New York's Hottest Race Is for City Council
While the fight to succeed the term-limited de Blasio for mayor is attracting more notice — 22 candidates, including former presidential aspirant Andrew Yang, are jockeying for the post — the city council races could be a better barometer of the direction of municipal politics. At least 32 of 51 seats will be open due to term limits or retirements, compared to 9 in 2017, and roughly 300 candidates have announced city council candidacies. For the first time, the city will use ranked choice voting, which might help elect a more diverse group to the city’s one-party-dominated council. There’s a strong potential that the council could move further left, highlighting the battle between mainstream Democratic politicians and its more activist wing around the direction of policy in U.S. cities.
“We see a bubble bursting,” says Tiffany Cabán, an attorney, activist and candidate for District 22 in Queens, the borough where her narrow loss in the 2019 race for district attorney helped earn her national name recognition. “Movements, in general, are an ecosystem. We work long and hard for small gains. Right now, we’re in a time of a lot of activity and growth.”
Progressive groups have endorsed multiple candidates, including 21 by the Working Families Party and 6 by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. (On the state level, a recently elected Democratic supermajority in the state senate also foreshadows more progressive shifts.) “We really have an opportunity to make this a city for all New Yorkers,” says Chi Anunwa, co-chair of NYC DSA. “It’s going to be a long process, but we have to start somewhere, and on some level, time is of the essence.”
Kumar Rao, senior director of policy and strategy for the WFP in New York City, calls this year a moment of “transition, crisis and opportunity” for progressives in U.S. cities. The sites of large-scale demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, cities grappled with interconnected, overlapping crises around transit, housing and criminal justice as the nation exited the Trump era and pivoted to the Biden presidency. While an anticipated “blue wave” didn’t fully materialize last November, progressive ideas and candidates did make a strong showing at the local level in 2020.
“This election will be less of a referendum on the era of Mayor Bill de Blasio than people wanting answers for the future,” says Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and contributing editor of City Journal. “Voters want answers. How do I get back to work, if my job isn’t coming back? What’s going on with public safety in my neighborhood? People don’t want to dwell on 2020.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-15/progressives-are-watching-nyc-s-city-council-race
