Kristen Gonzalez Wins + Other Primary Results
No. 285 | Monday, August 29, 2022
The NYC Thorn is a weekly roundup of local political news compiled by members of NYC-DSA.
Elections
Kristen Gonzalez decisively won her primary in State Senate District 59 (Astoria, Lower Manhattan), beating centrist former City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley by more than 26 percentage points despite Crowly outspending her. On Election Night, Gonzalez announced that her victory “proved that socialism wins.”
State Senator Jabari Brisport (District 25, Bedford-Stuyvesant) easily won reelection against a challenger backed by Mayor Eric Adams. Brisport earned 70 percent of the vote.
NYC-DSA backed State Senate candidate David Alexis fell short in his bid to unseat incumbent State Senator Kevin Parker (District 21, Flatbush), finishing with 37 percent of the vote, to Parker’s 45 percent. A third candidate, Kaegan Mays-Williams, played spoiler, earning 16 percent of the vote.
In other State Senate primaries, a number of incumbent Senators who faced moderate challengers backed by Mayor Adams won reelection. State Senator Robert Jackson (District 31, Upper Manhattan, the Bronx) beat Angel Vasquez, a former aide to a member of Albany’s Independent Democratic Caucus who was also backed by Congresmember Adriano Espaillat (District 13, Harlem), by 25 points. Gustavo Rivera (District 33, the Bronx) defeated his challenger, as did Andrew Gounardes (District 26, South Brooklyn).
Dan Goldman narrowly won the hotly contested primary for New York’s 10th Congressional district (Park Slope, Lower Manhattan), defeating Working Families Party–backed Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou (District 65, Chinatown), by just ~1,300 votes. Niou and two other progressive candidates, Congressmember Mondaire Jones (District 17, Rockland County) and Councilmember Carlina Rivera (District 2, East Village, combined for 60 percent of the vote, leading to some speculation about whether Niou might mount a general election campaign against Goldman on the Working Families Party line.
Congressmember Jerry Nadler (District 10, Upper East Side) decisively defeated Congressmember Carolyn Maloney (District 12, Greenpoint, Upper West SIde) in an Upper Manhattan primary that pitted the two longtime incumbents against each other in the newly redrawn 12th congressional district.
Congressmember Sean Patrick Maloney won the primary for District 17 (Hudson Valley) against his progressive challenger, State Senator Alessandra Biaggi.
Democrat Pat Ryan won a special election in Hudson Valley congressional district 19, which Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, in what some suggest could be a bellwether for this fall’s midterm elections. Ryan will hold office for four months, at which point he and his recent opponent Marc Molinaro will both be on the ballot again, this time competing in separate districts.
Local News
The NYC Department of Education spent $90 million on “HEPA purifiers” that do not use CDC-recommended HEPA filters, after a lobbying campaign by the company that makes the purifiers, according to a report from Gothamist.
Governor Kathy Hochul has indicated that she supports a law passed by New York State legislature to cap class sizes in City public schools, though is working out a deal with Mayor Adams, who opposed the bill, before signing it.
The New York Police Department overtime budget for uniformed officers have reached record highs, according to a report from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
The Court of Appeals has selected Associate Judge Anthony Cannataro to serve as Acting Chief Judge until the Governor appoints a permanent replacement for outgoing Janet DiFiore. The decision to break with tradition and not select the court’s most senior member, in this case, Jenny Rivera, likely stems from a desire to keep power in the hands of an emerging conservative bloc, of which DiFiore and Cannataro are both members.
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