city council this year. As much as Hiram Monserrate should be a thing of the past, he isn’t, and his personal political machine tries to win a few races every year. In 2023, this is one of them. (Though Daniels allegedly didn’t bother to register as a candidate with the state as required by law, so who knows how serious this campaign really is?) No thanks! Next.
Cop-turned-judge George Grasso is a hard-right tough-on-crime candidate. He sounds like 1990s Rudy Giuliani and pays for Twitter Blue. With that pitch (and the endorsement of Giuliani’s first police commissioner, Bill Bratton) Republicans are more than a little interested. Grasso is going to the trouble of setting up a “Public Safety” ballot line to aid him using New York’s fusion voting system in the general election; he does not plan to stop in June, whether or not he beats Katz, and sees Republican voters as a cornerstone of his strategy in November. Queens, we’re sorry.
Brooklyn Civil Court Judge
Turquoise Haskin vs. Linda Wilson
Civil Court elections can be boring and opaque. This one may be boring, but at least it’s easy to figure out. The moderate Brooklyn establishment has lined up behind clerk Turquoise Haskin, while the progressive faction is backing Linda Wilson.
Manhattan Civil Court Judge
David Fraiden vs. Lauren Esposito
By contrast, Manhattan’s Civil Court race is not boring (one of the candidates is a fire-breathing juggler), but it is opaque. In 2022, all of the big Manhattan liberals got behind David Fraiden, who was running against a borough-hopping landlord. He lost, and now he’s running against, but all the big Manhattan liberals got behind Lauren Esposito instead. If you have any idea why, let us know, we can’t figure it out.
Queens Civil Court Judge
Sandra Perez vs. Marianne Gonzalez
Sandra Perez is the Queens-machine endorsed candidate, but Marianne Gonzalez sure seems like the Hiram Monserrate candidate, and that’s far worse. That doesn’t actually mean Perez is assured victory, though; Monserrate has had some bizarre luck with judicial candidates in the past.
Buffalo Common Council
Buffalo gives its districts names instead of numbers, and calls its city council the Common Council.
Ellicott District
Matt Dearing vs. Emin Eddie Egriu vs. Leah Halton-Pope vs. Cedric Holloway
Leah Halton-Pope, longtime staffer to Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, is the favorite in this election. Cop Cedric Holloway is running to her right, but to her left is former Assemb. Pat Burke staffer Matt Dearing. Pat Burke’s office is an unusual place to find a progressive candidate, but he’s far from thrilled about his old (alleged) sex pest boss after being fired after an argument about race following the Tops shooting. Emin Eddie Egriu is a businessman who ran for Congress last year and got 8.7% of the vote. It would be shocking if he managed a performance that high in this election.
Fillmore District
Mitchell Nowakowski (i) vs. Samuel Herbert
Mitch Nowakowski is a boring moderate-to-liberal member of the city council running his first reelection race. His opponent is far more interesting. Sam Herbert is an activist responsible for a years-long campaign to upgrade the statue of MLK Jr. at MLK Park to one that better resembles the late civil rights leader. Herbert has been involved in other causes, for instance the legalization of marijuana, but he's best known for the statue campaign. His attempts at political campaigns have fared worse, running for this seat in particular four times already. He's a perennial candidate by this point, albeit one who was close to getting on the council in the mid-2000s, but in his last campaign he only got 28% of the vote, and may do even worse today.
Lovejoy District
Bryan Bollman (i) vs. Mohammed Uddin
Bryan Bollman, another moderate-to-liberal freshman incumbent, also has a challenger. Unfortunately, Mohammed Uddin isn’t as much of a known figure as Herbert. In fact, he barely has an online presence. His Facebook page indicates he would support the Tenants Bill of Rights, unlike Bollman, so he’s probably more progressive.
Masten District
Zeneta Everhart vs. Murray Holman vs. India Walton
Most reading this will remember how nurse India Walton defeated incumbent Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary, only to have Brown, with the help of Republicans and New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, defeat her in the general election as an independent write-in candidate. It was a thrilling, then, crushing, pair of elections. Walton is back, running for city council in a district that became open late in the cycle. While progressives have still endorsed her, they’re not putting the same financial and volunteer resources behind this bid as they did for her mayoral campaign. Her main opponent is Zeneta Everhart, the mother of a Tops shooting survivor, and a staffer to state Sen. Tim Kennedy. Everhart is backed by the city’s establishment, and has seen money flow into her campaign coffers as business interests want to be sure Walton’s career is dead.
North District
Joseph Golombek (i) vs. Eve Shippens vs. Lisa Thagard
Joseph Golombek is the longest serving member of the city council, by a margin of over a decade. His conservative leanings made sense when building trades unions were kingmakers in an electorate dominated by white working class voters. Public teacher and union delegate Eve Shippens is challenging Golombek from the left with the help of the local AFT chapter and the WFP. Also in the mix is Lisa Thagard, a social worker whose big issue is expanding cash bail.
University District
Rasheed Wyatt (i) vs. Kathryn Franco
This district, which, true to its name, includes the SUNY Buffalo campus, is one of the more progressive in the city. Last cycle, incumbent Rasheed Wyatt was challenged by SUNY employee Kathryn Franco, winning 67%-33%. Franco is running again, backed by labor unions and the Working Families Party. If there’s a future where the city council pushes back against Mayor Byron Brown, this is the kind of race progressives need to be winning.
Rochester City Council
The Rochester City Council has eight members, four of which are elected At-Large, and four of which are elected on a district basis; those are the four up for reelection this year. The People's Slate is a leftist group running candidates in there of the four districts: Chiara "Kee-Kee" Smith in the NE District, Barbara Rivera in the South District, and, in the East District, incumbent Mary Lupien, who is being challenged by county party-backed "extreme moderate" Paul Conrow. They're not involved in the NW District, which has its own weird situation. Frank Keophetlasy served one term in the Monroe County Legislature, from 2019 to 2021. During that term, he and four other legislators elected as Democrats caucused with the GOP majority. Keophetlasy, along with two other turncoats, got thrown out by primary voters in 2021, and the caucus dissolved shortly afterwards. Bridget Monroe, a longtime city council staffer, includes PDFs of mailer designs on her website; everything but a very brief biography of Monroe is dedicated to the simple message that Keophetlasy is a Republican and a loser. Go Bridget.
Monroe County Legislature
Monroe County, for some reason, has 29 districts in its county legislature, which is just ridiculous—each has about 26,000 residents. Democrats hold 15 of them, but don't command a majority, thanks to a turncoat IDC wannabe by the name of Sabrina LaMar in District 20, who caucuses with the Republicans. She's being challenged by Rose Bonnick, who promises to caucus with the Democrats. The county party officially is trying to primary out four progressive incumbents Rachel Barnhart (District 17), Mercedes Vazquez-Simmons (District 22), Carolyn Delvecchio Hoffman (District 25), and William Burgess (District 29). In fact, the only incumbent they’re supporting in a contested primary is…Sabrina LaMar, the member of the Republican caucus. Additionally, tenant organizer Oscar Brewer is running for open District 21 on the People's Slate.
Westchester County Legislature District 16 (Yonkers)
Christopher Johnson (i) vs. Shanae Williams
This race is about factional differences: Yonkers City Councilwoman Shanae Williams has the party endorsement, while Majority Leader Christopher Johnson has the WFP. On top of that, Williams is a former Mike Spano (see Yonkers Mayor) staffer, and was appointed to the Council by him. Williams was also working with the disgraced former chair of the Westchester County GOP in her last election, according to some reports. While Christopher Johnson is unfortunately a status-quo moderate, he’s no fan of Spano, and the status quo may still be preferable to letting Spano allies get their way.
Yonkers Mayor
Mike Spano (i) vs. Corazón Pineda-Isaac vs. Margaret Fountain-Coleman
Mike Spano is a living artifact of a different Yonkers. A white conservative from an entrenched Yonkers political family, Spano got his start in politics in 1992 as a Republican assemblyman, following in the footsteps of his father Leonard and brother Nick. Yonkers’s rapidly diversifying population soon spelled trouble for the local GOP machine, however—and the Spanos were no exception. When Nick, then a state senator, lost reelection to Democrat Andrea Stewart-Cousins in 2006, Mike switched to the Democrats, winning two more terms in the Assembly before his election as mayor of Yonkers in 2011. Twelve years later, Yonkers is a Democratic bastion home to Squad member Jamaal Bowman, and a majority of its population is Black or Latino, but local government remains dominated by the Spano family—as it has been since the 1990s. At least 14 of the mayor’s relatives work for the city, and dozens of clients of his brothers’ lobbying firm have received city contracts or tax breaks. Amidst all that, Spano is seeking an unprecedented fourth four-year term after the city council modified term limits to allow him to run for one more term (something they already did for him once before to allow a third term.) One of the council members who voted against that term limit extension, Corazón Pineda-Isaac, is fighting an uphill battle to deny Spano that fourth term. She has the Working Families Party behind her, as well as a few politicians who’ve clashed with the Spanos. Public school teacher Margaret Fountain-Coleman is also challenging Spano with similar themes of progressive policy and cleaner government.
Yonkers City Council District 1
Deana Robinson vs. Effie Phillips vs. Shatika Parker
This election is a shadow fight for the Christopher Johnson/Shanae Williams contest happening for County Legislature. Deana Robinson is a Shanae Williams staffer (and by extension part of the Spano orbit), while Shatika Parker is a Christopher Johnson staffer, and Effie Phillips is running by herself.
Onondaga County Legislature District 15 (Syracuse)
Timothy Rudd vs. Maurice "Mo" Brown
There’s only one Democratic primary for Onondaga County Legislature, and it’s a real ideological battle. Timothy Rudd is a former Syracuse City Councilor who now works as one of the top staffers to Republican (sorry “Independence Party”) Mayor Benjamin Walsh. His big idea to solve poverty is a one-time $15,000 credit for home purchases. Maurice "Mo" Brown is a former Bernie Sanders delegate and current regional organizer for the Working Families Party who has a platform focused on helping renters and building a community land trust. He’s supported by both the WFP and the Syracuse DSA, as well as the local healthcare workers union, 1199SEIU.
Syracuse City Auditor
Nader Maroun (i) vs. Alexander Marion
Alexander Marion, a political staffer who has worked for Sen. Michael Gianaris for the latter half of the last decade, and ex-Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner in the former half, is running for office for the first time this year, attempting to primary long-time Syracuse politician and first term Auditor Nader Maroun. Maroun is a diligent but unexciting politician, who hasn’t done much of note, aside from being the favorite of landlords. Marion has the support of some progressives in Syracuse, most notably IDC-slayer Rachel May and 2018/2020 Congressional nominee Dana Balter.
Schenectady Mayor
Gary McCarthy (i) vs. Marion Porterfield vs. Ed Varno
We don’t normally cover mayoral elections for cities of this size (67,000) but Kathy Hochul offered a surprise endorsement of incumbent Mayor Gary McCarthy, a moderate being challenged from his left by Marion Porterfield, the City Council president, two days ago, which means it’s on our radar now.
Los Angeles City Council District 6
Round 1: Imelda Padilla 26% / Marisa Alcaraz 21%
After City Council President Nury Martinez resigned over the racist comments she made on tape, Los Angeles needed to elect someone to replace her, but no one mentioned that to the residents of her old district, basically none of whom sent in their ballots. Emerging from that collective shrug were the top two vote-getters, Imelda Padilla and Marisa Alcaraz:
Alcaraz is the deputy chief of staff to District 9 Councilman Curren Price; like her boss, she tends towards the moderate side of Democratic politics, and wants to continue the city’s policy of homeless encampment sweeps (an exercise in cruel theater which is no substitute for actually housing the homeless.) Padilla is even less exciting, somehow: she’s worked for both Nury Martinez and Martinez’s pet nonprofit, Pacoima Beautiful, and she’s even more enthusiastic about encampment sweeps (and even less concerned with providing the sorts of social services that can actually help homeless people secure housing) than Alcaraz.
We’ll see if turnout ticks up any, but we admit it’s an election that’s hard to get excited about. Take the Los Angeles Times’s pre-election roundup: Voters have to look hard to spot the differences in the race for Nury Martinez’s seat. They eventually threw up their hands and recommended voters pick Padilla. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is backing Alcaraz, and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce is backing Padilla, which points to Alcaraz being the less bad candidate, but that labor support might be coming from Price, and Padilla has some progressive politicians supporting her like Sen. Caroline Menjivar and County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, while Alcaraz doesn’t. We’ll throw up our hands here, too. It probably doesn’t matter much who wins.