City Council member Margaret Chin has won a third term representing Lower Manhattan. Preliminary (and unofficial) results from Tuesday’s election show her winning 11,468 votes, out of 23,027 ballots cast, which translates into a plurality of 49.80 percent. Her nearest competitor, Independence Party candidate Christopher Marte, garnered 8,502 votes, or 36.92 percent.
After the results were announced, Ms. Chin said, “Lower Manhattan voters have spoken and they have made it clear that they support the record we have achieved and the vision we have fought for: Building more affordable housing; securing millions for senior services, schools, and parks; strengthening Downtown’s resiliency; and fighting for our shared progressive values. I am so proud to have the support of the thousands of Lower Manhattan voters who showed up to the polls. I am sincerely humbled and I look forward to the next four years on the Council where I will continue the great progress we have made as a community.”
Early on Tuesday evening, as the first returns trickled in a few minutes after the polls closed at 9:00 pm, Ms. Chin took a commanding lead, with 818 votes to Mr. Marte’s 518 (or 53.89 percent, to 34.12 percent), with 16 percent of Lower Manhattan precincts reporting.
Challenger Christopher Marte, running on the Independence Party line, captured 37 percent of the vote, which amounts to an unusually strong showing for a third-party candidate in Lower Manhattan.
As successive waves of additional votes were tabulated, however, this lead gradually dwindled to 52 percent, then 51 percent, and then dipped below the majority threshold of 50 percent. At the same time, Mr. Marte’s share of the vote jumped from 34 percent to 37 percent early in the evening, a development that briefly took on the appearance of a groundswell. By around 10:00 pm, however, he had given back some of these gains, and his ongoing tally began to hover between 35 and 36 percent of the vote.
Republican candidate Bryan Jung attracted 2,014 votes (or 8.75 percent of the total), while Liberal Party nominee Aaron Foldenauer got 1,013 (or 4.40 percent). Both Mr. Marte and Mr. Foldenauer were erstwhile candidates for the Democratic Party nod, challenging Ms. Chin in the September primary. In that much-closer contest (which actually drew slightly more voters than Tuesday’s general election), Ms. Chin won with 5,363 votes, while Mr. Marte captured 5,151, and Mr. Foldenauer won 459. This amounted to a margin of victory of 222 votes for Ms. Chin, or slightly less than two percent of the 11,719 ballots cast in the primary.
Inspired Ms. Chin’s thin margin of victory, Mr. Marte chose to continue his campaign under the banner of the Independence Party, a reprise made possible by the fact that five voters in the September contest had written his name in under the Independence line. In the end, however, this proved quixotic: Lower Manhattan voters tend to be reliably Democratic, which usually makes the primary the real contest, with the general election relegated to the status of a formality.
That noted, Mr. Marte’s strong showing in the primary, coupled with the surprising strength of his third-party bid in Tuesday’s election, appear to have established him as a significant player in Lower Manhattan politics. At the start of the race, he was a virtual unknown outside of the Lower East Side neighborhood where he grew up, and has earned a reputation as community leader in recent years. Building on this base, he accumulated a slew of endorsements and nearly toppled an established incumbent during the primary.
For Ms. Chin, the start of her four years in the City Council (as mandated by term limits), appears poised to be dominated by issues related to land use and development. In recent weeks, she spearheaded a new law that will subject new development, such as the massive Two Bridges project now going up on the East River waterfront, to the City’s Uniform Land Use Review process. (The Two Bridges development evaded this requirement through the use of procedural loopholes, which Ms. Chin’s new law aims to close.) She also recently petitioned the City Planning Commission to veto a controversial plan to privatize public arcade and plaza space at 200 Water Street, in order to create new retail, restaurant, and market-rate residential units.