Republicans Hope To Hold On In Two Competitive NYC Council Races

With registered Democrats vastly outnumbering Republicans across New York City by seven-to-one, most of the Democratic winners of the June primary are favored to win the November general election. That trend is also likely in the majority of City Council races since most Democratic nominees have no Republican opponent who has raised enough money to mount a serious challenge, or they’re running in a district with few registered GOP voters. In some cases, Democrats have no Republican challenger.

If the trend holds, the council not only will remain overwhelmingly Democratic, but also more politically progressive and composed of a female majority, a historic milestone that could put more women’s issues to the forefront. It could also put pressure on members to select a female council speaker, who could serve as a foil to the next mayor.

READ MORE: The Next City Council Set To Be Most Diverse, Progressive, And Hold First-Ever Female Majority

But at least two contests are more competitive than others. They’re happening in Staten Island’s 50th Council District and the 32nd Council District in Queens, which are both home to the city’s few Republican strongholds. Viable candidates have emerged to challenge Republican frontrunners, making a win for the GOP crucial to avert further diminished power in city politics.

50th Council District

The race on Staten Island is among the more closely watched contests. The district covers the borough’s Mid-Island section that’s home to historic residential neighborhoods, a sprawling nature preserve, and waterfronts. City Board of Elections figures show 39,072 active registered Democrats, compared to 36,185 active Republicans in the district.

Three candidates — David Carr, Sal Albanese, and George Wonica — are running on different party lines to replace Steve Matteo, a Republican who has represented the district for eight years and is now term-limited.

Carr currently serves as Matteo’s chief of staff and hopes to keep the seat red, which has remained so since the modern version of the City Council formed 30 years ago.

Carr won a competitive primary following a manual recount, ultimately defeating Marko Kepi by 42 absentee ballots. While the city Board of Elections certified the results of the primary election after the recount, Kepi moved forward with a lawsuit alleging absentee ballots in favor of Kepi were illegally invalidated by the BOE. Kepi ultimately lost his case.

Carr seeks to restore public support for the NYPD, reduce property taxes, and reverse the number of “For Sale” signs he says have proliferated in the district.

“It’s really important that we elect the right leadership to city government, and particularly in the City Council this year because maybe we have one more shot to try to turn this around before we start losing, really, some of the best and brightest that we have here in Staten Island,” Carr said.

But even as GOP influence in the council is limited, Carr finds the best way to circumvent it is by introducing legislation that has broad appeal. It’s a formula that worked well for Matteo, who sponsored bills that garnered Democrats’ support. Among them was an anti-litter bill package in 2018 aimed at increasing fines for drivers who throw trash from their vehicles, and creating a more robust enforcement plan for existing litter laws. The measure passed in the Council.

“There’s going to be times when ideology does come into play, right? And we see it in some of these public safety policing issues,” Carr said. “That’s going to be an opportunity for us to stand up to say, ‘No, this is wrong. This is going to hurt all of us’ and really kind of try to sway public opinion so that members of the Democratic majority don’t feel like there’s only one way to look at this.”

But Carr’s narrow GOP primary victory could signal an open door for Albanese, a Democrat, to pull off a victory in the general election. Albanese had previously served in the council, representing sections of Brooklyn from 1982 to 1997. City Charter rules allow Albanese to run again since he sat at least one term out. While he was out of office, Albanese unsuccessfully ran against Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017 under the Reform Party.

READ MORE: Once Term-Limited Council Members Are Vying Comeback. Some Good Government Groups Don’t Seem To Mind

“I feel like it’s the right time for me to wade back into the electoral arena, and I don’t think I’ll be your average City Council member because of my experience, background, being there for 15 years,” Albanese said in a phone interview.

Albanese is running on a campaign that seeks to improve the district’s transportation network, reduce constant flooding in the area, and denounce the Defund The Police movement. His positions have helped secure endorsements from four police unions, including the Police Benevolent Association.

While Albanese might lean conservatively on public safety issues, he prefers to remain in the moderate Democrat lane in the same vein as current Queens Councilmember Robert Holden. Albanese, however, is not one for labels. In an interview, Albanese said he’d introduce legislation supporting non-partisan elections, further distancing himself from Democrats.

“I became a Democrat because the Democratic Party is the party of working people. We’ve gotten off track a little bit with a lot of folks who I consider extreme within the party, but the Republican Party has always been to me a party that didn’t support working people, especially organized labor,” Albanese said. “Unless the Republicans shift gears, I’ll have a hard time running under that banner.”

Neither the Republican nor Democratic banner is appealing for Wonica, a real estate broker running on the Conservative Party ballot line. Wonica is portraying his lack of political experience as a strength. On his agenda, if elected, is to address inflated property taxes and the growing animus toward the NYPD under the de Blasio administration.

“Unfortunately, I don’t like the direction that we’ve been going in,” Wonica said in a phone interview. “That’s not acceptable to me. We want our elected officials to fight. Even if they’re fighting uphill we want to see some fight and some yelling and screaming, and quite frankly it hasn’t been done.”

While Wonica, a Staten Island native, said he respects his two opponents, he finds both to be “part of the political establishment,” far removed from everyday people. His pitch appears to have translated to a competitive campaign war chest of $158,795, of which $94,683 remains unspent. That unused cash is the highest compared to Carr and Albanese, who have $71,077 and $90,507 in their respective accounts.

Like Carr and Albanese, Wonica has made it clear he has no qualms about compromising with Democratic colleagues on issues, noting his experience as a deal-making realtor.

“While politically we’re diametrically opposed on a lot of different issues, there’s some things that are bi-partisan, that are quite frankly not a political conversation, and that’s where you have to start. You have to start there. You have to build coalitions. You have to be able to do that kind of stuff,” Wonica said. “The problem is, unfortunately, there’s no real independence because everyone’s concerned about where is their next job.”

The three candidates maintain some similar platforms, including their opposition to vaccine mandates for city workers, but they’re not all aligned on other issues. In a televised debate on Spectrum NY1, Wonica and Carr opposed speed cameras. Albanese wasn’t completely opposed to deactivating cameras, preferring to keep them active near schools and nursing homes.

The candidates also differed on who should be the next mayor, with Albanese remaining neutral, Wonica preferring Conservative Party candidate William A. Pepitone, and Carr endorsing Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa.

Anthony Reinhardt, chair of the Staten Island Republican Party, stood confident Carr will prevail over his two challengers. He pointed to prior council races for the seat, in which a Republican frontrunner faced challengers, and ultimately won.

“They’ve secured a lot of cross-island support, cross-party support because their work ethic stands up to the test,” Reinhardt said.

Of the current race, Reinhardt anticipated stiff competition since it’s an open seat, repeating a similar trend when Matteo ran for the seat in 2013.

“There’s no incumbent; you’re going to see competitive races and candidates step forward,” Reinhardt said.

32nd Council District

Another race to watch is in southern Queens, where the seat is currently held by Eric Ulrich, one of three Republicans in the current council and the only one who does not hail from Staten Island. Ulrich, who is leaving office because of term limits, was first elected in a special election in 2009 and has won re-election three times since, serving a total of 12 years. He was part of the cohort of elected officials who benefited from a temporary extension of term limits at the end of the Bloomberg administration.

Since 1994, the seat has swung from Republican to Democrat and back again making it a decidedly purple district surrounded by a sea of blue, both literally and figuratively. As a coastal district, the boundaries of the 32nd include the Atlantic Ocean to its south stretching along the Rockaway peninsula from the western tip of Breezy point running east until Beach 73rd street. Jamaica Bay is on the northern side of the peninsula and bounds the Broad Channel and Howard Beach portions of the district, which also extends into Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Lindenwood, Richmond Hill, and Woodhaven.

No other Republicans hold any local, state or federal seats in the district — or in the entire borough of Queens — making this competitive contest something of an existential test for the party to determine if they can retain a pulse outside of Staten Island.

Joann Ariola, head of the Queens County Republican Committee, is the candidate on the ballot aiming to do just that. She was endorsed by Ulrich and enjoys support in her home neighborhood of Howard Beach along with uptown neighborhoods in the Rockaways, where her campaign signs dot lawns and shop windows.

Ariola serves as the president of the Howard Beach Lindenwood Civic Association and is a member of Community Board 10. Her platform includes expanding the New York City Police Department and overhauling the city’s uneven property tax system. She opposes the development of additional neighborhood-based homeless shelters.

But the issue that is front and center of a recent mailer to voters in the district has to do with a statue of Christopher Columbus located in Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan.

“As a proud Italian-American, I celebrate Columbus Day and support keeping the statue where it is,” Ariola is quoted saying on a double-sided 8 x 10 glossy mailer. The flip side includes a photo of her Democratic opponent, Felicia Singh, with the word “woke” stamped across her picture and a quote which says she supports removing the statue and replacing it with a tribute to the native Lenape people.

While this is not exactly a local issue for District 32, it marks an attempt by Ariola to appeal to an electorate made up of a shrinking majority of white voters, including a declining population of Italian-Americans, particularly in Howard Beach. It’s also an issue that was a talking point for former President Trump. When he was in office, he did well in portions of the district in both 2016 and 2020.

Ariola did not respond to an interview request from Gothamist / WNYC.

“Historically, Italian-American voters have been a mainstay of the Republican party electorate,” said John Mollenkopf, a professor at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York. “But demographic changes are washing the sand away from that foundation of conservative voting in the city,” he said, noting that the share of voters who identify as Italian-American is contracting both in the district and citywide.

Although the district has traditionally elected more moderate, white candidates, the largest growth among voting age citizens is from Hispanic and Asian populations, particularly in Woodhaven and Richmond Hill, according to Mollenkopf’s analysis of census data.

"If Singh has made a good case to Latino voters and Democrats more generally, this should favor her chances," said Mollenkopf.

Democrats do hold a 3-to-1 registration advantage in the 32nd, with nearly 55,000 registered compared to nearly 18,000 registered Republicans. There is also a sizable number of unaffiliated voters, more than 21,000, all of whom can participate in the general election.

Singh has made outreach to all voters in the district a priority, including those who may not speak English as their first language. Her campaign has sent mailers translated into multiple languages across the district.

She describes herself as an educator and the daughter of working-class immigrants. She used to teach language arts at Coney Island High School. As a resident of Ozone Park, she’s been knocking on doors across the district trying to persuade voters that she is focused on the issues that matter to their lives, like fully-funding schools and providing afterschool programs.

She also stresses the importance of policies to address climate challenges faced by the community, and not just for the neighborhoods along the coastline.

“The things that are going to work here in Rockaway on the peninsula when it comes to groins and jetties,” Singh said referring to ongoing projects led by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent erosion along the coastal waterfront, “are not the same for building resilience in Hamilton Beach or Broad Channel or in Howard Beach.” She is advocating for a science-driven approach to climate resiliency that takes into account the individual needs of a neighborhood.

There is a third candidate on the ballot in the 32nd District: Kenichi Wilson, the chairperson for Community Board 9, which covers Woodhaven, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens. He is running on the Community First line, which means he submitted independent nominating petitions to secure his spot on the ballot as opposed to running in the Democratic or Republican primaries. It also puts him at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to the general election, because voters tend to pick from the major party candidates. Wilson also did not respond to a request for comment.

Singh has outraised both her challengers bringing in $406,180 in public and private funds, with more half of that money still on hand. Ariola has raised $308,328 with $165,435 on hand; Wilson raised $108,098 with $74,172 remaining.

One wild card in the race is the spending from Common Sense NYC, an independent expenditure group funded by deep-pocketed real estate donors Stephen Ross, Ronald Lauder, and Jack Cayre. The group has already spent more than $1.2 million dollars on council races both supporting and opposing candidates, and it is aiming its fire on Singh, labeling her a socialist.

But Singh has not been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, nor did she seek their endorsement. She has been endorsed by the Working Families Party and several politically-active unions known for turning out voters, including 32 BJ SEIU, District Council 37, the Hotel Trades Council, and the Communication Workers of America.

Ariola has lined up support among several law enforcement unions including the Police Benevolent Association and the Sergeants Benevolent Association along with several other trade unions.

Ulrich tried to downplay the importance of party labels in the race. As an Ariola supporter, he argued that she has cross-over appeal in the district even among registered Democrats, who he described as more moderate than elsewhere in the city.

“Felicia [Singh] should be running in Park Slope or Long Island City or maybe even Jackson Heights or some other part of the city where the voters are much more progressive,” said Ulrich, calling her a bad fit for the district, while noting the party enrollment advantage remains in Singh’s favor.

Still, he said no matter who wins, the outcome of this election will make history: “For the first time ever, a woman will be representing the 32nd Council district,” said Ulrich. “I think that’s a great thing.”