Republicans in the City Council got a surprise win in Tuesday’s election, as a progressive Democrat in a politically mixed area of The Bronx couldn’t hang on to her Throggs Neck seat.
Elsewhere in the city, Democrats appeared to hold on to competitive southern Brooklyn seats and exonerated Central Park Five activist Yusef Salaam sailed to a win in Harlem. In both Queens and Brooklyn, incumbent right-wing Republicans won their races despite recent controversies.
But the biggest surprise came from The Bronx where first-time candidate Kristy Marmorato, a Republican, appears to have bested incumbent Democrat Marjorie Velázquez — who faced major opposition after she reversed her stance and supported local zoning changes pushed by Mayor Eric Adams to allow more development in her district. Marmorato held 52% of the vote as of 11 p.m. Tuesday night, to Velázquez’s 47%.
“I would like to congratulate Marjorie. She ran a good campaign and it was a tight race. But we did it,” said Marmorato, wiping tears off her face in front of more than 60 supporters gathered at Brewski’s Bar and Grill in Throggs Neck on Tuesday night. “I’m gonna make the people of District 13 so proud.”
As of late Tuesday night, Marmorato said Velázquez had not called her to concede or congratulate her.
Neither Velázquez nor her campaign manager responded to a request for comment.
The Republican victor is looking forward to working “on hopefully bail reform,” Marmorato said, and “to be a little bit harder with these illegal smoke shops, even though it’s more of a state issue.”
The win means the GOP will hold a Bronx Council seat for the first time since 1983 — when Joseph Savino Jr. served as an “at-large” member, a position no longer in use, county party chair Mike Rendino — Marmorato’s brother — told Politico earlier this year.
Public safety was the top issue for New Yorkers who spoke with THE CITY on Election Day. Republican Bronx voter Amber Suarez said she’s crossed party lines in gubernatorial and mayoral races in the past, but picked Marmorato on Tuesday, saying she’s the best candidate to address safety and a rising cost of living, and to support middle-class residents.
“I just want whoever’s representing our district to listen to the people – don’t just listen to them before voting, just to get their vote,” Suarez said at P.S. 71 in Pelham Bay.
She’s been voting for more than 25 years, more than a decade of that in The Bronx district, and wanted to see higher turnout.
“Other years, there have been lines even outside,” she added. “They complain a lot that there needs to be change but they don’t vote for it.”
The off-year election drew many fewer to the polls than in mid-term or presidential election years. At least 493,000 New York City voters cast ballots in early voting and on Election Day according to a preliminary city Board of Elections tally. That’s 10.7% of the 4.6 million active voters on the rolls in the five boroughs, based on records from this month by state election officials.
Democrats Hold the Line in Southern Brooklyn
While Democrats in southern Brooklyn have lost footing in recent years in increasingly purple districts, on Tuesday the city’s majority party held its ground there. In District 47 — a newly-drawn district that includes Coney Island, Bay Ridge and parts of Bath Beach — Democrat Justin Brannan easily fended off Republican Ari Kagan, who had switched parties from Democrat to Republican months after getting elected to the Council last year in a rare clash of incumbents.
Brannan, who previously represented a neighboring district carved up by last year’s redistricting, was up by 3,200 votes with 97% of scanners counted. Kagan conceded to Brannan within an hour of polls closing.
“Tonight was a victory of love over hate, for hope over fear, for truth over lies,” Brannan said to a crowd of ecstatic supporters at The Brooklyn Firefly, a bar and pizzeria in Bay Ridge, at around 10 p.m.
“We’re all going to remember those who stood with us … and we’re certainly not going to forget those, within our own party … who tried to bring us down,” he said, a reference to a recent public spat with Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.
For some voters in the district’s large Jewish and Arab communities, the war in Israel and Gaza loomed over the race. Kagan had expressed unequivocal support of Israel, while Brannon, who has not called for a ceasefire in Gaza, has expressed concern about the killing of civilians there.
Palestinian community leader Zein Rimawi, the cofounder of Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, said he preferred Brannan stick to local issues.
“We don’t want him to call for a ceasefire. Just take care of Bay Ridge,” he said. “Make the crime go down, help us to stop the drug dealers, help us to open more schools. What will it matter if he calls for a ceasefire?”
Meanwhile some voters in Coney Island, an area that Kagan currently represents, expressed frustration that he had switched parties from Democrat to Republican just months after taking office.
“I felt betrayed. He took everybody by surprise,” said Chauncey Palmer, 67, who has lived in Coney Island for nearly 40 years, casting his ballot during early voting last Wednesday. He’d previously voted for Kagan but felt like he couldn’t do that again after his change in party. “I don’t feel like you’re a trustworthy person when you do something like that.”
Over in the newly-carved District 43 — the first majority-Asian district in the Council, spanning parts of Sunset Park, Borough Park and Bensonhurst — Democrat Susan Zhuang easily won against Republican Ying Tan and Conservative Party candidate Vito LaBella.
Zhuang ran a campaign focused on public safety, taking positions that put her at odds with many mainstream Democrats, but won her the support of the conservative-leaning voters in her district.
And despite facing a pending illegal gun charge, incumbent Republican Councilmember Inna Vernikov — who represents sections of Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Home Crest and Manhattan Beach in District 48 — easily beat back a challenge from Democrat Amber Adler as well as a third-party candidate running on the newly created Trump Team party line, Igor Kazatsker.
Voter Swings in Queens
In what had been seen as a competitive contest in eastern Queens, Republican incumbent Vickie Paladino called her victory by about 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, walking out to a podium in front of her campaign office while “Won’t Back Down” played in the background. With 99% of the vote counted by 11 p.m., Paladino led the race by more than 20 percentage points over Avella after narrowly defeating him two years ago.
“I want to thank my Democrat friends, my Republican friends, my independent friends, because let me tell you something, what we showed the city of New York was that we all can come together,” Paladino said.
Both the Council member and her son, Thomas Paladino, made it a point to thank the “support of the Asian community,” and said the victory had been a result of bipartisan support within the district. The area’s Asian American voters have been moving rightward in recent years.
Several voters who spoke to THE CITY said they cast mixed ballots in the toss-up district. That includes lifelong district resident Karen, who declined to provide a last name. She said the carbon-capping Local Law 97 has been top of mind for her as a condo owner — and that while she did not vote for just one party this election, she cast her ballot for Paladino because she appreciated the incumbent’s engagement with constituents over the issue.
“There only seems to be one person who’s fighting for us, and you have to go by who’s fighting for you,” she said.
Retail manager Greg Randell also identified as an issue voter who swings between parties. Though he said he prioritized civility in politics, he said that he felt that Paladino has fallen short by that mark.
“Some of her policies are OK by me, but her approach to things is just not something I support. I don’t think that’s civil government,” Randell said. “That’s not my kind of politics.”
Paladino has attacked drag queen events in schools and libraries as “degeneracy” and accused progressives of having “no problem with child grooming and sexualization.”
In neighboring District 20, Democratic incumbent Sandra Ung prevailed over Republican Yu-Ching James Pai, with 58% of the vote over his 31% as of late Tuesday.
There, voter Eva Zhang said she cast her ballot for the GOP in every race this year — after becoming an active voter only about two years ago.
“I never used to align with any political party in the past. But when the Democrats started messing things up, I started supporting the Republican Party,” Zhang told THE CITY in Mandarin, and added that she was concerned about drugs in the neighborhood and about legislation that supported LGBTQ rights. “There’s no way I could support the Democrats based on how things have turned out.”
Activists, Attorneys and Judges
Elsewhere in the city, Central Harlem got a new Councilmember in Yusef Salaam, the activist and Central Park Five member who pulled off a surprise win during a crowded primary this summer after Democratic incumbent Kristin Richardson Jordan dropped out.
Incumbent district attorneys in three boroughs sailed to easy victories on Tuesday. In The Bronx and Staten Island, Darcell Clark and Michael McMahon, both Democrats, ran unopposed and will serve another term each. In Queens, Democrat Melinda Katz prevailed over two candidates, Republican Michael Mossa and “Public Safety” party candidate George A. Grasso, with nearly 67% of the vote.
Two statewide ballot proposals got the OK from voters. Each addressed debt limit rules, for both small school districts across the state and sewage facilities projects. Neither question faced organized opposition and both met overwhelming approval, with 72% and 76% of voters saying yes to Proposal 1 on schools and Proposal 2 on sewage projects.
Among the city’s competitive judicial races, Democrat Sandra Perez handily won a countywide Civil Court seat in Queens over Republican Sharmela Bachu.
In another Civil Court race in Queens’ 6th Municipal Court District, Republican William David Shanahan ran against Democrat Evelyn Gong. Outside a Flushing poll site Tuesday afternoon, Shanahan said he felt optimistic in the Republican strongholds in Whitestone, College Point and Douglaston, where he said he was getting more than half the votes.
“I don’t have a good feel here like I do in the other communities,” Shanahan said of Downtown Flushing, adding that he hoped that his record of litigating on behalf of Chinese landlords would turn the race in his favor.
“The question is: Are people going to vote for someone immediately on the ethnic basis, or because of the background and the issues?”
With 98% of scanners counted, Shanahan trailed Gong 48% to 51%.
