GOP ends 40-year hiatus and wins city council seat in Bronx
The last time Bronx voters were represented by a Republican on the City Council, Mayor Ed Koch still asked voters, “How am I doing?” Ronald Reagan was president and hip-hop music was mainly a local phenomenon.
The idea that voters in the Bronx, one of the nation’s most deeply Democratic counties, could send a Republican representative to the City Council would be nothing short of a “national disgrace,” Rep. Ritchie Torres said at a recent Democratic rally. Side. incumbent, Marjorie Velázquez.
On Wednesday, that political shame became reality.
With fewer than a thousand votes remaining, Kristy Marmorato, a conservative Republican candidate, was declared the winner of the city’s toughest municipal election by The Associated Press about 15 hours after the polls closed.
Ms. Marmorato had spoken with Ms. Velázquez about crime and her support for a rezoning that would bring affordable housing to the District 13 neighborhood in the northeast Bronx. The area showed signs of a rightward tilt: in 2021, Republican candidate for mayor Curtis Sliwa had won more votes in the district than the Democrat, Eric Adams.
Sensing a rare opportunity to flip a seat, the Bronx Republican Party went all in on the contest. The party sent 20,000 text messages to their base; 40,000 robocalls made in English, Albanian and Arabic; and made 10,000 live calls.
“We threw everything and the kitchen sink at her,” said Michael Rendino, the chairman of the Bronx Republican Party and also Ms. Marmorato’s brother. “It’s a wake-up call for the Democratic Party.”
Ms. Velázquez’s defeat continues to send chills through the city’s Democratic establishment and gives hope to Republicans. Both parties are closely watching a pair of off-year suburban contests in New York as harbingers for 2024, when a half-dozen key congressional races in the state could tip the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
But for the most part, the potential shift to the right caused by changing ethnic demographics did not materialize in New York City, where all 51 seats on the City Council were up for re-election due to a once-in-a-decade redistricting process.
In southern Brooklyn, Justin Brannan, the chairman of the Finance Committee and one of the Council’s most powerful members, won a resounding victory over Ari Kagan, a Democrat-turned-Republican who quickly changed his party’s positions on issues like crime and abortion. took over. .
In a neighboring district, Susan Zhuang, a moderate Democrat, defeated Ying Tan, a Republican, in a district created to recognize the growth of the city’s Asian American population.
The story was different on Long Island, where Republicans routed Democrats. Their dominance dated back to the 1970s, when suburban cities were a Republican stronghold, and suggested that concerns about crime, the cost of living and the state’s unfolding migrant crisis could do long-term damage to Democrats’ image in an otherwise hospitable state. , where abortion rights are generally considered safe.
Following Ed Romaine’s 15-point victory in the race for Suffolk County’s top executive, Republicans have flipped nearly every major office on Long Island since 2020. They also scored key victories in Long Beach and North Hempstead in Nassau County, traditionally Democratic areas that are part of the Democratic Party. must-win districts of Republican Reps. Anthony D’Esposito and George Santos.
The results nearly sent Democrats, who had lost three consecutive election cycles in the area, into panic mode.
“The conventional wisdom is that the road to a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives runs through New York,” said Representative Steve Israel, a former New York congressman who once headed the Democrats’ campaign arm. “But there are only yellow lights flashing for Democrats, especially on Long Island, indicating they are not getting the traction they need.”
He said he had seen a “perception of crime, disorder and lawlessness that is hitting the concerns of suburban voters,” and that there are few signs of abating.
However, the party performed much more strongly north of New York City, where voters in suburban towns along the Hudson River and in western parts of the state behaved much more like their counterparts in Virginia or Ohio.
Democrats won key local races in Westchester and Rockland counties, where Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican, faces one of the nation’s toughest reelection fights next year. They appeared to be on pace to win a trio of competitive contests for district attorneys in Ulster, Dutchess and Columbia counties, a hotly contested area where Reps. Pat Ryan, a Democrat, and Marc Molinaro, a Republican, will play key positions next year. swing seats will defend. .
And in Erie County, which includes Buffalo and its suburbs, Mark Poloncarz won a record fourth term as county executive. Republicans had targeted Poloncarz for his handling of the state’s migrant crisis, but voters paid little attention and gave the Democrat a nearly 20-point victory.
Jason Weingartner, the executive director of the Republican Party, conceded that counties in the state’s north could learn lessons from Long Island, especially convincing voters to get to the polls early.
Although Ms. Velázquez won the June Democratic primary by nearly 50 percentage points, the fault lines in that election showed her vulnerability on both crime and her decision to support the repurposing of Bruckner Boulevard to bring affordable housing to the neighborhood , said Mr Velázquez. Rendino said. Ms. Velázquez does opposed the project months before she changed her mind.
Ms. Velázquez was elected in 2021 as a progressive, but quickly joined more than a dozen other Democrats who left the Progressive Caucus after being asked to sign a statement of principles calling for “the size and scope” of the New York Police Department York to be reduced. During the Democratic primaries, Ms. Velázquez emphasized that she was a moderate.
“I heard you’re socialist because you look like AOC, and it’s like, no, I’m not,” Ms. Velázquez said in June, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist.
Ms. Marmorato, an X-ray technician and married mother of an elementary school-age daughter, has said she wanted to run because she opposed plans to build mid-rise homes in an area of mostly single-family homes. of Bruckner’s rezoning and a proposal for supportive housing for people released from prison in a former Jacobi Medical Center building near her home.
During her speech on NY1, she said people wanted change. She called for more police officers.
“They feel like there is no more local control in our community,” she said. “They have no say in what happens in their neighborhood and are just fed up.”
Neither Ms. Velázquez nor her campaign responded to multiple requests for comment on Wednesday. Camille Rivera, a Democratic political consultant at New Deal Strategies, said concerns about Bruckner’s rezoning rested on “coded language” and racial fear-mongering.
Joseph Savino Jr. was the last Republican member of the City Council from the Bronx. He served as councilor at large from 1977 to 1983 before the position was abolished. In 1985, he was convicted of illegally possessing a machine gun and subsequently pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failing to report $300,000 in income.
Jamaal Bailey, a senator and chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party, called Ms. Velázquez’s loss a local issue that would have little impact next year.
“Taking a stand to ensure more people have a place to live is a principled stand,” Mr. Bailey said, “and one that I think she is proud of and one that we as Democrats should be proud of, especially in a residential construction sector. crisis.”
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Torres, one of Ms. Velázquez’s closest allies, described his “national embarrassment” comment as an exaggeration aimed at motivating supporters before a key election.
“All politics are local, and nowhere are these words truer than in the East Bronx, where the racial and class politics of rezoning can be insidious,” Mr. Torres said. “A perfect storm put the seat in Republican hands.”