The State Assembly (photo: @NYSA_Majority)

For some time, a lack of Democratic control in the New York State Senate prevented progressive legislation from becoming law. But even after the chamber flipped from red to blue through the 2018 elections and a long list of Democratic priorities were acted on, some bills that once passed the State Assembly when Republicans held the Senate are now having trouble reaching that chamber’s floor, leading to frustration that multiple insurgent campaigns capitalized on in this year’s primary elections.

Longtime incumbents who, at least on paper, support legislation that has been stalled in the Assembly — like the New York Health Act to institute single-payer health care in the state, raising taxes on the wealthy, and legalizing adult use of marijuana — faced tough primary challenges and, in some cases, are on the verge of losing their seats to candidates with very similar platforms but who said they will do what their opponents have not: get things passed.

“It’s not good enough to just vote the right way,” said Jessica González-Rojas, an activist who is well ahead of incumbent Michael DenDekker in Queen’s 34th Assembly District as absentee ballots are being counted. “Now, we need champions for these policies.”

If her primary lead holds and she wins the likely noncompetitive general election in the heavily Democratic district, González-Rojas could be one of several new Assembly members with a brand of punchy, anti-establishment progressivism more focused on delivering on campaign promises than toeing the party line. They will join several other incumbent Assembly members retaining their seats who are also outspoken and more independent than the bulk of the large Democratic conference dominated by New York City officeholders and led by Speaker Carl Heastie of the Bronx.

Senators with similar agendas and ideology were essential to Democrats flipping the Senate in 2018, as many of them won primaries against members of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a rogue group that had a power-sharing agreement with Republicans, often preventing progressive legislation from being passed.

In some ways, but definitely not all, the Assembly has become the more moderate house, although it remains to be seen how additional independent progressives entering the majority may change that. A number of frustrated return incumbents and several new like-thinking members, often of a younger generation and representing marginalized communities, could impact the direction of the Assembly majority and how its leader, Speaker Heastie, operates. At least that’s what those candidates and incumbents, and some of the progressive activists behind their rises, hope.

But unlike those who challenged members of the IDC, many of this year’s insurgents lacked significant platform differences from their incumbent or establishment-backed opponents. Instead, they mainly distinguished themselves demographically and through their activist backgrounds, claiming they would be a stronger voice for constituents and would fight harder to see meaningful legislation passed.

These candidates made their positions on the outside of the political establishment a key area of difference from their opponents, distancing themselves from the ineffectiveness they, and some voters, associate with the current Legislature. They say that the state is not aggressively enough addressing crises including poverty, public health, public housing, and more, with many pointing the finger at both Governor Andrew Cuomo, a third-term Democrat with a strong moderate streak, and the Legislature’s unwillingness to go further and force Cuomo along. These officials and candidates and their supporters found additional urgency leading into this year’s primaries given the COVID-19 crisis that worsened many existing problems and inequalities, as well as the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement to end police racism and brutality following the killing of George Floyd.

The Assembly candidates who broadly fit the category at hand include González-Rojas, Jenifer Rajkumar, Khaleel Anderson, Emily Gallagher, Zohran Mamdani, Danielle Brecker, Mary Jobaida, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Marcela Mitaynes, George Diaz, Garfield Holland, and Mahfuzul Islam (as well as Sarah Clark outside the five boroughs).

González-Rojas, Rajkumar, Clark, and Anderson are in strong position to win their primaries after the in-person vote; while Mamdani, Souffrant Forrest, and Mitaynes are in seemingly toss-up territory in their challenges to incumbents; and Gallagher, Brecker, Jobaida, Diaz, Holland, and Islam are near defeat — though a great deal could change given the unprecedented number of absentee ballots.

The Candidates and the Progressive Push in Albany
Though he is not unseating an incumbent, Anderson, a 24-year-old organizer for a non-profit, is well ahead of the local party’s pick in the Democratic primary for an open Assembly seat in Queens, where the most recent officeholder, Michele Titus, vacated the post for a position as a New York City Civil Court judge. Anderson is the likely winner of the primary in Assembly District 31, which covers parts of Southeast Queens. 

Anderson, who had the backing of a wide array of organizations including the Working Families Party, TenantsPAC, True Blue NY, Citizens Union, and Rockaway Youth Action Fund, ran on a platform of fighting environmental racism in his district, which borders Jamaica Bay and includes JFK Airport, increasing public school funding, food justice, and affordable housing through housing vouchers.

“Now that we have a new body, we can energize some of the members that have been kind of on the edge with this stuff and mobilize them and really get them to understand that this is what the people want,” said Anderson, who could become one of the youngest elected officials in New York City history, in an interview. “And we just need to find the best way possible to package it to ensure that we’re speaking for as many folks as we can, and supporting and getting resources to as many folks as we can. I’m super excited to get in there and to start getting some of these bills moved.”

Anderson, who is Black, is one of several insurgents who are vocal supporters of the New York Health Act, which he said was especially important due to how it could be a step forward in addressing health inequities that affect Black people, and especially Black women, in New York.

Rajkumar, who is on the verge of winning the Democratic primary in District 38 over incumbent Assemblymember Michael Miller, also stressed the importance of pushing ahead on the single-payer health care bill that Assembly Democrats championed when the Legislature was split but did not push when Democrats took control of both chambers last year. 

“The New York Health Act has never been more needed, the pandemic has made that clear, and it has passed the Assembly at least four times,” Rajkumar said. “The new generation of legislators will be able to make sure that it is signed into law.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who is responsible for what legislation ends up on the floor of the body, said in 2017 when the Assembly again passed the New York Health Act, “While lawmakers in Washington debate giving tax cuts to the wealthy and cutting funding for healthcare for those who need it most, the Assembly Majority remains committed to ensuring every New Yorker has access to the care they need and deserve,” and called on the State Senate to act. Now, he has been relatively quiet concerning the legislation.

Heastie’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, a close ally of Heastie, said the New York Health Act has simply been held up.

“As a sponsor of the New York health bill, I certainly would love to see that go,” Peoples-Stokes, who represents Buffalo in the Assembly, said in an interview. “The thing that in some ways kind of holds that up, notwithstanding the fact that the Assembly has passed that in the past, we still need to have partners.”

Though most members of the Senate Democratic conference either have been co-sponsors of the New York Health Act or ran in support of it in 2018, that majority also did not make it a priority in this first two-year session of its reign. The lead sponsors of the bill, Assemblymember Dick Gottfried and Senator Gustavo Rivera, have continued to push for the legislation, including by holding hearings around the state, and have said they don’t think the lack of official movement on it means it is dead. They’ve said they need to continue to build public support for it to make it a political necessity.

As Rajkumar indicated and as many others have argued, Rivera has said that the mass unemployment wrought by the pandemic has made it abundantly clear that health insurance and quality health care should not be tied to employment. Opponents of the legislation, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, point to its massive cost and the need to raise taxes on many New Yorkers while overhauling huge portions of the state’s economy.

There has also been frustration among some progressive Assembly members, groups, and candidates about how Heastie and the conference back-tracked or proved reluctant on other high-profile priorities, such as campaign finance reform, including a public matching system. While a system did eventually become law earlier this year, it was met with some frustration over the details of the donation limits as well as the fact that it appears to make life much harder for the liberal Working Families Party, which has been at war with Cuomo for years and supported many of the 2018 and 2020 insurgents for legislative seats.

Additionally, legalizing adult use of marijuana, which the governor and both majorities say they support, is among other bills and progressive priorities yet to be acted upon after talks fell through last year and thus far this year.

Peoples-Stokes, the lead Assembly sponsor of the marijuana legalization bill, said such policies have simply taken more time to finalize. Although she welcomes new progressive Assembly members and their voices, she does not see them being elected as playing a major role in whether or not the bills get passed.

“That speaks to their electorate and their decision to want to see a new person in that seat,” Peoples-Stokes said. “Clearly, when the new Assembly members arrive they will have the same opportunity that I do, one vote. That’s not going to change, you still need to have the majority of the people say the same thing at the same time to have it passed.”

The Democratic majority has put some money to back incumbents, with legislators like Assemblymember Joe Lentol of Brooklyn controversially receiving $45,000 from the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, which to some is only supposed to help Democratic Assembly candidates win general elections. But in some of the closest races, where after the in-person voting incumbents appear most at risk of losing their seats, current Assembly members received little support. Incumbents Miller, DenDekker, and Aravella Simotas, all of Queens and in tight races with or trailing challengers Rajkumar, Gonzalez-Rojas, and Mamdani, respectively, have all received nothing from the DACC. Miller and DenDekker received around $4,000 each from Speaker Heastie's PAC, all as of the most recent filings.

Progressive Assembly members already in the body have been frustrated with limited action on certain legislation. In interviews, Assembly members mentioned a wealth tax as well as higher taxes on upper income brackets, plus the Home Stability Support anti-homelessness rental subsidy, the “good cause” eviction bill, NYCHA funding, and other previously-stated policies. Tensions were particularly high when none of those measures were included in this year’s state budget, which narrowly passed the Assembly. Several progressive members, such as Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, expressed significant disappointment with what she called an “austerity budget.”

Niou, who represents the 65th Assembly district in Lower Manhattan and has repeatedly criticized Cuomo, said in an interview, “Why is it that we passed austerity budget after austerity budget after austerity budget?...It's really important that people are speaking out that are saying we need to prioritize our working families over wealthy corporations and the multi-million and billionaires. Why is it that we have folks who are still asking ‘What if multi-millionaires and billionaires move away from New York?’ Well, but what if people die?”

Niou is a leading voice of a growing number of progressive Assembly members willing to criticize the status quo, including the annual budget process, which is always lacking in transparency, even for members of the Legislature. Lawmakers often do not have a chance to actually read the budget bills they are voting on as the bills are passed just before or after the start of the new fiscal year.

The recent budget barely passing — one key budget bill received the bare minimum 76 “yes” votes in the 150-seat chamber — puts on display what seems to be a growing divide within the Assembly between progressives further to the left and others, particularly leadership. Assemblymember Ron Kim of Queens, who also voted “no,” said he hopes incoming Assembly members will further strengthen the former group.

“The outcome is clear, that the public wants real change up in Albany. They want people who are there to genuinely speak up for their interests, the people’s interests, and protect the most vulnerable members of our communities first,” said Kim, who represents the 40th Assembly District. “As a legislative body, we have done some positive work but not enough to deliver fundamental change that should have taken place, especially at a time like this pandemic, when we know there are hundreds of thousands of families that have been left behind.”

Kim said not being able to pass long-term progressive priorities such as single-payer health care and a wealth tax has been “super frustrating and completely demoralizing.” He said Cuomo uses his immense influence to ensure the state follows his agenda.

“Many of us are sick and tired of playing this song and dance where we pretend that we’ve actually done something, but when you actually look at the policies in the budget, it’s completely watered-down and it’s just giving the facade that we’re actually championing peoples’ values when we’re not,” Kim said, going on to state that he hopes the Assembly’s ability and willingness to pass progressive legislation and block what he sees as regressive policies will change after this year’s elections. “With the changes that are coming, there is no way we would pass another budget that cuts Medicaid in the middle of an emergency, they wouldn’t have the votes to get it done. That alone is significant enough to change the culture of how we legislate and how we focus on new solutions.”

But other Assembly members, even those who are part of the push for more progressive legislation, like Assemblymember Catalina Cruz of Queens, say it's not a lack of want preventing these policies from being put to the floor, but the often slow and bureaucratic reality of governing.

“It’s too soon to tell how effective those folks are,” said Cruz, who represents the 39th Assembly District, of incoming progressive Assembly members. “I’ve been on both ends, where I’ve been an advocate, where I’ve been inside of government implementing laws, and where I’ve been the one creating them. One thing is to be on the outside advocating for something, another completely different reality is once you get in and you are one of 150.”

Cruz cited marijuana reform as an example. She said the governor’s stated support did not manifest itself when lawmakers were trying to work out how to make the legislation happen and, although there are many vocal supporters, there are also many members of the State Senate and Assembly firmly against it — even some who support an array of other progressive measures.

Asked for comment on some of these points and critiques, a spokesperson for Cuomo put the focus elsewhere.

“We've spent the last 130 some odd days dealing with a global pandemic, where New York was the global epicenter,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Governor Cuomo. “We tamed the beast, but it’s not over and we have no time, and frankly no patience, for small and asinine palace intrigue."

Progressive Activists and Organizers Push for Change
Many on-the-ground organizers have echoed Niou and Kim’s sentiment that change is all the more needed due to the pandemic, such as Javier Valdés, Co-Executive Director of Make the Road Action, an immigrant advocacy organization that gathers many volunteers to help on selected campaigns. 

Valdés was among the leaders of the push for recently-passed pro-immigrant policies like the New York Dream Act, which allows undocumented immigrants to access state college tuition assistance, and the Green Light bill, which allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain New York driver’s licenses, two policies cited by Cuomo and many Democrats in the Legislature as evidence of their aggressive pursuit of progressive priorities under full Democratic control of state government.

But even with those and other wins, Valdés said after fighting for a long time to flip the Senate, Make the Road Action turned to the Assembly because of the lack of movement on some issues.

“For us, the Assembly races were the next step,” Valdés said of the transition from 2018 to 2020. “A lot of times these incumbents would say ‘well I always voted for you on your issues,’ and I think what we actually need is people that actually are champions of our issues, that actually get our issue to be voted on and are fighting for us.”

Valdés said policies such as the “good cause” eviction bill, the excluded worker fund for workers not getting support from the federal government during the pandemic, particularly undocumented individuals, and repealing the “walking while trans ban” in order to decriminalize alleged loitering for the purpose of prostitution, are some of Make the Road Action’s priroities.

Valdés said he has not seen much energy in the Assembly regarding these topics, but hopes new “champions” like González-Rojas -- whom Make the Road Action put significant resources behind -- can help to make a strong push for them along with current progressive members like Kim, Niou, and Cruz, who have all been endorsed by Make the Road Action.

But Cruz said she felt, in some cases, that unseating an incumbent can put the progressive movement behind if the incumbent is already fighting for these issues and has the benefit of connections made and experience gained from being in office.

She emphasized the distinction between someone who is running purely to challenge the “political machine” and someone who is running because they truly think they can make an effective change in their community.

“To me, when I see a perfectly progressive incumbent…who has been on the right side of history, and then somebody comes in and is trying to out-left them, I don’t know how I feel about that,” Cruz said, without naming names other than Brooklyn State Senator Julia Salazar, whom she said ran to defeat the machine and with a new vision for her community in her 2018 primary victory. “If they were doing a good job, if they’re representative of their community, but your beef or your problem is with the machinery rather than whether the person is doing a good job or not, you’re going to have a rude awakening when you actually get in the room where decisions are being made and you have to work with another 149 people.”

Two incumbents facing stiff challenges who made such a case have been Assemblymembers Aravella Simotas of Queens and Lentol of Brooklyn. While Simotas is neck-and-neck with Mamdani (he’s up 589 votes), Lentol has a solid 1,763-vote lead ahead of Gallagher — with thousands of absentee ballots being counted in each race.

Jonathan Westin, Executive Director of New York Communities for Change, a group focused on affordable housing and socioeconomic equity, does not necessarily disagree with Cruz, but he said some incumbents being around for decades creates an element of complacency, and a tendency to want to maintain the status quo.

“The challenge with the Assembly is that there is honestly just so much entrenched power that’s been there for decades,” Westin said. “So many Assembly members have literally been in office for two, three, four decades and have never been challenged, and really are just there to continue the same power structure in New York that has existed for years and years and years.”

Westin said this is particularly problematic due to the connections Assembly members build with lobbyists working for finance, real estate, and technology companies, and that elected officials who take money from those lobbyists and industry leaders are often the ones to block major reforms like taxing the rich, canceling rent, and creating a fund for excluded workers.

Westin said Speaker Heastie, who has served in the Assembly since 2000 and as Speaker since 2015 and has been a leader of the Bronx Democratic Party, is obviously part of the entrenched and calcified power structure of the Assembly.

“His view of politics very much resembles a machine view of ‘everybody needs to fall in line,’” Westin said of the speaker, whose job is to find consensus among his members. “A lot of times those machines are propped up by the industries that need to curry favor in Albany and we continue to see that.”

Both Make the Road Action and New York Communities for Change were among the long list of progressive groups who organized to defeat six of eight IDC senators in the 2018 primaries and backed quite a few Democratic insurgents this year, largely in the Assembly but also for Congress, such as Jamaal Bowman in the Bronx and Westchester. As the calendar this year turns toward the fall general election, State Senate Republicans will be using the progressive surge in New York City Assembly races as campaign fodder to convince suburban voters to help flip the Senate back to Republican control. Senate Republicans often warn voters outside the city that New York City "radicals" are setting the agenda in Albany without the check of a Republican Senate.

Among those progressive organizations, the Working Families Party (which includes several of the aforementioned groups) and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) are among the most prominent when it comes to campaign tactics, including the type of voter contact seen as essential to winning contentious local elections. In her bid to unseat Brooklyn Assemblymember Felix Ortiz, Mitaynes had the support of the WFP, NYC-DSA, and other groups as they argued for the need for change in the Assembly. The WFP backed González-Rojas and Anderson, while the DSA supported Mamdani and Souffrant Forrest, who took on Brooklyn Assemblymember Walter Mosely.

NYC-DSA has grown significantly in recent years and put a lot of muscle into policy and electoral organizing, helping several favored candidates win competitive primaries. It has particularly supported candidates who take on the real estate industry and call for raising taxes, among other priorities in opposing the political establishment.

The DSA has worked to find and support primary challengers to a growing list of incumbents, even some considered by many to be strong progressives, as Cruz indicated. For example, Mamdani is his bid to unseat Simotas in western Queens. Mamdani claimed throughout the race that Simotas, a staunch progressive, was a product of the “Queens political machine” and called her out for breaking her pledge to not accept real estate donations.

Co-chair of the NYC-DSA Sumathy Kumar said she hopes the work her organization and others have done will encourage the Speaker and the Assembly Democrats to enact more far-reaching progressive legislation.

“The Speaker has a lot of responsibility for what gets passed and what doesn’t get passed and what comes up to the floor and what doesn’t,” Kumar said, going on to say that, even so, she is hopeful electing more progressives will push him and the body to the left. “He listens to the rest of the Assembly and that’s why it’s really exciting that we have more progressive voices in the Assembly so that we can push the legislation from the bottom up.”

[Read: 'Not A Budget Anybody Should Be Celebrating': Democratic Legislators Displeased with Albany Compromise]

Ben Max contributed to this article.

Note: this article has been corrected to reflect that González-Rojas was not endorsed by NYC-DSA as previously stated. It has also been updated to reflect that Lentol received $45,000 from the DACC, with $25,000 coming after the initial $20,000 originally stated here.

(l-r) Dan Quart, Alvin Bragg, Tahanie Aboushi, Janos Marton, Eliza Orlins

With the 2021 Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney now under a year away, five candidates for the office participated in a forum hosted by the New York City Program Council and Columbia Law School’s Black Law Students Association. Manhattan’s current District Attorney, Cy Vance, has not yet said if he will seek reelection next year as the borough’s top prosecutor and law enforcement officer, but he was a frequent target of his potential opponents during the event.

The kickoff of the primary comes amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests and national reckoning around racism in policing and criminal justice, as well as several successful elections of progressive district attorney candidates across the country, plus public defender Tiffany Cabán’s near-win in the Queens District Attorney primary last year.

Vance has faced heavy criticism in recent years over his handling of sex crime cases, including Harvey Weinstein’s, and his decision not to prosecute members of the Turmp family over potentially fraudulent real estate deals, among other controversies. There are currently six Democrats who have declared campaigns, with five of them participating in Tuesday’s virtual forum.

The five participating candidates were Assemblymember Dan Quart; former Chief Deputy New York Attorney General Alvin Bragg; former ACLU attorney Janos Marton; civil rights attorney Tahanie Aboushi; and public defender Eliza Orlins. (Tali Farhadian Weinstein, the former general counsel for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, announced her candidacy this week and did not participate in the forum.)

As many as 400 people watched as the five candidates discussed their backgrounds and stances on issues ranging from cash bail to police brutality to alternatives to incarceration. The candidates often agreed on the issues, but tried to cast themselves as the person best-positioned to actually deliver change.

The question of how to hold police accountable for potential misconduct was the top issue of the forum. Each candidate proposed how they would ensure independence, an important theme given that police and prosecutors largely work on the same team. Bragg called it “the essential issue” and that it’s been his “life’s work,” noting that he has previously prosecuted police for misconduct. He would have prosecutors in his office who specialize in police misconduct and would not be beholden to police for other cases.

Marton said he was “the only candidate to hold Andrew Cuomo accountable” through his work for Cuomo’s prematurely shuttered Moreland Commission to address public corruption, though he didn’t go into specifics, and he would take the same independence to handle cases of police misconduct. He said he would use a “full court press” that would hold as many officers accountable for breaking the law as possible.

Orlins called for independent investigators with civilian oversight to handle allegations of police misconduct. “These prosecutions must be done by someone with no connection to law enforcement,” she said. She also said untrustworthy police officers should not be allowed to testify in court.

Aboushi said that the district attorney’s office is currently the “personal law firm for those with a badge” and said she would “listen to victims of police violence,” promising transparency and accountability in prosecutions of police officers.

Quart pledged to reform the early case assessment bureau and to publicly disclose untruthful police officers.

The candidates rarely took shots at each other and instead directed much of their ire at Vance, bringing up several scandals that have dogged the incumbent in recent years.

Quart said that Vance had “failed to use the incredible powers of the district attorney’s office to reform the system” during his tenure.

“I wish [Vance] could get his 30 seconds, but I know he’s not here tonight,” Orlins said at one point, referring to the rebuttal time candidates were allowed if another candidate mentioned their name during the debate.

“We need fundamental change in Manhattan and I’m the one to bring it,” said Bragg, who said he believes that “incarceration should be a matter of last resort.” He would make pretrial alternatives for mental health and substance abuse disorder treatment more widely available, especially to communities of color, he said.

The candidates agreed on much, such as all five supporting an end to cash bail and more aggressively prosecuting the financial services industry, and arguing that DA Vance should be doing more to reduce the jail population during the coronavirus pandemic. All five candidates also expressed support for ending the so-called trial penalty, whereby defendants know that they will face tougher potential sentencing if they take a case to trial over accepting a plea bargain. Quart and Marton committed to rarely seek sentences of longer than 20 years.

Throughout the forum, Quart pointed to his “actual history of achieving results” as a legislator implementing changes to the criminal justice system, including cosponsoring cash bail reform and voting against recent rollbacks of the bail changes passed by the Legislature last year.

Marton, a decarceration activist who helped lead the campaign to closer the Rikers Island jails, argued that he has “the boldest positions in this race,” including a plan to reduce the number of people in jail from Manhattan by 80%. He also opposes the city’s plan to build new community jails to replace Rikers Island, saying, “I believe in a world without prisons.”

Bragg frequently pointed to his experience as a prosecutor in both the State Attorney General’s office and at the Southern District of New York as a federal prosecutor. He boasted about successful investigations of President Donald Trump for Trump University and major corporations like UPS for shipping untaxed cigarettes. He pitched himself as an “experienced manager” who oversaw an office of 1,200 while Chief Deputy Attorney General for New York State.

Orlins argued she is unique among candidates, saying, “I’m the only candidate here who has been on the frontlines as a public defender for over a decade.” As proof of her managerial expertise, she said she has managed up to 200 cases at a time.

Aboushi cited her experience working directly in communities as a civil rights attorney who “has spent the last ten years in people’s living rooms protecting their rights.” She said she is “the only candidate who has forced the NYPD to change discriminatory practices,” likely referring to a lawsuit she led against the NYPD’s policy regarding religious head coverings during arrests.

All five candidates said they would not take campaign donations from law enforcement unions. Quart, Bragg, and Marton each said that they would not take campaign donations from defense attorneys. Marton said he also would not take funds from the real estate industry and Bragg said he would not accept donations from corporations or lobbyists.

The Democratic primary for Manhattan District Attorney will be held in June of 2021.

Note: this article has been corrected to reflect Bragg said he would not accept donations from corporations or lobbyists -- the word "not" had been previously left out accidentally.

Vote Here / Vote Aqui (photo: governor's office)

This series on voter engagement in New York City is supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

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		Voter Turnout in New York City Was Cratering; Then Came 2018 by Victoria Merlino
		Insurgent Campaigns Try to Replicate Major 2018 Voter Turnout Jump in Very Different Circumstances by Victoria Merlino
		A Pandemic and A Primary in the Most Impoverished Congressional District in the Country: How are Campaigns and Community Groups Trying to Connect by Felipe De La Hoz

Cy Vance (photo: @ManhattanDA)

Five candidates vying to become the next Manhattan District Attorney will participate in a forum on Tuesday, just under a year before the primary election and over a year after the first candidate in the race announced his campaign. The event, featuring all Democrats, is being hosted by the NYC Programming Council and Columbia Law School. Current District Attorney Cy Vance hasn’t said whether or not he will seek reelection in 2021 and is not participating in the first debate of the race.

The event comes a week after Vance notched a significant win in the nation’s highest court in Trump v. Vance, a landmark case over a grand jury subpoena of the president’s tax returns. In doing so, Vance earned a precedent-setting victory over the President of the United States. While it’s not immediately clear that Donald Trump’s tax returns will be made available to Vance’s investigation, it is a win of some magnitude, especially against a figure as reviled in Manhattan as Trump, that would typically be something most politicians could only dream about heading into an election year. But this is no ordinary situation.

Embattled DA Noncommittal About Reelection Bid
Appearing last week on NY1, Vance again wouldn’t say whether he will be seeking a fourth term as Manhattan’s top law enforcement official. Despite several recent Vance victories, including the successful conviction of Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, he’s come under intense criticism in the past few years for his handling of the Weinstein and other sexual assault cases, as well as cases relating to the Trump family, and more.

And while at times Vance, who has been Manhattan DA since 2010, has led his New York City district attorney colleagues on progressive reform, which will be a focus of the 2021 Manhattan primary race, he has also been criticized for not going far enough.

Vance’s third term has been under a cloud of suspicion, since details re-emerged in late 2017 about his decision not to prosecute Weistein, a famous film producer (and now convicted sex offender) over a 2015 allegation of sexual assault that NYPD investigators believed met the evidentiary standards for prosecution. Vance received a five-figure campaign donation from Weinstein’s attorney that same year, leading many critics to argue this influenced Vance’s prosecutorial judgement. By that point in 2017, Vance had already secured renomination as the Democratic candidate and was unopposed in the general election, but one in ten voters wrote in somebody else on their ballot.

Weinstein’s misconduct wasn’t the only sexual assault-related case that has come under scruitny during Vance’s decade-long tenure as Manhattan’s top prosecutor. In 2011, a prosecutor in Vance’s office argued in court for Jefferey Epstein’s sex offender status to be reduced. That year, DA Vance also faced criticism for declining to prosecute Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund, for sexual assault relating to an incident in a New York hotel. In 2016, his office negotiated a plea deal with an OB-GYN who abused dozens of patients in which the doctor received no jail time.

Another frequent criticism of Vance has been his handling of cases related to former Manhattanite Donald J. Trump and his family’s business dealings. Similar to the Weinstein case, Vance decided against prosecuting two of the now-president’s children, Ivanka and Don Jr., over a potentially fraudulent SoHo real estate deal in 2012 after Trump’s attorney donated and fundraised for the district attorney.

Vance has denied all wrong-doing or any undue influence.

Aside from these headline-grabbing cases, opponents contend that Vance’s office too aggressively prosecutes low-level offenses, such as nonviolent misdemeanors, against poor defendants and people of color. These critiques are in line with national and local decarceral movements that seek to reduce the prison population through the non-prosecution of nonviolent offenses such as fare evasion, sex work, and drug possession.

In January of this year, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called for Vance to resign and tweeted “if you are black, brown, or a woman in NY county, you have a right to believe that you will not get justice when the other party is someone who has money or is connected.” The City Council’s entire Women’s Caucus has also called for Vance’s resignation, as have victims of the doctor, Robert Hadden, and other advocates, elected officials, and others.

In recent years, Vance has taken steps to attempt to remedy past mistakes, taking on Trump over his tax returns and securing the conviction of Weinstein earlier this year. However, for many critics, these moves are too little too late.

Vance touts a long list of what he calls accomplishments and reforms, including his work to clear old summons warrants; fund the review of old rape kits; increase cyber security; and limit the prosecution of low-level offenses like fare evasion.

While Vance has not formally made a decision yet, his fundraising (or lack thereof) would seem to indicate he won’t be running in 2021. Vance has only raised $25,600 over the last six months of 2019 and had just $105,000 in cash on hand in January, per his state campaign finance filings.

"Well the status of my decision-making is, number one, it’s an amazing office and it’s a privilege to hold it," Vance said on NY1. "I think it’s a good thing that, not just this office but other DA’s offices around the country are attracting a lot of attention, and I hope a lot of good candidates. And so I think the attention and the focus on the District Attorney’s race is important, but for me right now we are in the midst of a crisis that we have not seen in — I’m not sure ever. We have the court system functioning at 10 percent operation. We have a huge backlog of significant cases that we need to manage. We have an office and a community that has undergone enormous pain and self-questioning as a result of the incident that happened with George Floyd in Minneapolis and other fatal police encounters with civilians, and these are very tricky times. My focus is on making sure the office is running properly, making sure that I am addressing some of the issues that are raised by the George Floyd killing with regard to race in our criminal justice system, our policies, our practices, and our personnel, and that’s where my attention is. But I’m glad to see that there are individuals that are interested in running for the Manhattan DA’s race. That is a healthy thing to happen."

Candidates Emerge
As Vance faced growing criticism and calls to resign, candidates emerged -- either to take Vance on in the Democratic primary or to pursue the “open” seat if the incumbent declines to run again.

They include the five candidates who will debate Tuesday night: Assemblymember Dan Quart; Alvin Bragg, the state’s former Chief Deputy Attorney General; Janos Marton, a decarceration activist and former ACLU lawyer; public defender Eliza Orlins; and Tahanie Aboushi, a civil rights attorney.

A sixth candidate, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, the former general counsel in Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office, just announced her candidacy this week, but will not be participating in the debate.

Tuesday's debate comes just before candidates will make new fundraising filings public, which will give new insights into the state of the race in its early phases. Fundraising numbers for January through early July will soon be filed by the campaigns, then made available by the state Board of Elections (District Attorney positions are technically part of state government, not city government, so the elections are not part of the city's public campaign finance system).

According to the hosts, Tuesday's "forum comes at a crucial moment as New York City citizens and people across the United States pay close attention to the policing, mass incarceration, and the role of prosecutors in the criminal justice infrastructure.The candidates will answer questions related to he Black Lives Matter movement, alternatives to incarceration, mental health diversion, police accountability, and the role of prosecutors in mass incarceration."

The New York City Program Council is "a trade association of organizations that provide programming in [Department of Correction] facilities around New York City," including the Rikers Debate Project, which has led the organizing for Tuesday's debate among the five Democratic district attorney candidates.

Dan Quart
Quart has represented the Upper East Side and Midtown East in the State Assembly since 2011. He cosponsored legislation to end cash bail in 2019 and chairs the Legislative Commission on Administrative Regulations Review. He has continued to work as a criminal defense attorney throughout his tenure in the State Legislature.

Quart faced some criticism as a “double-officeseeker” for running for reelection to the Assembly this year while also campaigning for District Attorney. He is ahead of his well-funded opponent Cameron Koffman in the Assembly primary that is still playing out with the counting of absentee ballots.

It has been evident for several years that Quart was eyeing a campaign for Manhattan District Attorney. He promises a host of progressive reforms if he were to be elected to the position, including the abolition of cash bail, the decriminilization of sex work, and an end to surveillance-based gang indictments. He has promised to treat substance abuse disorder as a public health issue, as opposed to a criminal justice issue, and would also decline to prosecute low-level offenses such as fare evasion and marijuana possession. Quart has focused on criminal justice issues during his decade in the Assembly, passing a law to compensate exonerated inmates, among a number of other issues he’s either advocated or passed legislation on.

Alvin Bragg
Bragg, who hails from Central Harlem, has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York (headquartered in Manhattan) and the Chief Deputy Attorney General for New York State. In the latter office, he oversaw a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein for a hostile work environment at his production company, a challenge to the constitutionality of the Trump Administration’s citizenship question in the 2020 Census, and major criminal cases involving bribery, securities fraud, and Medicaid fraud.

Bragg vows to make the Manhattan DA’s office “progressive and accountable.” He says his default position would be to decline to prosecute low-level crimes and treating them as a civil matter where appropriate. He promises to dedicate independent prosecutors to exclusively investigate allegations of police misconduct. He would prioritize harm-reduction strategies and seek the low-end of sentencing guidelines in most cases, he says.

Janos Marton
Marton, who was born and raised on the Upper West Side, has held several prominent legal positions throughout his career. He was special counsel to the Moreland Commission, convened and prematurely disbanded by Governor Andrew Cuomo, that investigated political corruption in New York State. He was a leader in the campaign to close Rikers Island jails and later worked as states campaign manager for the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice.

Marton says he would be a “progressive prosecutor” and takes inspiration from Tiffany Cabán’s unsuccessful campaign for Queens DA last year. He wants to reduce the number of Manhattan residents in jails by 80% through declining prosecution on low-level offenses, expanding diversion and restorative justice programs, and reforming bail. He also promises to end charge-stacking and other “coercive plea bargaining practices.” He would decriminalize sex work and “end the War on Drugs,” through changing laws and enforcement practices, he says. 

Eliza Orlins
Orlins is a Manhattan public defender who says she has represented over 3,000 low-income New Yorkers over the past decade and an advocate for criminal justice reform. Some may recognize her from her participation on CBS’s reality competition shows “Survivor” and “Amazing Race,” which has helped her amass a large social media following.

As Manhattan DA, Orlins says she would decriminalize sex work and simple drug possession. She also believes the criminal justice system criminalizes poverty, which she would work to undo, through declining to prosecute low-level offenses. She points to her work as a public defender (the only one currently in the race), an experience she shares with Cabán, as well as progressive DAs across the country, such as Larry Krasner (Philadelphia) and Chesa Boudin (San Francisco).

Tahanie Aboushi
Aboushi is a progressive attorney, as well as a member of Manhattan Community Board 10 and board member of the New York Civil Liberties Union. As an attorney, Aboushi touts legal fights against racism, discrimination, and abuse of power, as well as lawsuits on behalf of bullied school children, people of color harassed and falsely imprisoned in the criminal justice system, and rape victims.

Aboushi would “transform our justice system from one that targets historically marginalized communities into one that uplifts and builds up our neighbors and neighborhoods.” She promises to establish a Police Accountability Unit to investigate police misconduct and focus on alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenses. She will also decline to prosecute charges stemming from “crimes of poverty, mental illness, sex work, and substance use disorder.”

Tali Farhadian Weinstein
While not participating in Tuesday’s candidate forum, Tali Farhadian Weinstein is the latest addition to a growing field of potential replacements for Vance. Farhadian Weinstein just stepped down as general counsel for Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez. She has also served as a federal prosecutor and counsel to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in the Obama administration. Holder endorsed her upon her entrance into the race.

Farhadian Weinstein says she supports abolishing cash bail, but is in favor of allowing judges to hold defendants if deemed dangerous, a standard opposed by many criminal justice reformers. When announcing her candidacy, she told Politico that “I agree with some things [Vance]’s done and disagree with others. I think it’s really important to focus on what the office ought to look like in its next chapter.”

Another candidate, criminal defense attorney Liz Crotty, is also not participating in the candidate forum.

The candidate forum is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Tuesday night. The event is virtual and anyone interested can sign up here.

Note: this story has been updated to clarify portions of the section on DA Vance's decision-making and tenure.

Voting has changed dramatically in New York (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor)

As hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots are being counted more than two weeks after the June 23 primary elections, state lawmakers are pushing a bill that would allow absentee voters to track their ballots and would require election administrators to provide an individual explanation when a ballot is disqualified.

The latest effort to pass the legislation, which was first introduced in 2013, comes amid an unprecedented increase in absentee voting due to the coronavirus pandemic and changes to the eligibility criteria for receiving them. The bill sponsors, Assembly Member Dan Quart and Senator Brad Hoylman, two Manhattan Democrats, say they want to see it signed into law in time for the general election, but it faces a number of legislative and technical hurdles.

"I think the current situation with so many thousands of voters voting by absentee demonstrates how critical this legislation is," Quart said in an interview. "I've heard from many constituents that they have deep concerns that their vote, something so critical, will be counted this year."

"In the age of pandemic democracy, we've got to take into account the fact that voters need to know whether their absentee ballot was counted or not," Hoylman said.

In April, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order expanding the eligibility for an absentee ballot to include anyone with COVID-19 or at risk of contracting the virus, effectively encompassing all registered voters, in order to prevent the virus from spreading at poll sites. Cuomo also ordered boards of elections to distribute absentee ballot applications to all eligible voters, with state lawyers asserting that he could not constitutionally order ballots themselves sent.

As the process unfolded, hundreds of thousands of registered New York City voters requested an absentee ballot through the New York City Board of Elections, with roughly 765,000 ballots sent out by the BOE and 384,000 returned by voters to the BOE, which is now just beginning the process of tallying up those votes.

But, the rapidly expanded absentee system was marred by confusion with some voters not receiving their requested ballot in time to vote absentee. Many others did mail their ballot but have no way of knowing if their vote was received and counted. The BOE will undoubtedly throw out a number of those votes on technicalities as part of the review process, as it does with affidavit ballots.

The lawmakers’ proposal would require county boards of elections to provide written or online confirmation when an absentee ballot has been received. If the ballot is rejected, which can happen on a number of technical grounds like failure to provide a signature or including an extraneous piece of paper in the ballot envelope, the board would have to explain why, and how it can be corrected.

Many other states have online systems for voters to track ballots cast by mail. At least 19 states require some kind of tracking system by statute, and another 14 (including the District of Columbia) have voluntarily established websites to serve that function, according to the National Conference of State Legislature website.

"It's time for New York to conform to the absentee ballot standards in other states," Hoylman said. The bill has not moved out of committee since it was first introduced, even after 2019 when Democrats took control of both houses of the State Legislature and passed a number of voting reforms. The 2020 primaries have been the first elections with widespread absentee voting, but it has often been used by people who are older and who have health and mobility impairments, as well as people who travel or live elsewhere temporarily.

The legislation leaves it up to elections administrators to implement the system and come up with the rules and regulations governing it.

Federal law already requires New York State to allow overseas residents and military voters to track their ballots, which the State Board of Elections does via an online portal, and Hoylman thinks local boards can take a similar approach.

Through the state's current website, military and overseas voters can see when their ballot is sent to them and when it is received by the board of elections, according to John Conklin, a spokesperson for the State Board of Elections. But the system has limitations: it does not allow those voters to see whether their vote was counted.

"It would be local boards of elections but they would work in conjunction with the state to implement it," Hoylman said. This is not atypical of state legislation dealing with elections, which are administered in New York State at the county level by local boards of elections under the oversight and regulatory framework of the State Board of Elections.

Quart suggested that the bill would not only create a system to track whether an absentee ballot was received by the board of elections, but whether it was sent out to the voter in the first place. "So they are not waiting until the last minute for an absentee ballot that's not going to come," he said. Voters are currently responsible for applying for an absentee ballot, even under the broadened eligibility, and many have reported not receiving a requested ballot in time for the primary or at all. But the bill language and accompanying sponsor's memo do not make explicit mention of the ballot application, only saying that the ballots themselves would be tracked (and the explanation of rejection appears to only apply to the ballot, not to applications for a ballot).

Questions remain whether the legislation will be passed and if in time for this year’s fall general election, when even greater numbers of absentee ballots are expected to be cast, pending an extension of the governor’s executive order or legislation that would keep all voters eligible to vote absentee.

"As more is revealed about absentee ballots and voters who may not have had their ballots received in time or their votes counted, I think there is going to be a public call for this type of action," Hoylman said, without indicating whether the bill had support from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and the majority of the Democratic conference.

Quart did not say whether he had spoken with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie either but both said they believed it should be in place for the fall presidential election, which will coincide with the general election for all seats in the State Legislature and House of Representatives, among others.

Spokespeople for the Democratic majorities in both chambers of the State Legislature did not return requests for comment on the bill.

"I'm more optimistic of the chance of success, especially in advance of November -- such a critical election not just in New York State but in the history of this country." Quart said. "Thousands upon thousands of people will be casting their vote by absentee ballot."

Even if it is signed into law before November, whether New York's decentralized and notoriously error-prone election boards will be able to successfully implement the brand new system is a big unknown.

"We have to demand that they do or nothing is going to get done," Hoylman said. "The fact that so many voters have reported not receiving their requested ballot in time to vote by absentee remotely is a scandal in and of itself. But those that did receive a ballot and were able to vote by mail never got any confirmation that it was received and counted." (Voters can eventually check with their local board of elections office whether their vote was counted.)

A spokesperson for the New York City Board of Elections said the agency had no comment on the bill.

"The State Board does not comment on legislation unless the Commissioners have formally voted to support it," Conklin wrote in an email.

Both sponsors of the bill had primary challengers in their districts this June, and while Hoylman is leading his race by a wide margin, Quart's contest is much closer as the BOE is starting to count the absentee ballots. According to the latest figures from the New York City Board of Elections, as of July 2 the board received almost 31,000 ballots in Hoylman's race (22,000 fewer ballots than the BOE distributed in the district), and roughly 11,000 in Quart's race (9,000 fewer than the BOE distributed). These figures include in-person and mailed-in ballot.

The issue of widespread absentee voting may remain with or without a pandemic. Five states allow voting by mail in all elections and 12 other states allow vote-by-mail in certain elections. In New York, a state constitutional amendment to allow no-excuse absentee voting (which allows all voters to qualify for an absentee ballot, similar in effect to the current executive order) was passed by both houses of the State Legislature. But it still needs to pass both houses again in the next legislative session before it goes before voters in a referendum.

"Voters are going to need to have the confidence in the integrity of our elections," Hoylman said. "And again, New York is an outlier state for not having this in place already."

Jabari Brisport marching (photo: @JabariBrisport)

This year’s Democratic primary for Brooklyn’s 25th State Senate District mostly flew under the radar, but was one of the most interesting races in the city, with an energetic activist and teacher, Jabari Brisport, backed by the Working Families and Democratic Socialist of America-New York City, taking on Assemblymember Tremaine Wright, whose district overlaps with part of the Senate district and who had the backing of the retiring senator, Velmanette Montgomery, among many others in the political establishment. Also in the race was Jason Salmon, a progressive with some support trying to make headway against two better-known candidates.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the city and drastically altered campaigning, as well as the elections themselves through the expansion of absentee voting and more, June arrived, and with it the early in-person voting and absentee voting periods, then primary day, June 23.

When the in-person votes were tallied, Brisport appeared on the verge of a major upset, potentially outpacing a sitting Assembly member who had a great deal of local establishment support. While he leads the vote going into the counting of absentee ballots by a 17,113 (52.25%) to 13,301 (40.61%) margin of 3,812 votes, there are still more than 26,000 absentee ballots to be evaluated and counted by the Board of Elections.

In an interview with Gotham Gazette, Brisport said that his campaign is “fairly confident” that he will emerge victorious once the election results are finalized.

Brisport, who unsuccessfully ran as the Green Party nominee in 2017 against City Council Member Laurie Cumbo and clashed with Cumbo during this year’s campaign, is optimistic that he will get to take just one of 63 Senate seats across the state, and join forces with neighboring Senator Julia Salazar, also a democratic socialist, who was elected in northern Brooklyn after beating an incumbent in the 2018 Democratic primary and endorsed Brisport this year. Brisport ran on a far-left platform including the New York Health Act for single-payer health care, a Green New Deal for New York State, and the decriminalization of fare evasion, sex work, and simple drug possession. Housing issues are also at the top of his list, he said.

As with almost every seat in New York City, in the 25th State Senate District winning the Democratic Party is nearly a guarantee of winning the general election, if there is one. The 25th District includes neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Heights, Fort Green, Boerum Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope, and Red Hook.

It draws most of its constituents from parts of the 56th and 57th Assembly Districts. Brisport won the 57th handily, earning 59% of the in-person votes there, while Wright won her home 56th District with 53% there.

While not all for the 25th Senate District, 6,222 absentee ballots were returned in the 56th Assembly District and 14,238 absentee ballots returned in the 57th, again pointing to a significant Brisport advantage as the count continues.

Assembly District 56, which is mostly in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is 63% black and 12% white, with a median household income of $45,296. The 57th District, which is located around Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights, is 42% black and 33% white, with a median household income of $69,950.

Brisport attributes his solid showing in Wright’s home district to “a very present campaign” that “brought new people into the political process.” He told Gotham Gazette that left-wing candidates “win by speaking to people,” “not by relying on old political machines that slap a few endorsements together and put out a mailer and call it a day without engaging with constituents.”

Brisport called his dual endorsers of the Working Families Party and Democratic Socialist of America-New York City “a very dynamic duo” and hopes that the two groups continue working together. He was also endorsed by Salazar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two officials who won upset primaries in 2018 on similar platforms to Brisport's. He was one of a handful of candidates backed by both the WFP and DSA this primary season, and said he’s “excited” about the prospect of the membership of the two working together to achieve shared policy goals in Albany.

“One of my top priorities is passing ‘good cause eviction,’” Brisport said when asked about pressing issues before the State Legislature. He said there has been “a mass-bleeding of people and predominantly people of color” from areas like his district and “stemming that bleeding” will be among his top priorities as a legislator. The bill, which has been championed by Salazar, would ensure that landlords can only evict tenants for “good cause,” not at their whim.

Since primary day, Brisport has been participating in the “Occupy City Hall” protests demanding defunding of the New York City police department. While the most common call was for reducing the NYPD’s nearly $6 billion annual operating budget by $1 billion, Brisport has called for $3 billion in cuts.

“I believe the police are a fundamentally violent institution,” Brisport said, recounting his own negative interactions with officers, including one in which he had a gun drawn on him in a case of mistaken identity. Brisport believes that “stability is the answer to public safety,” and said “there shouldn’t be cuts to health care or education while the NYPD budget is at $6 billion.”

As a state senator, Brisport would pursue legislation that would “reduce the number of interactions” between New Yorkers and the police, mostly through decriminalization of nonviolent crimes, such as sex work and simple drug possession, which would “reduce the need for cops.” He has also proposed, along with the other DSA candidates running in this year’s primaries, a sentencing reform commission to bring the state incarceration rate to pre-War on Drugs levels.

In the lead-up to a city budget deal announced June 30, Brisport led protesters from the city DSA branch on a march and rally targeting Cumbo, who is the City Council majority leader, outside what they believed to be her Brooklyn home, leading to a heated war of words between the two over the course of weeks. Cumbo, who defeated Brisport by a fairly wide margin in the 2017 race (though he did better than most general election challengers to sitting Democrats), endorsed Wright in this year’s Senate primary. She organized a counter-demonstration at Brisport’s home last Monday, right before the primary.

Cumbo harshly criticized Brisport and accused him of breaking a code among Black people. Cumbo strongly condemned the tactics of Brisport and the DSA, labeling it as “an assault on my safety and that of my child” and a “lynch mob.” At the counter-demonstration, she addressed Brisport in his absence, saying “you have been used, my brother,” and portrayed him as the Black spokesperson for what she described as a mostly white group of DSA activists.

If the Senate results hold through absentee ballots, the two are likely to share a considerable number of constituents for at least a year (Cumbo is term-limited out of the Council at the end of 2021).

Brisport said Cumbo’s telling “was an unfortunate description of the event” and characterized the protest as “a very polite and peaceful demonstration.” He noted that he started the demonstration by thanking Cumbo for supporting defunding of the NYPD by $1 billion. He called the counter-demonstration “a tactic to get Tremaine [Wright] elected and the timing was pretty transparent.”

However, Brisport insisted that “really I just want to focus on defunding the NYPD” and that he doesn’t hold any grudge against Cumbo. “I really don’t worry because I don’t personally have any bad blood with the Majority Leader,” he said, adding he would “love to collaborate with her” in the future.

A gay Black man, Brisport is part of what he described as “a wonderful rainbow wave,” in which Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones also likely won their respective congressional primaries in the Bronx and Westchester. Torres and Jones appear likely to be the first openly gay Black men in Congress (Torres identifies as Afro-Latino). Similarly, Brisport will be the first openly gay Black state legislator in New York history.

“So many of these things are interconnected,” Brisport said when asked about the significance of these historic firsts. He pointed to how “queer people of color were severely impacted by Covid” and, as such, politicians like him “understand that intersectionality and can advocate on behalf of marginalized people.”

Brisport’s victory, along with Salazar’s reelection and Zohran Mamdani’s possible victory in Queens over Assemblymember Aravella Simotas, are significant boosts to the DSA, as are showings in other races where the DSA endorsed a candidate, but the outcomes are harder to predict: Marcela Mitaynes is a mere 419 votes behind Assemblymember Félix Ortiz in Brooklyn's 51st Assembly District and Phara Souffrant Forrest trails Brooklyn Assemblymember Walter Mosley by less than 600 votes in the 57th District. 

Meanwhile the Working Families Party, Sunrise Movement, and other groups among the ascendent left wing of the Democratic Party also saw a number of their backed candidates do quite well in the primaries, with some races overlapping and others also still to be decided via absentee ballots.

Chi Anunwa, co-chair of the NYC-DSA’s steering committee, told Gotham Gazette that “Jabari’s likely victory represents a big step forward for housing and racial justice politics in New York. With Jabari’s election, New York State will now have two socialists in the State Senate who are champions of the tenants’ rights movement and the movement for more radical police reform. As a longtime racial justice organizer, Jabari is committed to upending the symbiotic relationship between the police and the real estate industry in New York State, and by extension, the political status quo where protecting private property is more important than protecting New Yorkers from the violence of evictions and police brutality.”

When reached to discuss the race, Assemblymember Wright declined to comment, but this week her campaign sent out an email to supporters telling them “the election isn’t over yet” and asking for volunteers to help with the absentee ballot count.

Salmon, who attained about 7% of the in-person vote, conceded the race to Brisport on June 30, saying in a statement “I would also like to congratulate and commend Jabari Brisport who has been a powerful voice for the progressive movement” and endorsing him.

Voting was again challenging in New York City (photo: Edwin J Torres/Mayor's Office)

When Imani Clenance didn’t receive her absentee ballot to vote in the recent June primaries she, like many others, went to vote in person. But at her polling site in Harlem, she realized that her struggle to vote had only just started.

After being given her ballot, she only received one page with Democratic presidential primary candidates on it, but no mention of the Congressional race in her district, District 13, that she knew from the Board of Elections’ website was also going on. Confused, she asked poll workers why the Congressional race was missing from the ballot. Rather than being given the second page of the ballot, Clenance said poll workers proceeded to give her what she described as a condescending explanation of the difference between the President and Congress, as they were seemingly under the impression that Congressional races would be held in November.

Although she had started to doubt herself, Clenance “wasn’t going to leave until [she] was sure,” and spoke with the poll site coordinator, who was also unable to help. She was then given the Board of Elections’ number to call herself, and asked by poll workers to let them know what the BOE said.

Once Clenance finally confirmed with a BOE employee that there should be two ballots, a supervisor was sent to the site, and in the meantime poll workers were able to find the second page of ballots they had not been handing out before. When asked what happens to the voters who had come before her and not given the second page, Clenance said poll workers shrugged and told her that at least they figured it out before lunch.

“This is an unacceptable failing of our electoral process,” Clenance said in her testimony at this past week’s hearing of the New York City Voter Assistance Advisory Committee (VAAC), an annual public hearing to hear from voters about their experiences. “It is bewildering, sad, and, quite frankly, scary, that I should have to explain the difference between a primary and general election to poll workers. That the people running the election site don’t know what elections they’re running.”

Clenance was one of many at the hearing who gave testimony about problems they had while trying to vote in the June primaries, which were held via June 13-21 early voting, June 23 primary day, and vastly expanded absentee balloting as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The VAAC is part of the New York City Campaign Finance Board and its NYC Votes voter engagement arm.

For months, BOE officials had known this year would be different given that the pandemic would make in-person voting dangerous, especially for more vulnerable populations such as older voters or those with pre-existing conditions. Governor Andrew Cuomo had extended eligibility of absentee ballots for the June primary so that the “temporary illness” excuse could include the possibility of contracting COVID-19, and ordered local elections boards to mail all eligible voters an absentee ballot application. The governor has yet to extend that option to the fall general election, which is expected to see massive voter turnout given the presidential election.

The expansion of absentee voting created new difficulties for candidates and voting rights advocates as the widespread use of absentee ballots meant more voter education was needed. And although the decision was reversed by a federal judge, the BOE’s initial cancelation of the Democratic presidential primary created further confusion, with several candidates for state offices telling Gotham Gazette that voters seemed to be unaware that down-ballot races would not be affected even if the presidential primary was canceled, and that the presidential primary was later reinstated.

Problems leading up to the primaries aside, both the members of the VAAC, which advises the New York City Campaign Finance Board on what improvements to elections it should recommend, and private citizens who participated in the public hearing pointed out key issues that prevented people from being able to vote. People not receiving absentee ballots on-time or only receiving one out of two ballots, like what happened with Clenance at her polling site, were the top two issues, according to Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the New York City Campaign Finance Board Amanda Melillo.

“The headline news that we are seeing on election day was just that a number of people didn’t receive their absentee ballots on-time. This is what we were seeing over and over again throughout the day,” Melillo said, going on to list other problems such as technical difficulties, polling sites opening late, long lines, and inaccurate poll books.

On primary day, 30,000 of the over 700,000 people who had requested absentee ballots were still waiting for their request to be processed, according to Gothamist. At the hearing, VAAC members provided updated numbers that had been posted by the New York City Board of Elections of how many people were mailed absentee ballots, but not how many people requested them. The BOE reported more than 750,000 voters had absentee ballots distributed to them, which is 33 times the number from 2016.

Because the Board of Elections is not reporting the number of absentee ballots requested it is unclear how many voters requested but did not receive a ballot. The number of voters who did not receive the absentee ballots they requested or who received them too late to return them in time for their votes to count will be a measure of voter disenfranchisement, if the number is ever known.

Melillo said to improve the BOE should use existing software to allow voters to log-in to a portal and track their absentee ballots throughout the mailing process. She also said the process for dropping off absentee ballots at poll sites, a lesser-known option that was available this cycle, needs to be streamlined, as does the process for counting absentee ballots.

Still, many voters, like Brooklyn resident “TM,” who testified at the hearing, did not receive their absentee ballots. When TM went to vote in person at 6:30 a.m., one of the two ballot scanners at her poll site was already broken, and she was told she was in the wrong polling site despite having looked it up beforehand. She, like others who testified, was given an affidavit ballot. Also like others who testified, TM faced further issues while trying to vote.

“And when I went into the booth, I noticed that I had only received one page of the ballot and the presidential and the delegate ballot was missing,” TM said. “And I asked the volunteers if I could get an extra page, and no one seemed to know anything about another page.”

TM said she ended up receiving her absentee ballot later that day, and eventually went through a process to replace her initial ballot with that one. This required her to plead her case as to why she wanted to override her vote in front of a judge through a Zoom call. She received approval from the judge and was able to vote.

Some who testified at the hearing were the very confused poll workers described by others, like Juliana Pesavento who worked at an Atlantic Ave. polling site in Brooklyn. Pesavento said she took a class several months prior and received her assigned location a week in advance.

“My experience was a scary, shocking inside look at our poll working system,” Pesavento said. “We can register as many people to vote as possible, but if the actual poll system fails there is truly no point.”

Pesavento said although she and other workers showed up on-time at 6 a.m., the poll site coordinator did not arrive until an hour later. She said she received no overview of what ballots there were or guidance on what to do for people who wished to drop off their absentee ballots in person. She also did not receive information on what safety precautions should or would be taken due to the pandemic, she said, something another poll worker who testified at the hearing mentioned as deterring people from volunteering for the job.

VAAC members cited the need for improved poll worker training and encouraging more people to utilize early voting as potential solutions to these problems.

Laura Mueller-Soppart, who also testified at the hearing, was unable to obtain an absentee ballot and could not vote in-person because she was in Chicago, she said. Like many who spoke at the hearing, Mueller-Soppart said she was happy to hear that the VAAC would be recommending ways to improve voter experiences for the fall, but was still disappointed with the recent elections.

“We talk a lot about how to do it better,” Mueller-Soppart said. “But the baseline has to be that voters can vote.”

Real estate groundbreakings may be less celebrated (photo: governor's office)

In a few short years, real estate money has gone from the norm to “toxic” in New York State Democratic politics, with many of those who once gladly accepted thousands of dollars from the industry now pledging to take none. While there are still exceptions — including notables such as Governor Andrew Cuomo and Brooklyn Borough President and 2021 mayoral candidate Eric Adams — the overall trend is reflected in the recent June primaries for seats in the state Legislature, where the main New York real estate lobbying group donated a fraction of what it has in past election cycles.

The 2018 loss of the State Senate by Republicans, the latest campaign finance filings, and a growing list of Democratic candidates pledging to refuse donations with ties to real estate interests suggest the once-formidable Real Estate Board of New York, or REBNY, is in something of a political no man’s land.

Real estate plays a pivotal part in the New York economy, grossing around $1 billion annually for the state through the real estate transfer tax, according to the State Assembly; boasting around $5 billion in taxable sales in 2019, according to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance; and employing thousands. But although Senate Republicans, who held a majority in the body through 2018, were often sympathetic to the industry, Democratic-aligned activists and politicians alike see it as one that requires reining in and reform in order to make New York City more affordable and equitable.

The changing majority in the Senate paved the way for historic tenant-friendly legislation passed in 2019, which was strongly opposed by REBNY and real estate interests generally. It also correlated with a marked decrease in campaign donations by REBNY’s political action committee (PAC): while in 2018 the organization spent $450,000 during the primary elections alone, that number is less than $80,000 this year, which as usual featured almost exclusively Democratic contests in New York City.

A large chunk of REBNY’s 2018 spending — well over $100,000 — went to support the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of real estate-friendly state senators elected as Democrats but who formed a rogue conference and had a power-sharing agreement with Republicans, often preventing progressive legislation, including major rent regulation reform, from being passed. Six of eight members of the IDC lost their primary races in 2018, with a wave of progressive challengers who ran in part on their commitment to fighting big real estate interests.

Besides the change in control of the Senate that REBNY attempted to prevent, a shift in voters’ perspectives and its impact on many Democratic politicians was a likely cause of the decrease in the donations by REBNY to candidates, according to Cea Weaver, Campaign Coordinator of Housing Justice for All.

“At this point real estate money is toxic,” said Weaver, a leading organizer in the pro-tenants coalition that has fought for tighter rent regulations and more affordable housing. “It’s a testament to the tenant movement that real estate money has become basically a litmus test that you can’t run in New York as a progressive if you take it, no one’s going to take you seriously.”

Weaver said it was Diana Richardson who first ran on a promise to not accept real estate money during her 2015 bid for State Assembly in Brooklyn and that her success encouraged others, especially in districts with areas facing rising rents and gentrification, like Crown Heights in Richardson’s district and other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond. Senators Julia Salazar, Zellnor Myrie, and Alessandra Biaggi are examples of those who have since run and won primaries against incumbents on platforms centered around opposing and limiting the extensive power of real estate developers and big landlords.

Both Myrie and Biaggi challenged incumbents (Jesse Hamilton and Jeff Klein, respectively) who were members of the IDC. Those upsets, among others, left REBNY with fewer allies, Democrat or Republican, in New York government.

Weaver said those wins, and others, propelled the movement to reform the rent laws that resulted in last year’s landmark legislation.

“The reality is winning on that demand created a mandate to deliver,” Weaver said, given that the expiring rent laws were a major focus of 2018 Democratic primary campaigns, mostly in the city, and a rallying cry for general election races to flip the chamber, including one race in Brooklyn and several in city suburbs.

It wasn’t always this way, though. In 2016, the campaign fund for Democrats in the State Assembly was third behind the State Senate Republican Campaign Committee and the campaign committee of the Independent Democratic Conference in receiving donations from REBNY. That year, the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee received over $100,000 from the real estate group, and in 2018 REBNY donated four times as much to Democrats as it had in 2016 (including the support for the IDC and its members).

“They recognized in 2018 that it was a threshold moment for the real estate industry in terms of the balance of power in Albany,” said Erik Engquist, the senior managing editor at The Real Deal, a publication that covers real estate, and a longtime New York City journalist. “Giving money to the Republicans in the Assembly accomplishes nothing. So, you can’t read that as support for the Democratic Party, it’s more like ‘we want influence, period.’”

Engquist said REBNY may have hoped Assembly Democrats would serve as a moderating force to counteract the soon-to-be more liberal Senate. Although REBNY was extremely displeased with the rent laws passed in 2019, and some were mystified by how little influence Cuomo injected on behalf of his allies in real estate, there were indications that its strategy worked to some degree.

For example, a number of officials and advocates wanted to fully eliminate the Major Capital Improvement (MCI) program, which allows landlords to increase rents by a capped amount if they enhance the building in a way that benefits all tenants. Instead, the cap on rent increases after MCIs was reduced from 6% to 2%, something Engquist credited to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. And, even as bad as the legislation may have been for REBNY, it would still “want to at least play defense, prevent it from being tweaked more in tenants’ favor,” Engquist said.

An analysis of the REBNY PAC’s financials shows the shift after 2018. While it donated over $10,000 to each of 42 different political campaigns in 2018, only one candidate (Democratic Bronx State Senator Luis Sepúlveda) has received more than $10,000 in 2020 as of June 20. Donations of around $5,000 or less were made to Democratic State Senators James Skoufis, Kevin Parker, and Diane Savino, and Assemblymembers Amy Paulin and Inez Dickens, among others in both houses.

And you can’t spend money you don’t have: contributions to REBNY’s PAC went from over $1.3 million in 2018, a similar amount to what it received in 2016 and 2017, to about $200,000 in 2019.

Deputy Majority Leader of the State Senate Michael Gianaris, who successfully defended his seat in the recent primaries, is himself instructive. The Queens senator had previously taken real estate money, including roughly a few thousand dollars a year from REBNY up until 2018, but has since then upheld a pledge to not accept real estate donations. He said he took the pledge due to his newfound power when the Senate flipped, and to ensure his supporters knew he was on tenants' side leading up to the renewal of the rent laws in 2019.

Gianaris said the organizing done by pro-tenant groups was vital and will have a long-lasting effect on the ability for real estate interests to find support from politicians.

“All these things are interwoven,” said Gianaris, who represents parts of Western Queens that have seen rapid development and rising costs of living in recent years. “The organizing that the tenants did played a role in helping us obtain the majority, obtaining the majority helped wane the power of big real estate and the more that happens, the more candidates are comfortable not taking their support.”

REBNY spends on political campaigns through other avenues than direct contributions to candidates or committees, including through independent expenditure campaigns for or against certain candidates, which can include television ads, phone banking, and mailers paid for by an outside group, such as its Jobs For New York super PAC. Jobs For New York has spent, for example, over $100,000 to boost City Council Member Donovan Richards' bid for Queens Borough President, as reported by the Queens Eagle. And REBNY appears tied to several somewhat mysterious groups spending money in suburban Democratic primaries to boost the more moderate candidates, as reported by the Times Union.

In addition to campaign donations and independent expenditures, REBNY also has its connections and the promise of concrete community benefits to try and gain influence, Engquist said.

“REBNY will have less influence, but it won’t have no influence,” Engquist said. “There are elected officials out there who want development in their district. They want to tailor it and shape it, but they do want to have projects so they can say ‘I provided so much affordable housing, I got a subway station fixed up,’ or whatever.”

He gave the example of the redevelopment by the company Two Trees of Williamsburg’s Domino Sugar Refinery into large residential buildings. Engquist said politicians who want development that is too large for non-profit or small developers to handle would need the connections REBNY has with big-name developers like Two Trees.

One of the looming questions in New York City has been the extent to which even development with a large number of apartments with affordability caps is embraced by elected officials, especially local City Council members who often get significant say over any change to zoning rules in their districts. The anti-real estate trend has coincided with the city’s affordability crisis, but some have wondered if that pro-tenant movement will succeed in seeing enough housing built to help provide affordable apartments, whether new or existing, for those who need them.

That is a conversation less applicable to the state Legislature, where regulations on rent stabilized apartments are crafted and elections are being held this year, and more for the City Council, where local development projects are negotiated and elections are being held next year. Not to mention the 2021 mayoral race, where housing affordability and real estate development will undoubtedly be central, hotly-debated issues. Whether or not candidates accept real estate-linked campaign donations is alread splitting the likely Democratic mayoral field, with, for example, Adams taking them and both Comptroller Scott Stringer and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson saying they are refusing such funds.

The roles played by REBNY and individual real estate developers in the 2021 city elections, particularly with regard to candidate donations, independent expenditure campaigns, and policy advocacy, will play out over the coming year-plus. They will coincide with the much larger discussion of how the city will recover from the economic devastation wrought by the COVID-19 outbreak and its fallout.

“As we begin to rebuild after this pandemic, leadership is critical,” said a REBNY spokesperson, who did not answer several specific Gotham Gazette questions about its campaign donations while providing a broader statement. “We need officials at every level to implement meaningful, measurable and smart policies that can lead our City and State towards a strong recovery. We continue to watch how the [2020] primary races will shake out and look forward to working with thoughtful elected officials who understand that New York City’s economy isn’t healthy unless the real estate industry is healthy enough to generate the taxes needed to create jobs, build more affordable housing and fund essential services.”

With only 22 Republicans in the 60-seat Senate and 43 in the 150-seat Assembly, Gianaris said REBNY may have to rethink its strategy if it is going to play any role in New York State policy.

“I hope they figured out that their traditional model of just throwing dollars at politicians and expecting them to do their bidding is over,” Gianaris said. “What I would say to the real estate industry is throw the old models out the window, start working with your tenants to come up with a collaborative approach to setting policy. The idea that — on a political basis — the tenants are without allies in power is out the window.”

Jenifer Rajkumar mails her absentee ballot (photo: @JeniferRajkumar)

Primary elections in New York looked much different in 2020 than in previous years. This was the first time that primaries for the State Legislature and Congress were consolidated into one day, but more importantly, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the universal accessibility of absentee ballots meant that those mail-in votes could prove decisive in several hotly-contested races in New York this year. (The pandemic also meant that the Democratic presidential primary was postponed to also coincide with the June primaries for state and federal legislative seats, among others.)

Absentee ballot counting by the New York City Board of Elections begins this week, two weeks after primary day (June 23), and several races are still in play. With a total of just under 500,000 in-person votes across the primaries in the city, almost all of which were Democratic contests, through early voting and primary day, attention now turns to the absentee ballots, roughly 384,000 of which were returned by voters (out of more than 765,000 sent out by the Board of Elections after completed applications were turned in by voters).

When the votes came in on primary night challenger Jamaal Bowman had such a convincing lead over Rep. Eliot Engel of the Bronx and Westchester in New York’s 16th Congressional District that some prognosticators were comfortable calling the race for him.

Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke appears likely to hold on to her seat in the 9th Congressional District, and she has declared victory based on an AP projection, though her closest opponent, Adem Bunkeddeko, has not conceded. Other incumbents have far smaller margins after the in-person votes, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney of the 12th Congressional District, which spans parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

In the Bronx, a crowded primary for the “open” seat of retiring Rep. Jose Serrano yielded a strong margin for City Council Member Ritchie Torres, but with thousands of absentee ballots to be counted in the 15th Congressional District, Assemblymember Michael Blake, currently in second place, had not conceded.

Absentee ballots could also significantly impact several state legislative races. In the 25th State Senate District in Brooklyn, Jabari Brisport appeared on the verge of an upset win over Assemblymember Tremaine Wright and Jason Salmon in another “open” race.

Incumbent Queens Assemblymembers Michael DenDekker, Aravella Simotas, and Michael Miller currently trail after in-person ballots were counted and their fellow incumbents Walter Mosley and Joe Lentol of Brooklyn are holding on to very to fairly narrow leads. Three open seats, Assembly Districts 31, 56, and 79, also have margins that could be overturned once absentee ballots are counted.

A closer look at a number of races to watch:

NY-9
Rep. Clarke holds a 26,459-vote lead over second-time challenger Adem Bunkeddeko, who came within 2,000 votes of beating Clarke back in 2018. Clarke took 62.2% of the vote compared to Bunkeddeko’s 17.9%, while other candidates Council Member Chaim Deutsch and Isiah James each took about 9% of the vote.

The Board of Elections lists 40,686 absentee ballots returned in NY-9 out of 75,915 sent out, for a return rate of 53.6%.

Bunkeddeko would need to win about 65% of absentee ballots to reverse Clarke’s in-person vote lead, after receiving just under 18% of in-person votes.

NY-12
Longtime Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee, holds a narrow 648-vote (1.6%) lead over second-time challenger Suraj Patel after in-person votes were counted in New York’s 12th Congressional District, which is anchored in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but also extends to western portions of Brooklyn and Queens. Another challenger, Lauren Ashcraft, placed third with about 13.3% of the vote.

Maloney received 16,473 votes to Patel's 15,825 to Ashcraft's 5,268.

According to the BOE, 61,828 absentee ballots have been returned for the district.

That includes 44,687 (72.3%) from Manhattan, where Maloney bested Patel 46.9% to 37.1% in the in-person vote. Patel won both the Queens and Brooklyn portions of the district, by 6.3% and 22.1%, respectively, but those boroughs only accounted for 14.9% and 12.8% of the district’s returned absentee ballots, respectively.

NY-15
In a crowded, 12-candidate race to succeed Rep. Serrano in the South Bronx, Torres emerged with a lead of 4,516 votes over his nearest opponent, Blake. After Torres’ 30.4% of the vote and Blake’s 19.3% of the vote, the next four vote-getters were Council Member Ruben Diaz Sr. (14.7%), Samelys Lopez (13.2%), Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez (11.4%), and former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (3.8%).

There were 39,865 total in-person ballots cast in the race, while there are 18,632 absentee ballots returned (out of 47,046 sent out for the district, for a 39.6% return rate). Blake would need to do extremely well in the absentee ballots in order to overcome Torres’ lead. Torres has 12,421 votes to Blake's 7,905 after in-person voting, while Diaz Sr. has 6,032.

NY-16
Rep. Engel, a 30-plus-year incumbent who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, trails Bowman by 10,183 votes in NY-16 after the in-person vote spanning parts of the Bronx and Westchester. Bowman won 61.7% in the Bronx section of the district and 56.5% in the Westchester section.

According to the New York City BOE, there have been 12,197 returned absentee ballots from the Bronx portion of the district (49.0% of the 24,907 sent out there), while there were 19,249 returned in the Westchester portion as of primary day (53.0% of 36,323 distributed), for a total of 31,446 absentee ballots.

SD-25
With State Senator Velmanette Montgomery retiring, a three-candidate race emerged in Brooklyn’s 25th State Senate District. After in-person votes were tallied, Democratic Socialist of America activist and math teacher Jabari Brisport leads Assemblymember Tremaine Wright by 3,812 votes and a 52.25% to 40.61% margin, with activist Jason Salmon in third with about 7%.

Brisport received 17,113 votes to Wright's 13,301 during in-person voting.

There were 26,183 absentee ballots returned by voters, of the 50,023 requested (a 52.3% return rate), according to the BOE.

In the two Assembly districts that comprise most of the Senate district (ADs 56 and 57), 46.5% of absentee ballots (6,222 of 13,395) have been returned in the 56th AD, which Wright represents and won 52.7% to 43.6% over Brisport during in-person voting; while 58.8% (14,238 of 25,990) absentee ballots were returned in the 57th AD, which Brisport won 58.9% to 31.2% during in-person voting.

AD-31
In Assembly District 31 in Queens, an "open" seat race is led after in-person voting by Khaleel Anderson with 2,888 votes (good for 38.1%), over Rich David with 2,113 (27.9%), and Lisa George with 1,404 votes (18.5%). There were 2,790 absentee ballots returned in the district.

AD-34
In the Queens-based 34th Assembly District, six-term incumbent Assemblymember Michael DenDekker trails opponent Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas by 1,097 votes, after he received 22.8% of the in-person vote and she got 40.4%. Two other candidates, Joy Chowdhury and Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo, received 13.7% and 12% of the in-person votes, respectively.

Gonzalez-Rojas received 2,514 in-person votes, while DenDekker received 1,417.

According to the BOE tally, there are 4,884 returned absentee ballots in the district out of 12,958 sent out (a return rate of 37.7%).

AD-36
In Queens’ 36th Assembly District, five-term Assemblymember Aravella Simotas trails Democratic Socialists of America-backed tenant counselor Zohran Mamdani 46.2% to 53.6%, a total of just 589 votes. Mamdani received 4,228 votes to Simotas' 3,639.

There were 8,424 in-person ballots cast in this district, while the Board of Elections reported receiving 9,676 absentee ballots out of 16,433 distributed (a return rate of 58.9%). Simotas would need to win absentee ballots by 6.1% to win the nomination.

AD-38
Six-term Assemblymember Michael Miller currently trails challenger Jenifer Rajkumar by 1,324 votes, or 25.8% to 52%, in Queens’ 38th Assembly District. A third candidate, Joseph De Jesus, received 22% of the in-person vote. Rajkumar received 2,624 votes, Miller received 1,300, and DeJesus 1,108.

The BOE received 3,077 absentee ballot returns from this district. Miller would have to do far better than winning a quarter of those votes to overcome what is a daunting deficit.

AD-50
48-year incumbent Assemblymember Joe Lentol holds a 1,763-vote lead over challenger Emily Gallagher after receiving 57.3% of the 11,986 in-person votes to her 42%. Lentol received 6,608 votes to Gallagher's 4,845.

According to the BOE, there have been 9,299 absentee ballots returned for this district out of 17,023 sent out (a return rate of 54.6%). Gallagher would have to win the absentee ballots by 19% to unseat Lentol.

AD-51
Félix Ortiz, the Assembly’s Assistant Speaker, faced challenges from Democratic Socialists of America-backed activist Marcela Mitaynes and two other opponents. After in-person ballots were counted, Ortiz holds a 464-vote lead over Mitaynes. He took 38.6% of the vote, compared to Mitaynes’s 31.1%, while Katherine Walsh took 20.7% and Genesis Aquino received 9.1%.

Ortiz received 2,391 votes to Mitaynes' 1,927 and Walsh's 1,282.

The BOE has received 4,872 absentee ballots returns from this district out of 8,863 distributed (a return rate of 55%), compared to 6,314 in-person votes.

AD-56
With incumbent Assemblymember Tremaine Wright seeking election to the State Senate, there was an open race for the 56th Assembly District, located primarily in Bedford-Stuyvesant, between Stefani Zinerman and Justin Cohen. With in-person ballots counted, Zinerman received 56.2% of those votes to Cohen’s 43.1% and she holds a 1,623-vote lead as of primary day.

The BOE lists 6,222 absentee ballots returned from this district out of 13,395 distributed (a return rate of 46.5%).

AD-57
Four-term incumbent Assemblymember Walter Mosley faces a primary challenge from Democratic Socialists of America-backed nurse Phara Souffrant Forrest in the Brooklyn-based 57th Assembly District. When in-person ballots were counted, Mosley held a narrow lead of 588 votes, with 51.9% to Forrest’s 47.8%. Mosely tallied 7,482 votes to Souffrant Forrest's 6,894.

There were 14,238 absentee ballots returned in this district of the 25,990 distributed (a 54.8% return rate). Forrest would have to win absentee ballots by just over 4.1% to overcome Mosley’s current lead.

AD-79
With the district’s current incumbent, Assemblymember Michale Blake, running in the 15th Congressional District primary, there was an "open" race for the South Bronx-based 79th Assembly District. Chantel Jackson, who has the backing of Blake and much of the Bronx Democratic Party, narrowly leads her closest opponent, Cynthia Cox, by 240 votes after in-person ballots were counted. Cox is backed by Blake’s congressional primary opponent, Council Member Ritchie Torres.

Jackson received 27.1% of the vote to Cox’s 24.2%, with George Alvarez receiving 18.2%, former Assemblymember Eric Stevenson taking 13.5%, and Elvis Santana receiving just under 13%.

Jackson received 2,222 votes to Cox's 1,982 and Alvarez's 1,493.

There were 3,741 absentee ballots returned in this district out of 10,321 sent out (a return rate of 36.2%).

Sy Schimberg contributed to this article.

This article has been updated with additional numbers.

The Census count is ongoing, with high stakes (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Representatives Carolyn Maloney (NY-12) and Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) unveiled a report on Monday that shows the potential consequences of New York City being undercounted in the 2020 Census. The report comes as New York City continues to lag behind the nationwide response rate to the decennial questionnaire, although the city has gained ground in recent weeks.

As of Sunday, the national self-response rate stood at 61%, while New York City was at 52%. However, New York City’s 2020 response rate represents a 2% improvement from a month earlier and a 5% improvement from the city’s 2010 response rate at the same juncture. For the past month, New York City has outpaced the national self-response rate. Between May 12 and June 18, the national rate increased by 2.8%, but the city rate increased by 4.5%, according to the report from staff for the two long-serving Democrats.

“Today, we are calling on every New Yorker to respond to the Census. You can do it from the comfort of your home,” said Maloney, who represents parts of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, in a conference call announcing the release of the report. “You have the ability to help the future of our community and our city. All you need to do is fill out the Census form.”

The report, “It’s Time to Fill Out Your 2020 Census Form: Why a Complete Count is Essential for New York City,” comes from the staff of the House’s Oversight and Reform Committee, which Maloney chairs, and the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The report highlights the potential consequences that an undercount could have for the federal funding New York City receives for education and jobs programs. The federal government allocates $1.5 trillion annually based on Census figures, for those types of programs and many others.

“Every facet of your life will be vastly impacted by an undercount of even one percent,” said Jeffries, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

The staff report warns that New York City is particularly vulnerable to being undercounted, as many groups typically undercounted by the Census reside in the city. Sixteen million people were undercounted nationally in the 2010 Census, but communities of color fared worst. African-Americans were undercounted by 2.1%, Hispanics by 1.5%, and Native-Americans and Native-Alaskans living on reservations were undercounted by 4.9%. Furthermore, 4.6% of children under the age of 5 were undercounted. The report expresses the fear that the undercount in 2020 could be even larger.

For New York City alone, an undercount of the same magnitude as 2010 for the 2020 Census would mean nearly 40,000 African-Americans, 33,000 Hispanics, 1,100 Asian-Americans, and 4,000 Native-Americans would be undercounted, totaling about 78,000 New Yorkers of color being undercounted.

Additionally, New York is also home to other communities at risk for being undercounted. About 57% of New York City residents live in hard-to-count communities, according to the report; 17% of New Yorkers do not have internet access, which makes them much more likely to be missed.

The city loses $2,295 in federal funding for each child that is undercounted, according to the report. For education alone, that would mean $7.3 million per year in lost funding if there was just a 1% undercount of New York City children. Maloney said that total was the “equivalent of all the textbooks a child needs for a school year” for 29,000 students in New York City.

Additionally, a 1% undercount would also mean $3.7 million per year in lost funding for job training centers and career counseling. The city loses $281 in potential federal funding for each low-income worker who goes uncounted in this year’s Census.

Maloney said that the Trump administration and Senate Republicans are currently standing in the way of an accurate Census count. “We regretfully have had to fight to get [Census Director] Steven Dillingham to discuss things with us,” she said, “it’s hard for us to make an assessment.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has limited the U.S. Census Bureau’s field operations, Maloney and other Democrats have requested that Census deadlines be pushed back. While some deadlines have been moved, a further extension of the overall count was included in House Democrats’ latest stimulus proposal, the Heroes Act, which passed the House of Representatives, but has not been taken up in the Republican-controlled Senate as of yet. The bill would also require Dillingham to make monthly reports to Congress on the progress of the Census.

“This is so important because it shows why the Census matters to every community,” said Julie Menin, the director of New York City’s 2020 Census office, in an interview with Gotham Gazette about the report released by Maloney and Jeffries. “I think it’s important that people focus on the financial impact post-Covid.”

“We completely agree that it’s been very problematic,” Menin said of federal efforts. She cited the decrease in Census offices and door-knockers in the New York City area in 2020 compared to 2010, a decision made at the federal level.

Menin discussed the city’s wide-ranging efforts to inform New Yorkers about the Census, particularly in response to COVID-19. The city’s Census office has set up in-person outreach at food distribution sites and reached over 1.6 million New Yorkers through text-banking and phone-banking. Later this summer the city plans to launch 300 pop-up outreach centers to reach New Yorkers without internet access, a group particularly at risk of being undercounted.

In an interview with Gotham Gazette, Menin said that “if more people had filled out the Census in 2010, we would have had more money for our hospitals and Medicaid.” Referring to the crises at hand, she added, “this is not a time for people not to respond to the Census.”

The federal government extended the self-response period ending from August 31 to October 31 due to the pandemic.

Jeffries also did not mince words when describing the importance of the 2020 Census. “We need everyone to participate in the Census as if your life depends on it because your quality of life absolutely depends on it.”

[Read: U.S. Census Bureau Resumes Limited Field Operations in New York and NYC Continues Outreach While State Remains MIA]