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    New York’s Primary Elections 2023: What to Know

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    Primaries were being contested Tuesday for a range of New York City Council seats, district attorneys in the Bronx and Queens, and offices throughout New York State.Several Democratic incumbents in New York saw unusual challenges from more conservative candidates in Tuesday’s primary, with the opponents hoping to benefit from a demographic change, as an influx of immigrants is shifting some districts to the right.Incumbents easily held off primary challenges in Democratic primaries for district attorney in Queens and the Bronx; further north, a Council race in Buffalo was won by a woman whose son was shot in the Tops supermarket racist massacre.In New York City, just over 149,000 people had cast their ballots as of 6 p.m., according to the City Board of Elections. That includes 44,611 votes that were cast during the nine-day early voting period that began June 17 and ended on Sunday — less than a quarter of the early-voting turnout two years ago, when candidates for mayor were competing in the primary.There were contested primaries in New York City Council contests across the boroughs, with the races for a two-year term instead of the usual four years because of redistricting. Every seat on the City Council is up for re-election, but less than half of the 51 Council seats are being contested in primaries, and of those, 13 races feature more than two candidates — making ranked-choice voting, where voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference, necessary.Ranked-choice voting will not be used in the races for district attorney.How Ranked-Choice Voting Will Affect the ResultsThe New York City Board of Elections will reveal the first-place vote totals each candidate receives on Tuesday; if one of the candidates in the 13 Council contests where there are three or more contestants draws 50 percent of the vote or more, a winner should be declared.If no candidate hits the 50 percent mark, the board will use the ranked-choice system, but not until July 5. The board usually runs the first ranked-choice calculation seven days after the vote, but because that day falls on the Fourth of July, the tabulation will be delayed a day.If necessary, additional ranked-choice tabulations will be held each week afterward, on July 11 and July 18, said Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director of the Board of Elections.About 15,000 absentee ballots have already been filed, but additional absentee ballots can be received a week after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by June 27.Under recent changes to state law, voters will also have an opportunity to cure or fix mistakes on their absentee ballots. The tentative last day to receive absentee ballot cures is July 17.Because of the low turnout, Board of Elections officials don’t expect that more than three rounds of ranked-choice voting tabulations will be required.Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group, said ranked-choice voting gave people more options. “We heard some voters in our 2021 exit polling say that because they knew they had the ability to rank, they actually paid more attention to more candidates,” she said.Some Key Races to WatchNew York City District Attorney RacesThe incumbent district attorneys of the Bronx and Queens both fended off challengers to win their respective Democratic primaries, according to The Associated Press.In the Bronx, Darcel Clark defeated Tess Cohen, a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, who was the first person to challenge Ms. Clark in a primary. With 65 percent of the votes counted, Ms. Clark led Ms. Cohen by more than 12,000 votes.In Queens, Melinda Katz, rebuffed a challenge from her right, defeating George Grasso, a former Police Department first deputy commissioner who attacked Ms. Katz as being soft on crime. Ms. Katz disputed the accusation by pointing to her focus on retail theft, gang takedowns and gun seizures.The challenge from Mr. Grasso came four years after Ms. Katz narrowly defeated a democratic socialist who wanted to abolish the police and end cash bail. Ms. Katz was leading Mr. Grasso and another opponent, Devian Daniels, by 27,000 votes with 71 percent of the vote counted.Ms. Clark, whose tenure began in 2016, was the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in New York. She grew up in the Bronx, was raised in public housing and went to public schools.She said that her biggest accomplishment as district attorney has been “putting humanity into the criminal justice system.”Central Harlem City Council RaceIn Harlem, three moderate Democrats are running in one of the most competitive races in the city to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out last month.Ms. Jordan faced questions about her belief that the police should be abolished and about her far-left stance on housing development. Her name will remain on the ballot.The three Democrats running to replace her have sought to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan. They are: Inez Dickens, 73, who held the Harlem Council seat for 12 years before joining the State Assembly; Yusef Salaam, 49, one of five men exonerated in the rape of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989; and Al Taylor, 65, who is serving his sixth year in the Assembly.All three candidates gathered at Lenox Avenue and West 134th Street on Tuesday afternoon to try to woo voters. Ms. Dickens’s staff used a bullhorn, while Mr. Salaam’s team rang a bell every time a voter said they had ranked him first.Chantel Jackson, an assemblywoman from the Bronx who grew up in Harlem, came out with her nearly 2-year-old son to hand out fliers for Mr. Taylor. Mr. Salaam and Mr. Taylor had cross-endorsed each other, asking voters to rank them first and second. Ms. Dickens was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams.The major issues in the historically Black neighborhood include the loss of Black residents, lack of affordable housing and a saturation of drug treatment centers and social service providers.The candidates have struggled to differentiate themselves. All three say they would have supported a new housing development on West 145th Street that Ms. Jordan initially rejected because it was not affordable enough.Ms. Dickens and Mr. Taylor have contended that their experience would make a difference, while Mr. Salaam, who moved back to the city from Georgia to run for the seat, has argued that it is time for a generational shift.“Knowledge is power,” Ms. Dickens said while campaigning. “If you don’t have the knowledge, working in the system is difficult.”Other City Council RacesIn Lower Manhattan, the incumbent Chris Marte, a progressive Democrat, was leading challengers Susan Lee, a consultant; Ursila Jung, a private investor; and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher. All the challengers emphasized public safety and education and argued that Mr. Marte was too far to the left.In the Bronx, incumbent, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, was leading her opponents who criticized her because she backed the rezoning of Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck, which will bring affordable housing to the area.In southern Brooklyn, three Asian American Democrats are running in a newly formed district.The candidates are Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services; Stanley Ng, a retired computer programmer; and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.In a district that has swung to the right in recent years, the winner of the Democratic primary is expected to face a tough general election challenge from the Republican primary winner.Vito J. LaBella, a conservative Republican and former Police Department officer, is facing Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in that primary.Buffalo Common CouncilIn Buffalo, Zeneta Everhart, a political newcomer whose son was a victim of a racist shooting at a Tops supermarket last May, appeared on track to defeat a well-known progressive, India Walton, in a primary race for a seat on the city’s Common Council.The seat represents Masten, an East Side district where the Tops is located and which is a traditional base of Black political power in Buffalo, New York’s second largest city and a Democratic stronghold.Ms. Everhart, a former television news producer who works for State Senator Timothy Kennedy, testified in front of Congress after the shooting, in which her son, Zaire Goodman, was shot in the neck but survived. Ten other people — all Black — were killed by the gunman, who targeted East Buffalo because of its large Black population.Ms. Walton, a democratic socialist, became a liberal star after she defeated Mayor Byron Brown in a primary in 2021, only to lose the general election that fall after Mr. Brown mounted a write-in campaign.In this campaign, Ms. Walton had criticized Ms. Everhart’s connections to the Democratic establishment, which included endorsements from the county Democratic Committee and Senator Chuck Schumer. But returns on Tuesday showed Ms. Everhart leading with about two-thirds of the vote, with about 85 percent of precincts reporting.Jesse McKinley More

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      In Bronx DA Race, Darcel Clark Faces a Challenge From Tess Cohen

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      Darcel Clark is running for a third term, emphasizing a balance between public safety and justice. Her opponent, Tess Cohen, is focused on alternatives to incarceration.As Darcel Clark, the Bronx district attorney, made her way through the crowd at a Juneteenth celebration on Monday afternoon, it was clear she was in friendly territory. “Hi, D.A.,” a group of women called out. Ms. Clark smiled, hugged the women and asked how they were.A couple of miles away, Tess Cohen, the criminal defense and civil rights lawyer who is challenging Ms. Clark in next week’s Democratic primary, was knocking on doors at the Pelham Parkway public housing complex, trying to get the word out about her campaign, one apartment at a time.The June 27 primary offers Democratic voters in the Bronx something they have not had in recent years: a choice in the race for district attorney. But Ms. Cohen, who is challenging Ms. Clark from the left, faces a difficult fight against a well-known incumbent with more money, the support of the political establishment and name recognition across the borough.Ms. Clark, 61, a former state appellate court judge, was the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in New York. She grew up in the Bronx and was raised in public housing and went to public schools. She was nominated by Bronx Democratic leaders in 2015 and faced no primary opponent that year or in her re-election bid in 2019.Ms. Cohen, 36, is a criminal defense lawyer at ZMO Law. She spent more than eight years as a prosecutor in New York City’s Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor. She is originally from Riverside, Calif., and has lived in the Bronx for 11 years.Ms. Cohen said in an interview that she decided to run because she was “really frustrated with how the Bronx is consistently left behind” when it comes to receiving services and “things that create true public safety.” Specifically, she suggested that more people could benefit from mental health and gun court programs in the Bronx, which can provide an alternative to incarceration.Ms. Clark said that her biggest accomplishment has been “putting humanity into the criminal justice system,” a mission she said she wanted to continue, and noted that she was focused on balancing both public safety and justice. “You cannot do this work if you don’t know the people that you serve,” she added.Ms. Clark is leading the race by some traditional campaign markers: She has more money on hand, and the backing of numerous unions and Democratic elected officials.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesIn a recent debate hosted by BronxNet, a local TV station, the candidates staked out different positions on crime, on a 2019 legal reform law, and on the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.Ms. Clark said that her office had done “everything that we can to combat crime, whether it’s creating new bureaus in my office to deal with crime strategies, to deal with violent criminal enterprise — anything that will help victims of crimes.” She pointed to her Community Justice Bureau, formerly called the Alternatives to Incarceration Unit, which helps prosecutors connect people with community resources.Ms. Cohen argued that more could be done, and said the district attorney’s focus on incarceration has been detrimental. “The Bronx continues to be left behind,” she said, adding that the borough created a gun court program, which gives a second chance to young people who face gun possession charges and have no prior violent felony convictions, years after Brooklyn had such a program.The candidates also differed on a 2019 law, backed by progressives, that favors criminal defendants.In April, Ms. Clark and two other district attorneys sought to reverse some of the changes progressives had won. One revision would have allowed judges more freedom in detaining certain defendants on bail. Another would have placed a timeline on defense lawyers to flag and request outstanding case material, or “discovery,” from prosecutors. The prosecutors ultimately abandoned the changes.Ms. Clark said that she was in favor of the 2019 discovery reform, especially after spending 16 years on the bench. “I would never want to go back to the way it was,” Ms. Clark said, but she said that she supported “reasonable revisions.”Ms. Cohen said the proposed changes represented a “gutting of the reform” and said that “we cannot go back to a system where we have Kalief Browders.”Mr. Browder was sent to Rikers Island when he was 16, accused of stealing a backpack. He never stood trial and was never found guilty of any crime, but he was held at Rikers for three years. He killed himself in 2015. Prosecutors in his case had received a number of adjournments that prolonged his detention. State legislators invoked his name when they passed the 2019 reform, which aimed to curb such delays.Ms. Clark said during the debate that the Browder incident saddens her to this day. She called the handling of his case a “colossal failure” of the district attorney’s office, his defense attorney, the Department of Correction and nine judges, of which she was one.“I accept that I was part of that,” Ms. Clark said. “But also part of that means that you do something about it, so that doesn’t happen again.”The candidates agreed that Rikers should be closed, but they differed on how it should be managed in the meantime.A federal monitor overseeing the Rikers Island jails complex recently said that officials, including Louis A. Molina, the New York City correction commissioner, were hiding information about violence. And a federal judge signaled that she might be willing to consider a federal takeover.Ms. Cohen argued in favor of a federal takeover of Rikers. She said in an interview that the district attorney’s office should open an independent investigation into the jail. She said that Mayor Eric Adams and Mr. Molina were “really actively hiding how terrible things are at Rikers,” noting a new policy where jails would no longer announce inmate deaths.“The D.A.’s office isn’t proactively going out to look into instances, it’s waiting to see if other agencies refer instances to them,” Ms. Cohen said. “Even when they do bring charges, often they are late or unsuccessful.”On Juneteenth, Ms. Cohen was handing out campaign fliers and introducing herself to residents in a public housing complex.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesMs. Clark said during the debate that she had opened an office on Rikers and opened a public integrity bureau that handles corruption. She said she had won indictments against inmates and corrections officers. “The indictments are happening,” Ms. Clark said. “It takes time to happen.”Asked about a federal takeover of Rikers, Ms. Clark said that she was “in favor of anything that is going to bring justice, that’s going to make Rikers Island more humane and more safe, but it’s not my decision.”Ms. Clark is leading the race by some traditional campaign markers. She has more money on hand — $281,000 according to a report filed on June 16, compared with just under $16,000 for Ms. Cohen — and the backing of numerous unions and Democratic Party heavyweights, including Senator Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Letitia James, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie.“Darcel is a strong candidate, she’s been a lifelong Bronxite, she knows intimately what the issues of the Bronx are, and I just don’t see the challenger bringing that to the table,” said Virginia Krompinger, president of the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club, which endorsed the incumbent.Ms. Cohen has won the support of voters and organizations explicitly looking for a change — including a number of formerly incarcerated people who were exonerated. Amanda Litman, the co-executive director of Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits political candidates, said her group had endorsed Ms. Cohen because “she knows the system in and out, she has a really strong progressive vision for what the office can be and what the office can do.”Turnout in New York City’s primary elections is not expected to be high — and it remains to be seen how focused voters are on the district attorney contest in the Bronx.Ayisha Khalid, a college student studying politics and criminal justice, answered the door when Ms. Cohen knocked, listened to her pitch and appeared to appreciate the candidate’s ideas about providing second chances for people who commit crimes. Still, she said, “I have to read more about it, because I had no clue.” More