2025 NYC Democratic Primary Voter Guide

Time to build a city of abundance

New York City will have its primary elections on June 24 this year, with mail-in voting already started and early voting starting June 14. Here’s a brief guide on who I am supporting this election.

City Council District 1

For City Council, I live in District 1, currently represented by Christopher Marte, first elected in 2021. Over the past four years, there have been many instances where I’ve felt Marte did not represent the best interests of the district or city, but none was clearer or more obvious to me than the disaster that is 250 Water Street.

The above picture was taken today, and shows the current state of this site, which was a parking lot for at least 30 years, before a developer got approval to build 100 affordable units on it (in addition to 299 market rate ones)¹. However, Marte repeatedly and publicly opposed the development of the building, and supported and celebrated a lawsuit to suspend its construction. Although the developer ultimately won the suit, they have halted all work at this point and are now selling the site. District 1 is now left with a toxic-looking sludge pool, and no affordable units at all, in a district that already was dead last in affordable housing production.

Jess Coleman is the obvious choice to lead District 1, publicly supporting the production of new affordable housing units in the district as well as citywide. He further supports congestion pricing, outdoor dining, and pedestrian safety. His full platform can be found on his website.

Elizabeth Lewinsohn is a good option for ranking second, with improvements over Marte’s position, but falling short of Jess’s full vision.

Other City Races

Rather than repeat content from people and organizations with viewpoints similar to mine, I wanted to link and amplify them. In particular,

• Sebastian from Sidewalk Chorus has an excellent guide with good explanations

• Sachi at NYC Politics 101 also has good coverage of citywide races

• Abundance New York covers even more districts

• Daniel from Maximum New York spends a ton of time researching housing policy and writing on it eloquently, so he had a lot of good considerations on mayoral candidates, especially Mamdani

• Open New York has endorsed City Council and Westchester candidates so far

• The New York Times did not endorse anyone formally, but has a decent discussion of candidates

1. It appears that the initial plan was for 100 affordable units; it got scaled back to 70, and at some point scaled back up to 100.