Manhattan City Council District 2 is located on the downtown East Side, encompassing neighborhoods including the East Village, Lower East Side, Alphabet City, Gramercy Park, Kips Bay, Murray Hill, and Rose Hill. The district is currently represented by Council Member Carlina Rivera, who is term-limited and cannot run this year, triggering a wide-open race with five candidates. [Answers are from candidates, but some have been lightly edited for space considerations.]
Sarah Batchu
1. Why are you running for City Council?
I’m running for City Council because District 2 deserves a new generation of leadership that’s ready to build a city that cares—for everyone.
2. What are the top three things you aim to accomplish if elected?
First, restore our community safety: Expand mental-health crisis response teams, hold delivery apps accountable for e-bike safety, eliminate never-ending scaffolding, and invest in parks and public spaces.
Second, protect our healthcare: Stand up to greedy hospital systems shutting down local hospitals, defend public-service retirees’ right to traditional Medicare, and expand facilities and services at NYC Health + Hospitals, our public healthcare system.
Third, keep our homes affordable: Push for a rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants, reform the Rent Guidelines Board, secure NYCHA renovations, and connect homeowners to financing for energy-efficiency retrofitting.
3. What makes you the best candidate for this position?
I have hands-on city government experience and am the only rent-stabilized tenant in the race. From shaping policy at City Hall to building a community center in our district, I have the experience to fight for a safe, supportive, and affordable neighborhood—starting on Day One.
4. Background and qualifications:
I am a public servant and community health leader who, from the earliest days of my career in NYC government at City Hall, began tackling big issues head-on—like addressing the city’s crumbling public housing infrastructure and planning an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following my time at City Hall, I joined the Lower Eastside Girls Club as chief of staff and was part of the team that launched the Center for Wellbeing & Happiness, an intergenerational community space. I’ve also served on Community Board 3 as first vice chair.
Andrea Gordillo
Why are you running for City Council?
Unlike some candidates in this race, I am not a career politician and I never imagined I’d run for office. I’m running because my community urged me to carry on the tradition of bold Latina leadership that has guided our neighborhoods for the past quarter-century.
I’ve been a community activist and leader, living in and serving the Lower East Side for over a decade. I am also a proud daughter of Peruvian immigrants.
What are the top three things you aim to accomplish if elected?
Affordability is the number one issue facing our City. As the Chair of Community Board 3, I’ve advocated for increasing the supply and protecting existing affordable housing like HDFCs and rent-stabilized units. Working in a coalition with community groups and elected officials, I’ve helped secure hundreds of affordable and supportive housing units.
We all deserve to feel safe, whether in our homes, on our streets, on the subway, or while enjoying our public spaces. Right now, too many New Yorkers don’t feel that way.
Our system isn’t working, but we can fix it.
As Councilperson, I’ll work to ensure we are efficiently and effectively combating, adapting, and mitigating the climate crisis. I will do this by working to improve and expand resilient green infrastructure projects that keep our residents safe from storms, heat waves, and flooding.
What makes you the best candidate for this position?
We are in a crisis. The rent is uncontrollably rising, Beth Israel is shuttering, and each hurricane season brings more and more flooding to our homes. Washington, Albany, and City Hall have failed us, and the same old people running in this election will not yield us the results that we so desperately need.
I’m running for City Council because I will bring a fresh voice rooted in community experience to City Hall.
Background and qualifications:
For over a decade, I have worked to lead and advance racial and economic justice at multiple cultural institutions throughout Lower Manhattan: The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, The Fourth Arts Block, The Loisaida Inc., and The Public Theater. I am a proud former member of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Union, local 2110.
I helped oversee the City Artists Corps, helped prevent budget cuts to cultural institutions, and secured funding for District 2’s critical cultural economy.
I served as president of the Coalition for a District Alternative (CODA) for five years.
This past year, I was elected chair of Manhattan Community Board 3. and helped secure hundreds of deeply affordable and supportive housing units, allocated additional sanitation and homeless services to local parks, and ensured access to jobs and scholarships for low-income youth at the new Union Square Tech Hub.
Allie Ryan
Why are you running for City Council?
Two years ago I ran for this seat and won 40 percent of the vote against an incumbent, and now I’m back because the district has gotten far worse.
My family is representative of the working-class and union families being driven out of the city. I have formed coalitions that sued for change and will start a new era of City Council that works for constituents, not lobbyists or misguided ideologues.
What are the top three things you aim to accomplish if elected?
First, make our streets safe. Pass Priscilla’s Law to register and license reckless e-bikes.
Second, end toxic conditions in NYCHA public housing, starting with the brown polluted water and contaminated soil in Jacob Riis Houses. Fund repairs for the Council District 2’s 17 NYCHA public-housing developments to un-warehouse low-income housing to help people move out of homeless shelters.
Third, protect community gardens and green spaces targeted as “affordable” housing sites by zoning them as permanent community land trusts.
Visit AllieRyan.com to learn more.
What makes you the best candidate for this position?
Electing me to City Council will symbolize the end of accepting the status quo of elected officials who prioritize the organizations that fund or endorse them over residents. Causing so many of us to form grassroot and crowdfunded groups to sue to stop programs such as the Restaurant Sheds, the Congestion Pricing Tax, the destruction of Elizabeth Street Garden, and the SoHo NoHo Rezoning. Those who tell us crime is not happening and current policy experiments are working. That the affordability crisis, public education crisis, mental illness, homelessness and addiction crisis that we and our children experience daily are being addressed to the best of our elected officials’ abilities, when we KNOW they are not.
We cannot expect solutions from those who caused and deny the problems we all now suffer through daily.
Background and qualifications:
Two decades of experience as an NYC Environmental/Land Use Activist/Organizer, part of seven lawsuits suing for good government/community improvements, nonprofit creator. Small business owner. Mother of two grade-school children. Part of a family that relies on ALL forms of NYC transportation—trains, buses, bikes, and cars.
Anthony Weiner
Why are you running for City Council?
If you think that things are okay or that more of the same is just fine, maybe stop reading now. As a councilman and a congressman I have always been proud to represent what I call the “fighting wing” of the Democratic party. I have always believed in standing up for what’s right and tackling tough problems with real ideas—not just slogans and banners.
When people ask why I’m coming back now, I say this is an “all hands on deck” moment for our country and our city.
I am asking you to re-elect me because with Trump in charge in DC and seemingly no one minding the store in NYC, we need grit and smarts now more than ever.
What are the top three things you aim to accomplish if elected?
With 30 years in public life, maybe no one in the history of the city has run with more experience. In the City Council during the crime wave of the ’90s I started a program to put shoplifters, fare beaters, and petty criminals to work removing graffiti and sweeping our corners . . . the name might have been corny—Weiner’s Cleaners—but the idea was great. In Congress, I fought for 9/11 healthcare and became the national spokesman for Medicare for All.
Now I am leading this campaign with 25 ideas for 2025, like hiring 3,000 cops and getting them out of their cars and on the beat. Cracking down on illegal pot shops and enforcing the laws to rescue our public spaces from disorder.
Background and Experience:
A word about my journey to this moment. It hasn’t been easy. I struggled with addiction and lost the chance to serve. But after rehab, acceptance of responsibility, time in prison, and years since making amends, including by mentoring and hiring the formerly incarcerated, I consider my debt paid.
Now, I want to return to the thing I do best. Fighting for my city and my neighbors.
Harvey Epstein
Why are you running for City Council?
I am running for the City Council because the urgent priorities of our community require trusted leadership and a robust vision for our future. While serving our community in the Assembly has been one of the greatest honors of my life, I believe there is more work to be done, particularly at the local level, where the impact on our daily lives is most direct and immediate.
It is a natural progression for me to go to the City Council to champion the issues I’ve been fighting for my whole life. I will focus on tackling the housing and climate crises; breaking down the existing barriers to mental health care access; investing in our youngest New Yorkers with high-quality programs for everyone at the early childhood, public school, and higher education levels; and fighting for the rights of people with disabilities.
What are the top three things you aim to accomplish if elected?
My top three issue priorities are affordable housing, tackling our mental health crisis, and working toward environmental justice.
What makes you the best candidate for this position?
I’ve lived in the community for 30 years and raised my family here. The work I’ve done in the Assembly includes fighting for affordable housing, healthcare, climate initiatives, criminal justice reform, and gender justice. My track record is evident in my work expanding funding through foundation aid, public funding for elections, expanding tenant protections, increasing revenue, fighting to end mass incarceration, and working towards gender justice. I’ve been a champion in these fights in Albany and will take the same energy and value system to the Council.
Background and qualifications:
I attended Ithaca College and CUNY School of Law. After graduating from law school, I ran and worked in numerous legal services offices for over 25 years and provided free legal services for thousands of New Yorkers. I also served for 14 years on Community Board 3 and was a tenant member of the Rent Guidelines Board, where I helped achieve the first-ever rent freeze for one-year leases. Since 2018, I have served as the NYS Assembly Member for AD74.