Christopher Marte Re-elected, Defeats Helen Qiu in Council District 1

Down in old Chinatown and from the NYCHA projects near the East River to Battery Park City with South Street Seaport, FiDi and much else in between, the incumbent Democrat Christopher Marte cruised to victory over Republican challenger Helen Qiu to win the race for City Council District 1.

With 90 percent of the ballots counted, Marte had racked up 32,162 precious votes, or 72 percent of the electorate; while Qiu had 12,504 supporters, or 28 percent.

“Lower Manhattan delivered a mandate tonight, and I am profoundly grateful,” said the triumphant Marte, who celebrated his victory at an event space with his supporters. “Winning every precinct, reaching our highest-ever vote total, and more than doubling our 2021 totals, reflect the strength of our constituent services operation—answering the phone, helping neighbors with housing issues, and tackling quality-of-life complaints across the district.

“When we listen to people’s biggest concerns, we can deliver real results. I will honor this trust with the same urgency and accessibility that brought us here, and we look forward to fighting for every block of this district for the next four years.”

Speaking of her performance, Qiu noted that her tally was “a historic high for a Republican candidate, signaling the District has started to recognize me as their bipartisan candidate capable of achieving effective policy changes to improve the dire condition we live in.”

By the numbers, Qiu noted, “We maintained a strong support of over 45 percent in Chinatown and South Bridge. I was able to gain 38-41 percent support in Tribeca and Battery Park City. We made a surprise run in SoHo, Financial District, and Lower East Side, with some EDs showing a 300 percent increase, from 5-7 percent to now 21-25 percent. Our campaign is the only campaign in recent Manhattan history to have Yiddish and Hebrew posters for outreach, which helped me to gain 30 percent of Jewish votes.”

Who’s on East Broadway

While the final result was unsurprising given the huge electoral advantage Democrats hold in Manhattan, the contest wasn’t without its intrigues.

Among them is that this was a head-to-head rematch of the 2023 redistricting election, in which candidates were vying only for two-year terms.

In that off-year donnybrook, Marte racked up 68.1 percent of the votes, while Qiu snagged 30.9 percent. There were a 0.9 percent write-ins.

Marte’s improvement can be ascribed to myriad factors, starting with his increased record of accomplishment and constant presence in the district.

Whatever policy differences his critics might have with the besuited solon, he’s pretty much everywhere, from East Broadway to some bench renaming in Tribeca.

Speaking of that storied neighborhood of old warehouses and more recent affluence, it’s worth noting that Marte isn’t an entirely beloved figure in the district. Indeed, his 2025 primary races against Jess Coleman and Elizabeth Lewisohn especially, featured some very sharp rhetoric against Marte as, among other things, being pro-crime and anti-big real estate.

More objective observers of District 1 see Marte as a moderate progressive, or whatever combination of adjective and label best describes a politician who, while liberal, is also reality-based and respectful.

He doesn’t vilify NYPD, nor does he deny or oversimplify district problems—from crime to Canal Street vendors to ongoing fights against the Department of Transportation—for the sake of scoring points with this or that interest group.

What’s Next for the District

Whether this independent streak will serve Marte well going forward remains to be seen.

In late-breaking news just before the election, Zohran Mamdani signaled that he would knife Marte on the Council member’s surprise deal with the Adams administration to save Elizabeth Street Garden. Mamdani, like de Blasio, and like Adams before he came under the influence of his late-term consigliere, Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, wants the city to build an affordable senior housing complex called Green Haven there.

That Marte had endorsed Mamdani for mayor, if not loudly, has made the disagreement more notable. To date, Marte hasn’t publicly responded to the threat, but he was subsequently seen doing tai chi exercises with Mamdani at the Grand Street Settlement so there’s possibly some politicking that can be done.

The relationship between Democratic Socialists, like Mamdani, and regular Democrats, even where they have crossover on the Working Families party line, is fluid and intrigue-filled.

Whether Gotham Democrats submit to Zohranism the way the national Republican party largely surrendered to Trumpism remains to be seen, though one suspects, given the city’s diverse anti-Mamdani constituencies, including substantial Jewish, Black, Chinese, and pro-NYPD and pro-capitalist blocs, that this won’t be the case.

Marte is also running for speaker of the City Council, and has published an astonishing—for the fact that it exists—and highly detailed plan for his speakership, nicknamed 26 for ’26. A website, www.marte4speaker, explains it all.

Should Marte not be elected speaker, and if Elizabeth Street Garden really is razed by Mayor Mamdani’s bulldozers, District 1 politics will surely fulfill the old adage, “May you live in interesting times.”