Council Countdown is a partnership among City Limits, City & State, Gotham Gazette and The Queens Daily Eagle offering coverage of the 2021 New York City Council races.
While the majority of primary winners are Democrats who will not have challengers in the fall, Republican and third-party candidates are running in a handful of races, including the Staten Island borough president’s election and Council contests in Districts 15,19, 23, 24, 32 and 50.
In three primary races, all for City Council seats, the likely winner will be someone other than the candidate who led on election night, according to a City Limits analysis of the city.
Of the three primaries in which current Manhattan Council members faced challengers, the 9th Council District race is the only one in which the incumbent appears to have been defeated.
The winner of the primary will go on to compete on the ballot in November’s general election—which in a city that leans as heavily Democratic as New York means most seats will be filled by whoever wins in June.
The primary race in Queens will give the GOP a chance to reclaim the seat last held by the party in 2009.
Some 11 candidates are vying for the Democratic nomination for Brooklyn’s 40th Council District, comprising parts of Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Kensington, Midwood, Prospect Park, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
The list includes influential incumbents like Land Use Chair Rafael Salamanca and Manhattan Councilmember Carlina Rivera, as well as a few prominent figures trying to claim their first public office and a couple of relative unknowns, who have raised a ton of cash in a short amount of time.
The competition is especially hot, if civil, in Brooklyn’s 39th City Council District, one of the most politically-active areas in the city, with some of the highest voter turnout rates, and the home district of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who represented the district before being elected Public Advocate then mayor.
In central Queens’ City Council District 20, which spans Flushing, Murray Hill, and Queensboro Hill there is a crowded and competitive Democratic primary race. The candidates face an onslaught of contentious issues such as anti-Asian hate crime, rezoning of the Flushing waterfront, a busway in downtown Flushing’s Main Street, and small business struggles.
The longtime Council member from Harlem surprised observers by running for reelection.