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      For Yusef Salaam, a Landslide Just Might Be the Best Revenge

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      After his wrongful conviction as one of the Central Park Five was overturned, Mr. Salaam found it hard to rebuild his life. Now he stands to take office next year.This week, 34 years after he and four other teenage boys who barely knew one another were bound together by notorious failures of justice, Yusef Salaam was officially declared the winner in the Democratic primary for a seat in New York’s City Council, having received almost 64 percent of the vote. Given that more than three-quarters of voters in the district identify as Democrats, we can assume that beginning in January, he will represent Harlem, where he grew up, was arrested and returned after serving nearly seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit.The crime — the rape and near-fatal beating of a 28-year-old investment banker who was jogging in Central Park one night in April 1989 — came to define a late-20th century city plagued by entwined crises of violence, ferocious racial polarization and worsening inequity. The boys, known as the Central Park Five, were convicted on the grounds of coerced false confessions. In Mr. Salaam’s case, there wasn’t even recorded evidence of an admission of guilt. No DNA evidence linked any of the accused assailants to the victim; they were exonerated in 2002 only after the actual offender, an imprisoned serial rapist, came forward and provided forensic evidence that proved his culpability.Mr. Salaam’s electoral victory is as much a poetic correction as it is a political success. It signals not only a triumph over an entrenched political establishment — his rivals were longtime elected officials in their 60s and 70s — but also over an idealistic brand of progressivism embodied by the incumbent councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan, whose popularity fell off quickly. A young Democratic Socialist elected two years ago on a platform of “radical love” and police abolitionism, Ms. Jordan dropped out of the race in May when her defeat seemed certain.From the vantage of middle age — Mr. Salaam is now 49 — he can reflect and say that Harlem has been poorly governed for a long time. “When I look at 125th Street, I see rats, drugs, empty lots, the need for wraparound services,” he said during a conversation a few days before the race was called. “We’ve had legends here, but we have not had the full investment our tax dollars require.”Six years ago, Mr. Salaam moved to Georgia; Harlem had become so expensive. He returned at the end of last year. He sees the lack of affordable housing as the area’s chief concern, and he is committed to working with developers to create more. The problem, as he sees it, is that too often when “developers are coming into a community to develop, we are usually called to the meeting after they have decided to do whatever they are going to do.”Ms. Jordan did not show the same kind of flexibility. One reason she fell into disfavor with Harlemites was that she effectively killed a project on 145th Street that would have delivered hundreds of apartments at below-market rates; she insisted there were not enough for those in the lowest income brackets. Ultimately, the developer used the land for a truck depot.Mr. Salaam’s ascent suggests the political appeal of lived experience over the attraction of outlier ideologies that have been cultivated at a privileged distance. Ms. Jordan is also from Harlem, but she is the daughter of doctors, a graduate of the Calhoun School (a private school on the Upper West Side) and Brown, a poet and an independent publisher focused on the work of literary activists. After the murder of George Floyd, much of the rhetoric around defunding police seemed intentionally hyperbolic, a means to an end of reducing, not eliminating the presence of police. Ms. Jordan, though, held a literal, more absolutist view.“I actually believe in moving toward a world without cops,” she told The Nation in a 2021 interview. Not long after she was elected to the council, two police officers were killed in her district during a domestic violence call, and she found herself widely criticized for expressing sympathy not just for the slain men but also for the person accused of killing them. Despite what he suffered at the hands of a warped system, Mr. Salaam maintains a position on policing that is comparatively moderate, calling for better and more sensitive policing, not a world without it.One of his political supporters is a former corrections officer who first encountered Mr. Salaam in a Lower Manhattan courthouse in the early stages of his long ordeal. The officer, Derrick Taitt, believed in the innocence of the five teenagers from the outset. He recalled seeing them in court for the first time. “It’s just an experience I’ll never forget — going home that day,” he said. “I walked from Centre Street to 14th. I couldn’t get on the train because my head hurt so badly.” As the president of the Community Association of the East Harlem Triangle and a lifelong resident of the neighborhood, Mr. Taitt, who is now 68, has witnessed an unsettling resurgence of crack in the area recently, and he maintains that Mr. Salaam could not have built a viable campaign on anti-law-enforcement sentiment.When I spoke with Mr. Salaam, he ended our conversation for afternoon prayer. He has been a practicing Muslim for most of his life, and the notion of a career in political leadership was born, against all odds, not long after he was arrested. He could not help but see uncanny similarities between his own story and that of his namesake, the prophet Yusef, in the Quran who was thrown into a well, sold into slavery, wrongly accused of rape and imprisoned. Ultimately he rose to a position of authority in his kingdom.“I was just blown away,” Mr. Salaam told me. “For me reading that as a young person, it was a seed that was planted.”After his conviction was overturned, he re-entered the world at 23, to endure the predictable indignities common to those who have been incarcerated. One of his first jobs after prison was working construction at a Mitchell-Lama apartment complex on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. When the company he was working for found out who he was, he said, he was fired. The experience provided a terrible insight. “Prison is about continuous punishment,” he said. “But if you survive prison, every single door for success will be shut in your face.”Many people in the community supported him when he was released, Mr. Salaam’s mother, Sharonne, told me. But many others did not. “You still have that boiling sensation as you try to move on with your life,” said Ms. Salaam, who was teaching at the Parsons School of Design when her son was arrested. Exoneration did not bring peace for everyone. “It was easier for Yusef to move on and see a path forward.”After the construction job, Mr. Salaam worked in tech at Weill Cornell, became a motivational speaker, wrote books, received a lifetime achievement award from Barack Obama and helped to raise 10 children — seven of his own and three stepchildren.He would like to bring more public bathrooms to Harlem. He worries about the effects of global warming on people who make their living as outdoor vendors. He wants people to look inward and to look outward, to try to stay positive. Yet to this day he has not had an apology from any of the prosecutors in his case. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Upper Manhattan voters have embraced him overwhelmingly. A landslide can be the best revenge. More

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      Yusef Salaam Is Declared Winner of Harlem City Council Primary Race

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      Mr. Salaam was one of the Central Park Five who were wrongly convicted and then exonerated in the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park in 1989.Yusef Salaam, one of five Black and Latino men whose convictions were overturned in the 1989 rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park, cemented his victory in a highly contested City Council primary race in Harlem, according to The Associated Press on Wednesday.Mr. Salaam, 49, held a commanding lead on Election Day, with more than twice the number of votes over his closest rival, Inez Dickens, a state assemblywoman. The New York City Board of Elections began tabulating ranked-choice votes on Wednesday, and the new ranked-choice tabulation now shows Mr. Salaam with almost 64 percent of the vote to Ms. Dickens’s 36 percent.“This is a victory for justice, dignity and decency for the Harlem community we love,” Mr. Salaam said in a statement. “It’s a victory in support of not turning our backs on those in need, for saying we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and for saying the only way for all of us to thrive is to believe in the promise we all have.”In addition to Ms. Dickens, Mr. Salaam defeated another sitting member of the Assembly, Al Taylor, who is serving his sixth year in the Legislature. Mr. Salaam is not expected to face a serious challenger, if any, in November.He will succeed Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who was one of the most far-left members of the City Council. She dropped out of the primary in May, but her name still remained on the ballot and she will serve out her term.All three candidates were moderates who sought to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan’s far-left views on issues such as policing. Mr. Salaam cast the election as an opportunity for a generational shift in Harlem, which was once the center of Black political power in New York City but had ceded that title to Brooklyn.During the race, Mr. Salaam spoke frequently about his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump, who in 1989 took out full page ads in The New York Times and other papers calling for the death penalty in the Central Park jogger case. During debates or forums, Mr. Salaam often referenced his conviction and the nearly seven years he spent in prison.In a recent interview, Mr. Salaam said his victory restored his “faith in believing that what happened to me was for this very moment.”Issues in the district include a lack of affordable housing, the loss of Black residents and the saturation of drug treatment and social services facilities. One of the major issues during the election was the fate of a proposed affordable housing project on Lenox Avenue and West 145th Street.Ms. Jordan initially opposed the project and rejected it because it was not affordable enough for Harlem residents. The developer instead opened a truck depot on the site. Mr. Salaam said he supports the development of housing at the intersection and will work with area residents to make sure the project meets their needs.“The problem that we are experiencing in Harlem right now is that we are being pushed out,” Mr. Salaam said. “They’re saying that we’re leaving, but the truth of the matter is that we are being priced out and therefore we are being pushed out.”Mr. Salaam received a warm reception while walking around Harlem recently with passers-by who wanted to shake his hand and take selfies with him, including Janice Marshall, a consultant and lifelong Harlem resident, even though she said Mr. Salaam was not her first choice.“I’m happy because it’s justice for him and I’m happy for the new energy,” Ms. Marshall said. “I’ve heard of his story and I just wish him well.” More

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      New York Primary Election 2023: Live Results

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      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Will Houp, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Ilana Marcus, Charlie Smart and Isaac White. Editing by Wilson Andrews, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Reporting contributed by Dana Rubinstein. More

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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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      A Handy Guide to the Republican Definition of a Crime

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      If you think Republicans are still members of the law-and-order party, you haven’t been paying close attention lately. Since the rise of Donald Trump, the Republican definition of a crime has veered sharply from the law books and become extremely selective. For readers confused about the party’s new positions on law and order, here’s a guide to what today’s Republicans consider a crime, and what they do not.Not a crime: Federal crimes.All federal crimes are charged and prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Now that Republicans believe the department has been weaponized into a Democratic Party strike force, particularly against Mr. Trump, its prosecutions can no longer be trusted. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently tweeted.The F.B.I., which investigates many federal crimes, has also become corrupted by the same political forces. “The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation.And because tax crimes are not real crimes, Republicans have fought for years to slash the number of I.R.S. investigators who fight against cheating.Crime: State and local crimes, if they happen in an urban area or in states run by Democrats.“There is a brutal crime wave gripping Democrat-run New York City,” the Republican National Committee wrote last year. “And it’s not just New York. In 2021, violent crime spiked across the country, with 14 major Democrat-run cities setting new record highs for homicide.” (In fact, the crime rate went up in the city during the pandemic, as it did almost everywhere, but it has already begun to recede, and remains far lower than its peak in the 1990s. New York continues to be one of the safest big cities in the United States.)Crime is so bad in many cities, Republican state leaders say, that they have been forced to try to remove local prosecutors who are letting it happen. Some of these moves, however, are entirely political; a New York Times investigation found no connection between the policies of a prosecutor removed by Mr. DeSantis and the local crime rate.Not a crime: Any crime that happens in rural areas or in states run by Republicans.Between 2000 and 2021, the per capita murder rate in states that voted for Donald Trump was 23 percent higher than in states that voted for Joe Biden, according to one major study. The gap is growing, and it is visible even in the rural areas of Trump states.But this didn’t come up when a Trump ally, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, held a hearing in New York in April to blast Manhattan’s prosecutor for being lax on crime, even though rates for all seven major crime categories are higher in Ohio than in New York City. Nor does House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — who tweets about Democratic “lawlessness” — talk about the per capita homicide rate in Bakersfield, Calif., which he represents, which has been the highest in California for years and is higher than New York City’s.Crime: What they imagine Hunter Biden did.The Republican fantasy, being actively pursued by the House Oversight Committee, is that Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden, engaged in “influence peddling” by cashing in on the family name through foreign business deals. Republicans have yet to discover a single piece of evidence proving this theory, but they appear to have no doubt it really happened.Not a crime: What Hunter Biden will actually plead guilty to.Specifically: two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes on time. Because tax crimes are not real crimes to Republicans, the charges are thus proof of a sweetheart deal to let the president’s son off easy, when they would prefer he be charged with bribery and other forms of corruption. Mr. Trump said the plea amounted to a “traffic ticket.” The government also charged Mr. Biden with a handgun-related crime (though it said it would not prosecute this charge); gun-purchasing crimes are also not considered real crimes.Also not a crime: What the Trump family did.There is vast evidence of actual influence-peddling and self-dealing by the Trump family and the Trump Organization during and after Mr. Trump’s presidency, which would seem to violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution and any number of federal ethics guidelines. Just last week The Times published new details of Mr. Trump’s entanglement with the government of Oman, which will bring his company millions of dollars from a Mideast power player even as he runs for re-election.Crime: Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.“Hillary Clinton used a hammer to destroy evidence of a private e-mail server and classified information on that server and was never indicted,” wrote Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina. In fact, a three-year State Department investigation found that instances of classified information being deliberately transmitted on Mrs. Clinton’s server were a “rare exception,” and determined that “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”Not a crime: Donald Trump’s mishandling of government secrets.The Justice Department has accused Mr. Trump of willfully purloining classified documents from the White House — including top military secrets — and then lying about having them and refusing the government’s demands that they be returned. Nonetheless, former Vice President Mike Pence warned against indicting his old boss because it would be “terribly divisive,” and Mr. McCarthy said “this judgment is wrong by this D.O.J.” because it treats Mr. Trump differently than other officials in the same position. (Except no other official has ever been in the same position, refusing to return classified material that was improperly taken from the White House.)Crime: Any urban disruption that occurred during the protests after George Floyd was killed.Republicans have long claimed that the federal government turned a blind eye to widespread violence during the 2020 protests, and in 2021 five Republican senators accused the Justice Department of an “apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals.” In fact, though the protests were largely peaceful, The Associated Press found that more than 120 defendants around the country pleaded guilty or were convicted of federal crimes related to the protests, including rioting, arson and conspiracy, and that scores received significant prison terms.Not a crime: The invasion of the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Many Republicans are brushing aside the insurrection that occurred when hundreds of people, egged on by Mr. Trump, tried to stop the certification of the 2020 electoral votes. “It was not an insurrection,” said Andrew Clyde, a Republican congressman from Georgia, who said many rioters seemed to be on a “normal tourist visit.” Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman from Arizona, described Jan. 6 defendants as “political prisoners” who were being “persecuted” by federal prosecutors. Mr. Trump said he was inclined to pardon many of the more than 600 people convicted, and Mr. DeSantis said he was open to the possibility of pardoning any Jan. 6 defendant who was the victim of a politicized or weaponized prosecution, including Mr. Trump.Crime against children: Abortion and transgender care.Performing most abortions is now a crime in 14 states, and 20 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming care for transgender minors (though some of those bans have been blocked in court).Not a crime against children: The possession of guns that kill them.The sale or possession of assault weapons, used in so many school shootings, is permitted by federal law, even though the leading cause of death for American children is now firearms-related incidents. Republicans will also not pass a federal law requiring gun owners to store their weapons safely, away from children. It is not a federal crime for unlicensed gun dealers to sell a gun without a background check, which is how millions of guns are sold each year.Any questions? Better not call CrimeStoppers.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In New York Primaries, Democrats Feel the Heat From the Right

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      The Queens district attorney and several City Council members face more conservative challengers who are criticizing them on issues including public safety.When Melinda Katz ran for Queens district attorney in 2019, her principal opponent in the Democratic primary was a public defender and democratic socialist with a platform of ending cash bail and eventually abolishing the police.With endorsements from progressive prosecutors around the country — as well as from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Tiffany Cabán, a first-time candidate, lost by fewer than 60 votes after painting Ms. Katz as a regressive Democrat.Four years later, the strongest challenge to Ms. Katz is coming from George Grasso, an opponent running to her right who has accused her of being soft on crime.It’s not the only contest in the city where moderate Democrats are facing opponents on the right in primaries on Tuesday. In several City Council races, from the Bronx to southern Brooklyn, moderate Democrats are being challenged over public safety, affordable housing and education by more conservative members of their own party.“It’s really rare that so many challengers in this primary season are running to the right of the incumbent Democrat,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic consultant who is working on the campaign of Stanley Ng, who is running to the right of the front-runner in the 43rd Council District in southern Brooklyn. “Primary challengers to incumbent Democrats are usually running from the left or making a generational argument about it being time for new leadership.”In the Bronx, Councilwoman Marjorie Velázquez, who ran as a progressive in 2021, is facing two such challengers who have criticized her support of a plan to rezone Bruckner Boulevard in Throgs Neck. In Lower Manhattan, Councilman Chris Marte is facing off against opponents who have accused him of wanting to “defund” the police, which he denies.A councilwoman from Queens, Linda Lee, who represents Bayside, faces more conservative challengers. In Harlem, three moderate candidates are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who dropped out. And in the newly drawn 43rd Council District, the three Asian American Democrats running in the primary listed public safety and education as their top two issues.Marjorie Velázquez, a City Council member from the Bronx, said she is a moderate who is falsely viewed as a socialist.Anna Watts for The New York TimesSome see the trend as partially tied to demographic shifts from immigrants who are more conservative on two issues: public safety, especially after a rash of attacks on Asian Americans during the pandemic, and education, where progressives have backed changes to entry exams for specialized high schools with large Asian American enrollment.Between 2010 and 2020, New York City’s population grew by more than 629,000, according to a report from the CUNY Research Consortium on Communities of Interest. More than half of that increase came from a net growth in the Asian population, including a 43 percent growth in Brooklyn and the Bronx.Asian American voters have shifted to the right in recent elections. In the race for governor last year, majority Asian districts remained Democratic but shifted to the right by 23 points from the 2018 election, according to an analysis by The New York Times.Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance, said Republican candidates are aligned with views that many Asian immigrants value, which she said Democrats have not engaged well on. Others say that Democrats have left themselves vulnerable by not effectively articulating their positions.“What elected official doesn’t care about public safety?” said Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who represents Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and is likely to face a strong Republican challenge in the general election. “But because we’ve allowed the right to paint us with this broad brush that we all want to abolish law enforcement, now Democrats feel compelled to lead with that.”He is supporting Wai Yee Chan, the executive director at Homecrest Community Services, in the 43rd Council District Democratic primary. She is running against Mr. Ng and Susan Zhuang, the chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton.Sensing a threat from the right, Future NYC, a pro-business super PAC; Labor Strong, a coalition of the city’s most powerful unions; and the New York City District Council of Carpenters are funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising and on-the-ground support to help several moderate candidates.Future NYC recently pledged to spend approximately $500,000 to support Ms. Velázquez and Ms. Lee, said Jeff Leb, the group’s treasurer.Ms. Velázquez was one of 15 people who left the City Council’s Progressive Caucus in February after it asked members to agree to a statement of principles that included less funding for the police. She was recently endorsed by the conservative Police Benevolent Association. Still, her challengers have criticized Ms. Velázquez as too far left, citing her support of the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning that would bring affordable housing.One of them, Bernadette Ferrara, chairwoman of Bronx Community Board 11, said at a recent debate: “I am not going to let a weak and woke progressive like Marjorie Velázquez destroy a lifetime of work by stuffing the East Bronx with high-density, low-income housing.” Ms. Velázquez said she changed her mind and decided to support the Bruckner Boulevard rezoning, where new buildings will range from three to eight stories, because it would bring jobs and housing for older residents and families. The first Latina to represent her district, she said voters assume that she’s further left than she actually is.“I’ve heard that you’re socialist because you’re like A.O.C., and it’s like, no, I’m not,” Ms. Velázquez said referring to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist. “I am a moderate.”In Manhattan, Mr. Marte, who considers himself a progressive, said he has no plans to leave the Council caucus, and characterized his opponents as being further right than their comments suggested.All three of Mr. Marte’s challengers — Susan Lee, a consultant, Ursila Jung, a private investor, and Pooi Stewart, a substitute teacher — listed public safety as their top issue in the New York City voting guide.In a debate on NY 1, Susan Lee cited hate crimes against Asian Americans as a top public safety priority.And in the same debate, Ms. Jung defended her position by saying, “You can argue the numbers are going down, but a lot of public safety is perception.”Ms. Chu’s group endorsed George Grasso over Ms. Katz and ranked Susan Lee and Ms. Jung as their first two choices in the race against Mr. Marte. The group did not rank Ms. Chan in Brooklyn’s District 43, choosing Ms. Zhuang and Mr. Ng as their first and second choices. The Asian American winner of the Democratic primary in District 43 could face Vito J. LaBella, a former Police Department officer who is a conservative Republican, in what is expected to be a competitive general election. Mr. LaBella lost a close election for the State Senate by about 200 votes last year. He is running against Ying Tan, who works in senior services, in the Republican primary.Ms. Chu said many in her group are wary of “identity politics” and would not have a problem voting for Mr. LaBella in the general election.In the district attorney race, Ms. Katz has fended off attacks from Mr. Grasso, a former administrative judge and former Police Department first deputy commissioner, about her approach to crime.George Grasso, a primary candidate for Queens district attorney, is running as a more conservative Democratic who has accused his opponent of being soft on crime.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I think there’s a gnawing sense among people throughout the city, and Queens in particular, that they’re just not feeling as safe as they felt a few years ago, and they’re not seeing the political leadership respond in an assertive way,” Mr. Grasso said in an interview.Ms. Katz has been endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both moderates. During her first term, she said she had focused on gang takedowns, gun seizures and retail theft. She accused her opponent of “cherry picking” crime data and courting Republicans.“His claims,” said Ms. Katz, “are ludicrous.”Emma G. Fitzsimmons More

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      Harlem City Council Election Tests Limits of Progressive Politics

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      Three moderate Democrats are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, one of the city’s most left-leaning politicians, who is not seeking re-election.Two years ago, when a democratic socialist narrowly won a crowded Democratic primary for a City Council seat in Harlem, some saw it as a sign that the historically Black neighborhood was becoming more politically progressive.But roughly a month before this year’s primary on June 27, the first-term councilwoman, Kristin Richardson Jordan, unexpectedly dropped out of the race. Her decision has recast the hotly contested Democratic primary, which now comprises three candidates — none particularly progressive. Two are sitting State Assembly members: Al Taylor, 65, a reverend in his sixth year in the Legislature; and Inez Dickens, 73, who held the Harlem Council seat for 12 years before joining the Assembly. The third candidate is Yusef Salaam, 49, one of five men convicted and later exonerated in the rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989.All are moderate Democrats who, before Ms. Jordan’s withdrawal, had tried to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan and her political stances, which include redistributing wealth and abolishing the police.But with the incumbent out of the race, the candidates have turned on each other. Mr. Salaam questioned Ms. Dickens’s behavior as a landlord, asking her during a debate how many people she had evicted in the last two decades. Ms. Dickens initially replied one, but The Daily News found that approximately 17 eviction proceedings had been initiated.Ms. Dickens said her family-owned management companies rent units below market rate, and that some of the tenants involved in eviction proceedings were in arrears for four years or more. “I have done more to preserve and protect affordable housing in Harlem than any other candidate in this race,” Ms. Dickens said.Her campaign, in turn, has questioned Mr. Salaam’s experience after his campaign appeared to be in deficit and over the $207,000 spending cap, before he filed amended paperwork.The race then took a bizarre turn this week at a women’s rally for Ms. Dickens when the former Representative Charles B. Rangel, in recounting how Mr. Salaam had called him before entering the race, remarked that Mr. Salaam had a “foreign name.” Mr. Salaam responded on social media that “we all belong in New York City.” Mr. Rangel, through a spokeswoman for Ms. Dickens, said he intended no offense and meant foreign as being unknown to him.The two men spoke on Friday afternoon and resolved the issue, representatives for both campaigns confirmed.Mr. Salaam, left, often seeks to tie his candidacy to his wrongful conviction in the Central Park rape case, drawing the frustration of Ms. Dickens, seated in the background.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesUltimately, the race might be decided on issues more germane to the district, including the loss of Black residents, a lack of affordable housing and concerns about an oversaturation of drug treatment centers. The three candidates hold stances that underscore how the district will soon be represented by a moderate. Ms. Dickens opposed the so-called good cause eviction measure, which would have limited a landlord’s ability to increase rents and evict tenants, had it passed the State Legislature. Mr. Taylor has in the past voted against abortion rights based on religious objections, but recently voted to support a measure that would let voters add an equal rights amendment to the State Constitution. Mr. Salaam supported congestion pricing, but said he still had reservations about how it would affect Harlem.All three have garnered endorsements from mainstream Democratic groups and leaders: Ms. Dickens from the United Federation of Teachers and Representative Adriano Espaillat; Mr. Taylor from the New York City District Council of Carpenters; and Mr. Salaam was recruited to run for the seat by Keith L.T. Wright, the former assemblyman and chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party.The Greater Harlem Coalition voted to endorse Ms. Dickens before Ms. Jordan dropped out of the race. The carpenters’ union said their sole objective was to defeat Ms. Jordan.Ms. Dickens, center, was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams at a rally last week at the Harriet Tubman Memorial triangle in Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Taylor said that not all of Ms. Jordan’s supporters necessarily supported her most left-leaning stances like defunding the police. “I don’t think that she had cornered the market on this community,” he said in an interview.Ms. Jordan’s victory in 2021 over the incumbent, Bill Perkins, was less a districtwide endorsement of far-left views, and more the culmination of “galvanized anti-establishment” sentiment that has been building against Harlem’s once powerful but now fading political machine, said Basil Smikle, director of the Public Policy Program at Hunter College.“There is an interest in finding an alternative and setting a new course,” Mr. Smikle said.Ms. Jordan, whose name will still be on the ballot, may have been her own worst enemy. She was criticized for using Council funds to promote her campaign. Her far-left stances on policing, housing development and the war in Ukraine drew backlash from colleagues and voters. She missed nearly half of her committee meetings, city records show.Syderia Asberry-Chresfield, a co-founder of the Greater Harlem Coalition, a group that organizes against the oversaturation of social services in the neighborhood, felt that Ms. Jordan was too far to the left.“We did understand that changes needed to be made,” Ms. Asberry-Chresfield said. “But some of her changes were so radical and she wasn’t willing to bend.”Ms. Jordan declined to comment. But Charles Barron, a left-leaning councilman who represents East New York and is one of Ms. Jordan’s few allies on the City Council, said her leftist positions irritated mainstream Democratic leadership and their financial backers who “prefer establishment-type elected officials as opposed to independent, strong, Black radicals like she was.”The remaining three candidates did not greatly differentiate themselves during a forum at the National Action Network in Harlem earlier this month and at a debate Tuesday night on NY1.They are all in favor of the development of housing at 145th Street and Lenox Avenue, a proposal that Ms. Jordan initially rejected because it was not affordable enough. The candidates said they were not in favor of the city’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, which a federal monitor recently said was being utilized in a discriminatory manner.When it comes to the influx of migrants seeking asylum, Ms. Dickens, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Salaam said they support New York City’s status as a sanctuary city but questioned whether the billions of dollars being spent to house and feed migrants should also be available to New Yorkers experiencing homelessness.None want Ms. Jordan’s endorsement.Of the three, Mr. Salaam has gone most aggressively after Ms. Jordan’s likely supporters by using his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump as the focus of his campaign. Speaking at a community center for older adults in East Harlem last week, Mr. Salaam drew the loudest applause when criticizing Mr. Trump, who in the 1989 bought full-page advertisements in four city newspapers, including The New York Times, to call for the death penalty to be reinstated because of the Central Park case.“Who better to be a participant in leading the people than one who has been close to the pain?” Mr. Salaam said.Mr. Salaam and Mr. Taylor sought to weaken Ms. Dickens’s chances by cross-endorsing one another on Tuesday. Voters can rank their choices in the three-way primary, and the men encouraged supporters to make the other their second choice. Two days later, Ms. Dickens responded by hosting the women’s rally where she said the two men in the race were plotting against her, and unveiling a more prestigious endorsement: Mayor Eric Adams.Mr. Taylor said that the Harlem district did not necessarily share the far-left views of Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent who is not seeking re-election. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSpeaking at the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Harlem, the mayor highlighted Ms. Dickens’s moderate stances, saying that she understands the “balance between public safety and justice,” and that “it’s all right to have a city that’s friendly to businesses.”At the recent National Action Network forum there was not an issue, from affordable housing to whether he supported closing the Rikers Island jail complex, that Mr. Salaam did not link to his conviction or the nearly seven years he spent in prison — to the visible annoyance of Ms. Dickens, who has emphasized her experience.Mr. Salaam supports closing the Rikers Island jail complex and opening borough-based jails, while Ms. Dickens and Mr. Taylor have raised concerns about opening local jails.That still has not helped Mr. Salaam gain the support of local progressives. A political action committee associated with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Ms. Jordan when she first ran, but is unlikely to make a new endorsement. National progressive figures such as Cornel West, the professor and activist who recently announced a run for president, and Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s progressive attorney general, have endorsed Mr. Salaam. .“Donald Trump said he ought to have the death penalty,” Mr. Ellison said. “Who can talk about how the system needs to be better and more effective than Yusef Salaam?” More