Powers Powers to Victory over Foley in 74th Assembly Race

Former city council member Keith Powers scored a landslide win pulling in 82.1 percent of the vote in the special election Feb. 3 for the NYS Assembly 74th district. The Republican/Conservative challenger Joe Foley gnarred 16.1 percent of the votes, according to unofficial results from the board of elections.

Turnout was light with less than six percent of the districts 85,957 voters casting ballots in a district that includes the East Village, the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex, the Flatiron district, the United Nations and parts of Mid-town East including Kips Bay and Tudor City.

Powers represented a portion of the district when he was a city council member, where he was the Democratic majority leader for three of his eight years on the council and positioned himself as centrist democrat. He resigned from the Progressive Caucus in his final year because he objected to their plank calling for cuts in the number of police and corrections officer.

”My most important platform is pushing to make sure housing is affordable. That is what I will be fighting for,” he told Our Town Downtown on the night of the special election where he was holding a victory party in the Shades of Green pub on E. 15th St. near Union Square. He has gathered there during his City Council victory celebrations as well as after his defeat in last November’s race for Manhattan borough president. He also placed infrastructure improvements and public safety high on his list of priorities.

Foley, who faced an uphill battle in the traditional Democratic stronghold, positioned himself as an independent candidate running on the Republican and Conservative party lines. Among his populist ideas, eliminating state income tax for anyone making under $140,000 a year and enacting a Mitchell Lama 2.0 to build more affordable housing.

While Powers was celebrating victory, there was much political maneuvering afoot on past and future races. For one, news broke shortly before the celebration started that Brian Kavanagh, a NYS Senator from the area for 20 years, was not seeking reelection. And the buzz that night was that Assembly member Grace Lee and former Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou had already declared for the race.

Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who defeated Powers in the borough president race in November, was among the many elected officials who stopped by to congratulate Powers on election night.

Chris Marte, who served on the council with Powers for six years, was there early.

So was Vanessa Aronson who is looking to join powers in the NYS Assembly, contingent on her winning the Democratic primary in June to run for the seat that is being vacated by Alex Bores. [Bores is among 11 candidates running for the Manhattan Congressional seat that is being vacated by Jerry Nadler who said he will not run for reelection this year.]

Aronson, a long time community activist and a former head of the Lexington Democratic Club, ran a strong city council primary race for Powers former seat. He was term limited and could not seek re-relection. Powers stayed neutral in that race, that was ultimately won by Virginia Maloney. She stopped by late at Shades of Green as well to congratulate her predecessor.

Powers on his election night victory speech thanked Harvey Epstein, who had endorsed Powers as his successor when the Assembly seat became open because Epstein opted to run for City Council in a race that he won overwhelmingly in November.

“This is what I love to do, representing the people in the district where I grew up,” said Powers, who is a third-generation resident of Stuyvesant Town. His father John (Jake) Powers and mother Barbara were on hand to cheer on their son.

”The only drawback,” said Powers at the conclusion of his victory speech, “is I have to get on a train at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning to get to Albany.”

Powers could soon find himself back in full campaign mode. Winning the special election means he will only finish serving the unexpired term of Epstein through the end of 2016. Several of the candidates who did not get the nod from the Democratic committee in the special election said they are planning a challenge in the primary that is set for June 23, ahead of the November 3 general election. “I am a candidate in the Democratic primary,” said Kevin O’Keefe, a community activist who is a member of community board six and the head of the St. Vartan Park Conservancy.

Josh Arnon, a Stuyvesant Town resident who describes himself as a Jewish autistic democratic socialist is also in the race for the June Democratic primary.

On the Republican side, Joseph Foley could not be reached at press time.