Susan Zhuang, Wai Yee Chan, Stanley Ng, Vito LaBella, Ying Tan (l-r)
Three Democrats and two Republican candidates are vying for their respective party nominations in this month’s primary election for the newly redrawn City Council District 43 in Southern Brooklyn.
The district was created last year during the redistricting process following the decennial Census to reflect population shifts, and in this case to give the Asian-American community a chance of greater, more proportionate representation in the Council. Asian New Yorkers were the largest and fastest-growing major demographic group in the city between the 2010 and 2020 Census counts.
The race in District 43 is one of only two open seats for the City Council this year, along with Manhattan’s District 9, and all 51 seats are on the ballot just two years after the previous citywide election. Not every City Council district is home to one primary election, much less two.
Early voting for the primary began Saturday and will go through June 25. Primary day is Tuesday, June 27, and absentee balloting is ongoing. (City Council Member Justin Brannan represents the outgoing District 43 and is running for reelection in the new District 47, where he will face the Republican nominee in the general election — possibly Council Member Ari Kagan, the rep for the outgoing 47th district who left the Democratic Party in December and is running as a Republican.)
The new District 43 encompasses Bensonhurst, New Utrecht, and parts of Sunset Park and Dyker Heights. Almost 54% of the district’s population is Asian, according to the CUNY Mapping Service’s Redistricting & You project, while about 27.3% of residents are white and 15.3% are Hispanic. Almost all of the candidates across the two party primaries are of Asian descent.
More than half of voters in the district are registered Democrats, and just under 14% are Republicans, according to CUNY’s data. Nonetheless, in the 2021 mayoral election, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa overwhelmingly won what is now the new district, receiving about 60.1% of votes in its lines, compared to 35.2% for Eric Adams, the Democrat who won overall.
The District 43 race closely resembles last year’s contest for State Senate District 17, also a newly-created district that shares much of the same area. Iwen Chu, the Democratic candidate, won the hotly-contested general election, becoming the first Asian-American woman elected to the State Senate.
The three Democratic candidates for District 43 include Susan Zhuang, chief of staff to Assemblymember William Colton; Wai Yee Chan, a former Brannan aide who is now executive director of Homecrest Community Services, a local nonprofit group; and Stanley Ng, a retired computer programmer and longtime education advocate.
The two Republican candidates, Vito LaBella and Ying Tan, both joined the race this spring and have been ramping up their campaigns since.
All five candidates are running on similar platforms, which has made the race competitive and captured voter attention, said Yiatin Chu, president of the Asian Wave Alliance (AWA), an advocacy organization dedicated to supporting Asian-Americans in New York.
“The fact that districts like 43 have candidates that are making more people engaged and interested in elections is a really good thing,” Yiatin Chu said in a phone interview. “It’s a long game in terms of getting the Asian community to pay attention, to get engaged, to be registered, to go vote. Districts and races like this are what we need more of.”
Overall, public safety and education remain the two top concerns for District 43 voters, she said. Because of the similarities in policy proposals, voters will also have to weigh how effectively they believe candidates could advocate for their positions once elected to the Council, she added. (The AWA endorsed Tan as its first-choice Republican candidate and LaBella as its second. The group has also endorsed Zhuang and Ng as its first- and second-choice Democratic candidates respectively.)
Republican Candidates
Vito LaBella
LaBella, the only non-Asian candidate in the race, previously served as an NYPD officer for 31 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant. After retiring, LaBella became the president of the PTA of P.S./I.S. 187, a middle school in Borough Park that frequently sends high numbers of students to specialized high schools in the city.
In 2018, LaBella protested against former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to eliminate the use of the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) as the sole admissions criteria for the specialized high schools. The plan was an attempt to ensure greater diversity at the specialized high schools, where Black and Hispanic students are significantly underrepresented. But, it would have dramatically decreased the number of students taken from P.S./I.S. 187, LaBella said in an interview.
“The parents came to me, like, ‘Vito, can you help us?’” LaBella said. “I’m like, ‘Listen, I really didn’t sign up for this.’ But sometimes you choose your path, and sometimes your path chooses you.”
LaBella also co-founded Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE) NYC in 2019, an organization that similarly promotes the SHSAT as the sole criteria for admissions to specialized high schools and seeks to preserve the city’s Gifted & Talented programs, which de Blasio also sought to replace with an eye toward desegregation.
Last year, LaBella lost the State Senate election in District 17 by a few hundred votes to now-Senator Iwen Chu. She received 17,125 votes, while LaBella got 16,910. “My tenets are really just a continuation of my work from the Senate campaign but tweaked to focus on local issues,” he said.
Like many of his opponents, LaBella’s campaign prioritizes quality education, as well as public safety and the success of small businesses — but he said his institutional knowledge distinguishes him from the other candidates.
In addition to his time as PTA president, LaBella has served on the District 20 Community Education Council for the past five years. He has advocated for the expansion of selective middle and high schools, work he said he could continue more effectively if elected to the City Council.
“Quite frankly, even the CEC is advisory in nature,” LaBella said. “I’m running because I want to go to the next level, to try to bring a louder voice to the room for the things that I’ve been fighting for for the last five years.”
With regards to public safety, LaBella said as a City Council member, he would also call out District Attorneys when they fail to prosecute aggressively enough.
“Violence interrupters, social services — whatever you want to do, try it all,” he added. “But when that doesn’t work, let’s arrest people. And let’s hold them accountable, especially the people who keep doing it again and again and again.”
Though the Brooklyn Republican Party previously backed Chingkit “Jack” Ho, a candidate who has dropped out of the race, it has since endorsed LaBella. “We know that our candidate will do a very good job representing all constituents of the district,” said Ted Ghorra, the party’s chair, citing LaBella’s experience in policing and education.
“We try to pick candidates of any race for any district who are going to best represent the values and concerns of people in those districts,” Ghorra added.
The New York Daily News reported in April that the Brooklyn GOP’s choice to endorse LaBella – who replaced Ho after he declined the nomination – upset some community leaders, who wrote a letter to Ghorra that urged him to rethink the decision. “This newly created district offers our community a chance for real representation, a chance to elect someone who understands and is able to meet our unique needs,” the letter stated. “This decision appears selfish and wholly opportunistic, and it should be seen as an insult to the Asian-Americans who form the majority in this district, for whom this district was created.”
Ghorra claimed (without evidence) that Asian-American Democrats planted the article out of concern about LaBella’s potential success in the general election.
LaBella has also been endorsed by Sliwa, Republican Congressional Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, former Congressional Rep. and Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, City Council Member Inna Vernikov, former Governor George Pataki, the Brooklyn Conservative Party, and the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, among others.
Ying Tan
Tan, a first-generation immigrant from China who arrived in the United States in 2009, has spent the last seven years working in senior social services. Now, an item that sits near the top of her agenda is promoting protection for older New Yorkers — especially middle-class seniors, who are ineligible for benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “The seniors who do not receive entitlements and are living with a fixed income — the middle class — they are the group of people most struggling from inflation,” she said in an interview.
Tan’s campaign also focuses on supporting small businesses and improving public safety and education. Specifically, she has plans to create a new tax bracket, allowing local business owners to pay less in taxes than they do now, and require their input on new city regulations. She also wants increased police funding, further implementation of community policing, a reversal of bail reforms passed by the State Legislature in 2019, and more accountability for district attorneys to ensure they are aggressive in enforcing laws.
Additionally, though Tan and LaBella have each emphasized education as a chief campaign concern, she stressed the breadth of her advocacy, which includes increased early intervention programs for students with special needs. Tan has a son who struggled with speech as a child, so she has learned first-hand the difficulty of accessing special needs programs, she said.
And unlike LaBella, Tan argued that identity should factor into the elections. “I know the background, the culture, and the language,” she said of much of the new City Council district and its Asian majority. “He doesn’t know the values, he doesn’t know the background, [and] he doesn’t know the issues that we have in our community, so I don’t think he could well represent us.”
Tan said she knows District 43 is home to many non-Asian communities but emphasized that the Asian community needs increased representation and support in government. “Our goal is to empower Asian voters and facilitate their integration into American culture,” she said. “We must prevent individuals from exploiting the underrepresentation of Asian voters.”
“Both candidates, policy-wise, are very, very similar,” AWA’s Chu said of LaBella and Tan. “It was a matter of looking at what they’ve done for the community. Ying has strong roots by working in a senior center here in Bensonhurst, and people know her.”
Still, Chu emphasized that AWA endorsed both candidates, a choice the organization doesn’t always make. “The registered Republicans that will be voting have got good choices,” she said.
Democratic candidates
Susan Zhuang
A Chinese immigrant who moved to the U.S. in 2007, Zhuang was a volunteer for Assemblymember Colton before eventually becoming his chief of staff. She is running with Colton’s endorsement, which may be especially helpful in the parts of Bensonhurst that he represents in the Assembly.
Zhuang also has the backing of former City Council Mark Treyger, local district leaders, Asian Wave Alliance, good government group Citizens Union, and leaders of dozens of local nonprofit and business groups including the Chinese American Commerce Association, Bay Parkway Chinese Merchant Association, Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association and others.
Since she launched her campaign, Zhuang said she’s received an outpouring of support from district residents owing to her work in constituent services for Colton. But the challenge, she said, is ensuring that voter turnout is just as enthusiastic. “Now we need to make sure whoever supports me, comes out to vote,” she said in a recent phone interview.
Zhuang’s top priorities mostly mirror other candidates – public safety, education, quality-of-life issues as well as affordable housing, language services, and small business services.
In the last few months, while she has been campaigning, the state passed a new budget and the city is on the verge of passing its own. Both spending plans have surfaced key issues for Zhuang. While education funding is up in the state budget, there has been little movement on new affordable housing. And the city is poised to make cuts to early childhood education and senior services, both of which carry weight with District 43 residents, she said.
Zhuang said that her appeal as a candidate goes beyond the Asian community, to the Jewish, Muslim, Italian, and Russian communities in the district. “It feels like I really can unite everyone together and fight for the issues we all care about,” she said.
Wai Yee Chan
Chan has lived in the city for 27 years, after being born and raised in Hong Kong. Though she has been a Queens resident for the last decade, she says she is moving back to Brooklyn at the end of the month regardless of the outcome of the primary.
Chan’s professional career has largely been focused in the district and nearby. She has been a nonprofit executive for nearly 20 years and, in 2020, became the executive director of Homecrest Community Services, which provides services to older adults and families in the Asian community. She previously worked for Council Member Brannan as community engagement director and is also a member of the Language Assistance Advisory Committee of the citywide Civic Engagement Commission.
Chan has received a long list of prominent endorsements from elected officials including State Senators Chu, Andrew Gounardes, and John Liu, former Assembly Member Peter Abbate Jr., Council Member Brannan, nonprofit and business groups, and several major labor unions including 1199 SEIU (which ranked her first in a ranked-choice endorsement), the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), Professional Staff Congress – CUNY, NYC Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Uniformed Firefighters Association, Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics & Inspectors, New York State Court Officers Association, Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, and others.
“I've been knocking on doors for months and months…and public safety, education, as well as affordable housing issues, that’s most of what I’ve heard for the past couple months,” Chan said in an interview.
Chan also expressed concerns about the upcoming city budget, specifically proposed cuts to senior services such as Meals on Wheels. And she called for more funding to tackle hate crimes, which have risen in the last several years and have particularly affected Asian and Jewish communities, which make up large parts of the district. She said she wants more language and translation services to “streamline reporting [of hate crimes]” and “get the police’s attention right away instead of tedious reporting procedures.”
Her work for Brannan’s Council office is what sets Chan apart, she said. “I'm the one that has experience at the City Council and knows how the City Council functions,” she said. “So that's how I differentiate my background, my experiences with my two opponents.”
Stanley Ng
A retired computer programmer and member of the Citywide Council on High Schools, Ng proudly says he is not a member of the political establishment and does not run in Democratic political circles, even as he acknowledges that his independence makes for an uphill battle. “I am up against two people from two Democratic clubs. They have a lot more resources than I do. And I know I'm not going to be able to outrun them or outmuscle them, but I can outsmart them,” he said.
“I am the best candidate because I’m the outsider,” he added.
Ng also criticized the proposed cuts in the city budget put forward by Mayor Eric Adams, including the decrease in the Meals on Wheels program and a reduction of 500 school crossing guard positions, both part of negotiations with the current City Council over a budget due by the July 1 start of the new fiscal year. Though schools will be off for the summer after that, “When September starts, and you don't have all those guards in place, what are you going to do?” Ng wondered.
It’s not just the safety of students that he worries about. Crime and public safety across the district remains his top priority. He has been particularly critical of bail reforms that the state Legislature approved in 2019, though the bail laws were tightened again in this year’s state budget. “It’s a start,” he said of those latest bail changes, which will ensure that more defendants are held on bail for both major crimes and low-level offenses. “Is it enough? I don’t know,” he said. “Until crime actually goes down, it’s hard to say.”
Read more about the Democratic candidates here, from Gotham Gazette’s initial reporting on the race.
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by Julia Goldberg & Samar Khurshid
@GothamGazette
