Wilson Officially Wins Ranked-Choice City Council District 3 Race

The final ranked choice results for the City Council District 3 special election have been released, confirming Carl Wilson’s significant victory.

None of the candidates in the race—including Wilson—accrued more than 50 percent of the vote on election night, April 28, meaning that the Board of Elections was obligated to conduct a further shuffling of ranked-choice votes in the following days until a candidate crossed the 50 percent threshold.

On May 5, the BOE released updated tabulations revealing that Wilson had pulled ahead to 59.4 percent of the vote after four rounds of ranked-choice elimination, with runner-up Lindsay Boylan receiving 40.6 percent of the vote; this translated to 7,863 ballots cast for Wilson, and 5,373 ballots cast for Boylan.

Wilson, a political organizer who served as the chief of staff for his predecessor (and now-State Senator) Erik Bottcher, defeated a trio of formidable opponents on election night with 43 percent of the vote.

He was endorsed by various members of the Democratic establishment, including city council speaker Julie Menin as well, as Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal, City Comptroller Mark Leving and outgoing U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler among others.

Boylan, the runner-up in the race, garnered 25.6 percent of the vote on election night. An urban planning specialist and the first woman to accuse former Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, she ran with the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

City and State and other outlets have called the special election a “Menin-Mamdani” proxy war.

Two other candidates, the community activist Layla Law-Gisiko and Community Board 4 chair Leslie Boghosian-Murphy, respectively received 20.2 percent of the vote and 10.7 percent of the vote on election night.

After ranked-choice tabulations were released on May 5, Boghosian-Murphy’s total increased to 10.8 percent before she was eliminated. Law-Gisiko, meanwhile, increased her total to 24 percent of the vote in round three—or 3,435 ballots cast—before being eliminated.

In what could be an interesting twist, it remains the case that all four candidates are technically still filed to run in an upcoming June 23 Democratic primary for the seat, which could essentially set up a rematch—if any of the candidates that Wilson bested indeed feel like their chances will improve with a second go-around only seven weeks hence.

The April special election only came about because Erik Bottcher abruptly vacated the District 3 Council seat to successfully run for State Senate earlier this year (after dropping his brief bid for the House of Representatives seat being vacated by Nadler). As of last November, he had originally planned to serve out a second City Council term that he won then.

This means that Wilson, if he remains unchallenged through June, will run in a general election this November to fully receive the mandate to fill out the remainder of Bottcher’s vacated term.

So far, it’s still unclear whether any of the three candidates who lost to Wilson in the special election will decide to run against him again, with none responding to a request for comment by Chelsea News on that front.