Subterms
The Eighth Ward’s City Council seat has been vacant since February, when Councilmember Trayon White was expelled after his arrest on federal corruption charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty. Now, voters in southeast Washington will choose between four Democrats vying to represent them—including Mr. White himself. More
If nothing else, Elizabeth Lewinsohn’s failed bid for a New York City Council seat highlights two great needs: housing and idealistic candidates.Last December, Elizabeth Lewinsohn, a longtime TriBeCa resident, entered the Democratic race to represent her district in New York’s City Council, eventually raising and spending far more money than any of the other 216 people running for the Council. Of the $568,665 her campaign put toward securing the Democratic nomination in a district that covers the bottom tip of Manhattan, $522,000 came from a source with whom she was intimately acquainted: Elizabeth Lewinsohn.The return on investment did not inspire; she effectively spent $72 per vote and lost by 20 points to the incumbent, Chris Marte.City Council races typically generate little civic interest or remarkable dispersions of cash, one of the reasons that the race, which could be seen as a referendum on development, wound up on the radar of people who might have ignored it. Over the past 25 years, only one other campaign, to elect a Stanford-educated lawyer named Kevin Kim, spent more money on a Council bid. Running for a seat in Queens in 2009, he won the primary and then lost to a Republican in the general election.But the scale of Ms. Lewinsohn’s self-financing seems unprecedented in a contest of this kind. She opted out of the city’s matching funds program, which would have limited her spending. The prospect of a political novice beating an incumbent seemed daunting to the point of impossible, she told me, had she kept within the constraints of public financing, which cap spending for primary campaigns to $228,000.To put her gambit in perspective, the former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson donated just under $15,000 toward his own failed bid to become mayor. Out of four candidates in the Democratic primary for the First District, Ms. Lewinsohn ranked second, despite outspending Mr. Marte, the son of a bodega owner, by nearly $400,000 — roughly the tab she would have run up had she taken the 7,905 people who cast ballots for her to the Odeon for a plate of steak tartare and a glass of Bordeaux.While the paperwork she filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board identifies her as a “homemaker” (she is married to Jonathan Lewinsohn, an investment manager), Ms. Lewinsohn is, in fact, a quietly accomplished public servant, a graduate of Yale Law School, a former director of policy for the Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a member of her local community board for 12 years now and a co-founder of Gotham Park, a revived public space under the Brooklyn Bridge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Christopher MarteC. MarteMarte 49% Elizabeth LewinsohnE. LewinsohnLewinsohn 24% 91% Helen QiuH. QiuQiu Uncontested Harvey EpsteinH. EpsteinEpstein 39% Sarah BatchuS. BatchuBatchu 21% 83% Jason MurilloJ. MurilloMurillo Uncontested Erik BottcherE. BottcherBottcher 74% Jacqueline LaraJ. LaraLara 25% 81% Virginia MaloneyV. MaloneyMaloney 26.8% Vanessa AronsonV. AronsonAronson 25.4% 79% Debra SchwartzbenD. SchwartzbenSchwartzben Uncontested Julie MeninJ. MeninMenin 73% Collin ThompsonC. ThompsonThompson 26% 81% Alina BonsellA. BonsellBonsell Uncontested Gale BrewerG. BrewerBrewer Uncontested More
Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Emma Baker, Neil Berg, Andrew Chavez, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Joyce Ho, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Junghye Kim, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Joey K. Lee, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Jaymin Patel, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Additional reporting by Dean Chang, Maya King and Benjamin Oreskes.
Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. More
Shahana Hanif defeated Maya Kornberg, a first-time candidate, in an acrimonious race for a City Council seat in Brooklyn.Shahana Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the City Council in New York City, has held onto her seat in Tuesday’s Democratic primary contest, which had turned into a tense race where the politics of the Middle East became a focal point.Ms. Hanif, who represents Brooklyn neighborhoods including Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Kensington, defeated her challenger, Maya Kornberg, a senior research fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, according to The Associated Press.Ms. Kornberg, 33, said she decided to challenge Ms. Hanif, 34, who was elected in 2021, because of the councilwoman’s focus on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, and she regularly characterized her as being insufficiently concerned with the needs of the district.“The Council member’s disproportionate focus on that issue and taking public divisive stances on that issue, instead of focusing on the local issues facing our district — on fixing potholes and planting trees — is precisely the progressive attitude we need to change,” Ms. Kornberg said in a recent television interview.The race was animated this winter by the vandalism of an Israeli restaurant in Park Slope. Ms. Hanif condemned it, but some constituents felt she had not been vocal enough in calling out the vandalism as antisemitic. In an interview before the primary, Ms. Hanif said her opponents had tried and failed to belittle her efforts to bring more housing to Brooklyn, among other priorities.She cited as an example her efforts to rezone the site of the Arrow Linen & Uniform Supply Company in Windsor Terrace for housing. Many community members opposed the redevelopment, which passed the City Council earlier this year. Before it did, Ms. Hanif worked to scale it down and to ensure that more affordable units were included.“My campaign has been a multiracial and intergenerational coalition of people who want to build bridges,” said Ms. Hanif, who was supported by and campaigned aggressively with the progressive mayoral candidates Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and Comptroller Brad Lander.“If you look at the other side, you’re not going to see anything close to that sort of coalition.”In the end, Ms. Hanif, who grew up in the district in Kensington, prevailed in part because of her grass-roots outreach in immigrant communities. The efforts helped her withstand about $400,000 in super PAC spending from, among others, Uber and companies associated with Madison Square Garden, deployed to boost Ms. Kornberg’s campaign and attack Ms. Hanif. More
Mr. Weiner returned from a prison term to launch an unlikely campaign for the City Council. Outside a polling place on Tuesday, it was hot, mostly friendly and a little awkward.Anthony Weiner, posted on a sunbaked corner of the East Village on Tuesday, had stooped to hear an older woman tell him that she had just voted for him when a much younger woman stopped, took a quick selfie in front of the candidate and muttered “pedophile.”“What did she say?” the older woman asked.“Supports another candidate,” Mr. Weiner deadpanned.That he is himself a candidate is a plot twist in a story that many believed had ended badly. Mr. Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 following a sexting scandal. A second sexting scandal cost him a run for mayor in 2013. Four years later, he was convicted of a felony and served 18 months in prison for sharing sexually explicit photos and texts with a 15-year-old girl.He is now seeking an improbable comeback, running for a City Council seat in Lower Manhattan, asking voters to return him to an office he first won in 1991, in his mid-20s, in a Brooklyn district.During his campaign, he has owned those dark episodes without, as he put it, “wallowing” in them — “contrition, but not scraping.” He hopes his practical, street-level ideas to fix what ails the city — hire more police officers, find proper care for the mentally ill and homeless living in parks — attract voters ready to set aside his past.“I can’t think of another political campaign that’s quite like this,” he said.One thing that is undeniable, watching him greet person after person under a punishing midday sun that reduced his pole-thin shadow to a sliver, is that Mr. Weiner loves this part of the game. He is a tireless retail politician.“You guys vote yet?” he asked a passing couple.“We’re not from here.”“Maybe someday!” he replied.He recalls running for the Council in 1991 and has pictures of himself that year, looking gaunt and strung out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Here’s what to know about the primary election for mayor and a number of other posts, which will take place on the hottest day of the year so far.Good morning. It’s a very hot Tuesday. We’ll get details on today’s Democratic primary.Supporters of Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo outside the second Democratic primary debate for the New York City mayoral race this month.Anna Watts for The New York TimesAt the end of a day like today, Primary Day in New York, it’s always about numbers.There’s the number of votes the winner won by.There’s the number of people who voted.And today, there’s also a number that election-watchers usually don’t watch: the temperature.With the city under an extreme heat warning until 8 tonight, it may hit 100. That is far warmer than the last time there was a primary for mayor, in 2021. That day, the high was a seasonable 78.This time around, the heat could affect the turnout in a race that could turn on whether former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s union supporters and paid staff members head off Zohran Mamdani’s volunteers.Here’s another number: 384,338.That’s the number of voters who don’t have to think about standing in a sweaty line at a polling site. They’ve already cast their ballots, having taken advantage of early voting, which ended on Sunday. (Here is yet another number: 78,442. That is how many voters checked in at polling places on Sunday, by far the busiest of the nine days of early voting.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
All 51 seats are up for election this year, and the Democratic primary battles feature crowded fields, moneyed interests and some recognizable figures.The ballots feature political figures who resigned in disgrace. Global story lines related to Israel and President Trump have defined contests. And millions of dollars from corporate interests have been injected to sway outcomes.Even as most of New York City’s political attention is focused on Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary, this year’s races for City Council have also drawn widespread interest and money.Two names well known in New York congressional circles will grace the ballots in Manhattan: Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who spent about a year and a half in prison and much longer in public exile; and Virginia Maloney, whose mother, Carolyn Maloney, was a longtime congresswoman. Each is running to fill an open seat.All 51 Council seats will be up for election in November, and eight have no incumbent. But with most districts heavily Democratic, the primary on Tuesday has become the real race.Super PACs backed by companies, unions and housing advocacy groups, many with interests before the Council, have spent about $13.4 million to influence the contests, $6.8 million more than in 2021.Some of the races have been defined by local issues. In Lower Manhattan, for example, candidates have sparred over the fate of the Elizabeth Street Garden, where a long-gestating plan to build affordable housing for older New Yorkers has been put on hold.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A race in Rainier, Wash., was determined by a single vote, avoiding a tie and coin toss. One of the candidates did not cast a ballot.A local election in Washington State could have come down to a coin toss.Instead, one of the candidates, Ryan Roth, won by a single vote — his own. His opponent, Damion Green, didn’t vote.The two were competing for a seat on the City Council in Rainier, a community of approximately 2,400 people about 16 miles southeast of the state capital, Olympia.Mr. Roth, a landfill manager and father of four, ran a campaign. He canvassed voters, handed out yard signs and marched in the town’s parade in August. Mr. Green, an auto body technician whose household includes six children, chose not to campaign, trusting that voters would remember his stances from a previous run.After clearing a primary election, the two candidates met at a public forum with sitting City Council members. They both talked about a need for economic growth while maintaining Rainier’s small-town feel. Mr. Roth, 33, mailed in his ballot a few days before the Nov. 7 election. Mr. Green didn’t make it to the polls.In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Green, 40, said that he wished he had voted but not for himself.“I ran for other people, not for me,” he said, adding that at the public forum before the Nov. 7 vote, he learned that he and Mr. Roth held similar views.“Two middle-class dudes trying to do the same thing for our community, so it was a win-win for Rainier,” Mr. Green said.For several days after the election, the vote results appeared to be a tie. Finally, Mr. Roth inched ahead by one ballot. It took election officials nearly a month to certify the win after a mandatory hand recount last week.The race for Rainier City Council was part of Thurston County elections, which included a countywide proposition to raise sales taxes to give law enforcement funding a boost. The proposition passed.Voting in the council race was so close that the county was required by law to conduct a hand recount. Ultimately, Mr. Roth won with 247 votes to Mr. Green’s 246. State law prescribes that had it been a tie, a winner would be “publicly decided by lot.”In the last instance of a tie, Thurston County favored a coin toss — which Mr. Green said could have ended his bid for the council seat with the same outcome.“I feel bad for the people who did vote for me,” he added.In an interview, Mr. Roth said the process showed him that every vote counts. “A lot of people don’t think that it does, but it does,” he said. More
