Hanif, Aviles post early wins in NYC Council primary races; Marte cruising toward victory

As all eyes in New York were on the Democratic mayoral primary, City Council election results started taking shape Tuesday night, with early wins posted in Broooklyn by Councilwoman Shahana Hanif and Councilman Christopher Marte making a strong showing in Manhattan.

Among the most high-profile were two Council races in which disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner attempted a political comeback, while a former representative’s daughter eyed a political dynasty.

In other races, departing councilmembers are seeking to hand-pick their successors, throwing their weight behind current staffers and other heirs apparent.

Here are the key Democratic primary races:

District 1: Financial District, SoHo, Chinatown and the Lower East Side

Councilman Christopher Marte, whose opposition to the citywide rezoning plan “City of Yes” has sparked pushback from pro-housing advocates, had secured nearly half of the vote Tuesday evening with more than 84% of ballots counted.

In this year’s primary, the opposition also spurred so called YIMBY-candidate challengers, hoping to oust the incumbent by running on new housing production. The candidates have sparred over the fate of Elizabeth Street Garden, a plan for affordable senior housing killed by Mayor Adams less than 24 hours before Primary Day.

Also on the ballot is Elizabeth Lewinsohn, a former Police Department official and self-funded candidate who’s out-raised her opponents.

District 2: East Village, Greenwich Village, Gramercy and Murray Hill

Anthony Weiner’s political comeback looked unlikely Tuesday night as the disgraced ex-congressman seemed poised to lose a bid for New York City Council.

Weiner received 10% of the vote after 87% of ballots were counted, with the frontrunner Harvey Epstein holding steady at about 40%.

Weiner hasn’t held public office since 2011, when he was ousted from his congressional seat after accidentally tweeting a sexually explicit photo of himself. It was at least his second attempt at redemption in local politics after a failed bid for mayor more than a decade ago.

During the campaign, the irony of his face-off with the leading candidate of the night, Harvey Epstein, a state assemblyman, was not lost on the internet. Epstein was the subject of Saturday Night Live sketch in November that spoofed his name.

District 4: Upper East Side, Midtown East and Stuyvesant Town

Virginia Maloney, the daughter of former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, was locked in a tight battle late Tuesday.

She is facing off against a crowded field of primary challengers, some of whom had sizable campaign war chests. Keith Powers, the district’s current councilmember, is term-limited and running for Manhattan borough president.

The candidates include multiple political insiders, including nonprofit strategist and a former Democratic Club boss Vanessa Aronson and an ex-Missouri legislator, Rachel Storch, with formidable fundraising power.

Maloney, Aronson and Storch had each secured about a quarter of the vote with 86% of ballots counted as of Tuesday night.

District 8: East Harlem, Randall’s Island and parts of the South Bronx

Elsie Encarnacion, Council Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala’s hand-picked successor, was leading in the effort to win the Democratic nod to lead the district on Tuesday night with 28% of the vote and most ballots counted. Encarnacion is Ayala’s current chief of staff.

The race, however, is likely to advance to ranked choice voting and additional rounds of counting.

Raymond Santana, one of five teenagers wrongfully incarcerated for the 1989 rape of a Central Park jogger, was trailing three front-runners as of about 10 p.m.. After Yusef Salaam was elected to the Council in 2023, Santana hoped to be the second member of the so-called “Exonerated Five” on the city’s lawmaking body.

District 14: Kingsbridge, Fordham, University Heights

Incumbent Pierina Sanchez, a progressive with endorsements from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Ritchie Torres, faced two challengers for her Bronx seat on the City Council, including her predecessor Pastor Fernando Cabrera who held the seat for over a decade. The AP called the election Tuesday night for Sanchez with 63% of ballots tallied.

Cabrera, a socially conservative Democrat, served as a senior faith adviser to Mayor Adams. His hiring drew outrage from LGBTQ community advocates who pointed to his record of anti-gay rhetoric. (Cabrera claims his comments were “taken completely out of context.”)

District 28: Southeast Queens including Ozone Park and Jamaica

The race is on to replace term-limited Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is also running in the Democratic mayoral primary. Her chief of staff, Tyrell “Ty” Hankerson, is vying for the seat and was leading in early results with 35% of a majority of votes counted.

There are four other candidates in the race, including nonprofit founder Latoya LeGrand, community board member Romeo Hitlall, former challenger Japneet Singh, and ex-Councilman Ruben Wills.

District 38: Sunset Park, Red Hook, parts of Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst

A similar contest to District 39 is playing out further south in Brooklyn, which has been withdrawn since Councilwoman Alexa Avilés, a socialist, first won in 2021, adding some neighborhoods that voted for President Trump.

Nonetheless, Avilés as of Tuesday night bested challenger Ling Ye, a moderate Democrat who previously worked for Rep. Dan Goldman, with 72% of the vote as nearly all scanners reported results. The race attracted sizable outside money, including from real estate interests.

District 39: Kensington, Borough Park, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and the Columbia Waterfront

In the Democratic stronghold of brownstone Brooklyn, Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, co-chair of the progressive caucus and a district native, declared victory less than an hour after polls closed over challenger Maya Kornberg in one of the few races in this year’s primary — dominated by the mayor’s race — to make national news.

She received 70% of the votes with a majority of ballots tallied.

With the candidates holding similar positions on most local issues, the race has devolved into a referendum of style over substance. Hanif, the first Muslim woman on the Council and a fierce critic of Israel, became a target of a campaign that accused her of putting performative politics over constituents services. Supporters of Hanif, in turn, have tried to paint Kornberg, a political scientist at the Brennan Center for Justice and self-described progressive, as “MAGA”-aligned.

“This win is about people power beating corporate power,” Hanif said in a statement. “It’s about communities coming together across race, class, faith, age, and language—refusing to be divided.”

“It’s truly the honor of my life to get to fight for the neighborhoods that raised me.”

For up to date results, please go to nydailynews.com/politics/election

Originally Published: June 24, 2025 at 10:20 PM EDT