Who New Yorkers should elect in June 2025
Pro‑abundance picks for a more affordable, dynamic, and thriving city
By June 24th, Democrats across New York City will elect the party’s nominees for mayor, city council, borough presidents, comptroller, public advocate, and district attorney.
These municipal primary elections are the single biggest opportunity for voters to influence the future of our city. For most of our city’s elected positions, it’s almost guaranteed that the Democratic Party nominee will win the November general election. And the victors in these elections will go on to run a government with over 300,000 employees, a budget larger than 48 states, and influence over almost every facet of New Yorkers’ lives.
An awesome thing about New York City’s democracy is that we use ranked-choice voting. For each position, you get to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. When the votes are counted, if your favorite candidate gets eliminated, then your vote will transfer to your second-choice candidate, and so on. This allows New Yorkers to support several candidates in each race, without fear of wasting votes on less popular contenders.
Ranked-choice voting means you need to develop opinions about several candidates in each race, which takes a lot of work. To ease that burden, here are my recommendations of who to vote for in some of the most important and hotly contested races across the city:
By the way, if you’re new here, welcome! I’m Sebastian. I write this newsletter about how New York works, and opportunities to make this city even greater. I want New York to be a more affordable, prosperous, safe, and livable place to call home. Beyond this blog, I volunteer on my local community board and I work in tech.
What I’m looking for from our candidates
I’ve assessed each candidate based on their past actions and current policy platform. My framework looks for candidates who will:
Run the government effectively, with integrity, analytical rigor, and a love for what makes NYC special.
Make housing cheaper through pragmatic plans to build more homes and reduce existing buildings’ operating costs.
Make getting around our city easier, faster, safer, more reliable, and more accessible for pedestrians, transit riders, and people of all levels of mobility.
Have well-reasoned and pro-urban positions on public safety, use of public space, trash, education, tax, the environment, and caring for people in need — without engaging in magical thinking.
For me, these are the most important lenses to evaluate candidates through. No candidate is perfect, and you might have different issue priorities, but I hope this assessment helps you be better informed about who to support.
Mayor
#1. Zellnor Myrie is my clear top candidate for mayor because he has the most ambitious and realistic plan to make housing cheaper by building more homes. He’s solid on transportation, and has sensible plans to improve police staffing and solve more crimes. I’ve met him, and he clearly loves this city. He currently represents part of Brooklyn in the State Senate, and previously was a legislative director for a City Council member.
#2. Brad Lander is a strong second-best mayoral candidate because of his deep knowledge of city government, his commitment to building more homes, and his ambitious transportation plans. I appreciate his vigorous support for congestion pricing and making property tax fairer. He is currently NYC’s comptroller and previously represented parts of Brooklyn in the City Council.
#3. Adrienne Adams is my third-ranked mayoral candidate because of her experience with city government and record on housing. As speaker of the City Council, she navigated the passage into law of the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity upzoning reforms. I’ve not loved her take on transportation policy, which reflects her base representing a car-centric outer Queens district in the Council.
#4. Whitney Tilson is my fourth choice, given his policy positions on housing and improving government service delivery. He has not previously held elected office, and has worked in finance.
I recommend against ranking either Andrew Cuomo or Zohran Mamdani on your mayoral ballot.
As Governor, Andrew Cuomo was underwhelming on housing, ineffective on transit, and defined by scandal. His record shows little interest in reducing the cost of living. His campaign’s housing plan is garbled and unserious. He opposes upzoning in low-density neighborhoods, which are the very places most capable of housing more New Yorkers. On transit, Cuomo starved the MTA of funds and micromanaged its leaders. His governorship ended in disgrace after the COVID-era nursing home data coverup and multiple sexual harassment allegations.
Zohran Mamdani’s plans will seriously hurt New York, despite being superficially attractive. Mamdani has stridently opposed constructing new market-rate homes, preferring instead to build a smaller number of government-subsidized apartments at huge taxpayer cost. His signature transit proposal—fare‑free buses—would strip $650 million annually from the MTA, likely forcing less frequent service and greater crowding, rather than improving speed, reliability, or safety.
In addition to these recommendations, The City newspaper has a great quiz to help identify the mayoral candidates who most closely align with your preferences.
Comptroller
The comptroller is New York City’s chief financial watchdog: they audit every agency, sign off on contracts, and manage the city’s pension funds. When they do their job well, your tax dollars stretch further, waste is exposed, and the mayor’s policies face an independent, data‑driven check.
#1. Mark Levine is my clear top candidate for comptroller because of his record supporting housing construction, and his clever financing ideas to build even more. He’s been a champion of policies that keep New York moving, like congestion pricing, bus lanes, and accessibility upgrades. He is currently Manhattan’s Borough President. Levine previously served in the City Council, as a public school teacher, and as the founder of a neighborhood credit union.
#2. Justin Brannan is a distant second choice for comptroller. He’s an experienced chair of the City Council’s finance committee, and he knows city government well. Brannan supported City of Yes reforms to build more homes, but he exempted his own low-density Brooklyn neighborhood from these upzonings. If for whatever reason Mark Levine doesn’t win, Justin Brannan would make a fine comptroller.
To dive deeper into the race for comptroller, I suggest watching the excellent debate between Levine and Brannan hosted by the New York Law School in March.
Borough President
Each of New York’s five boroughs has a president. They advocate for borough-wide needs and influence how the borough’s land gets used.
Manhattan Borough President
#1. Keith Powers is my clear favorite for Manhattan Borough President because of his track record on housing. He was a key player in passing the City of Yes housing reforms, enabling office-to-residential conversions, and building more homes in Midtown Manhattan. He’s supported expanding bus lanes, outdoor dining, and cleaning up sidewalk scaffolding. Powers currently represents much of Manhattan’s East Side in the City Council, and I hosted a fundraiser for him last year.
#2. Brad Hoylman-Sigal is a distant second choice for Manhattan Borough President. He’s a credible State Senator who has led the charge on a variety of health, LGBT, and tenant rights issues (among others). He has a much weaker track record than Powers on building more homes, but nevertheless Hoylman-Sigal would be an adequate alternative if needed.
Brooklyn Borough President
#1. Antonio Reynoso is my favorite to be re-elected as Brooklyn’s Borough President. He’s taken concrete action to lower the cost of living, by supporting the passage of the City of Yes reforms.
No credible challenger is on the ballot, so I recommend only ranking Reynoso.
City Council
Only a handful of New York’s 51 city council districts have competitive races this year. You can see which district you’re in using this map.
I’m giving recommendations for Manhattan’s districts 1 and 4. Elsewhere, I suggest following the endorsements by Open New York and Abundance New York.
City Council District 1 (Lower Manhattan, map)
#1. Jess Coleman is my top recommendation for District 1. He supports building more homes, having better transit, and a generally abundance-minded vision of New York’s future. He’s trying to unseat an incumbent, Christopher Marte, who has stridently opposed legalizing construction of more homes, opposed congestion pricing, and opposed outdoor dining.
#2. Elizabeth Lewinsohn is my distant second-place choice. She is more tepid than Coleman on opportunities to reduce the cost of living, but appears to be far better than Marte.
City Council District 4 (Manhattan’s East Side, map)
I live in District 4, so I’ve been paying especially close attention to this race, which has five well-funded, serious candidates. I’ve also run an opinion poll of the race, which showed that a huge portion of likely voters remain undecided.
#1. Ben Wetzler and #2 Virginia Maloney are my clear favorite candidates for District 4. In my discussions with them, they both embrace building more homes as a key solution to making New York a more affordable place to live. They have rigorous, analytical approaches to evaluating problems and solutions. I especially like Wetzler’s detailed and pragmatic plans on housing and public safety.
#3. Rachel Storch is another experienced candidate who acknowledges the importance of building more homes and has reasonable positions on other safety, and education. I haven’t seen her say anything about transit policy.
#4. Vanessa Aronson identifies the cost of living as a major issue, and housing costs as a big part of that. She seems better prepared than the final candidate, Faith Bondy, who doesn’t currently mention housing, land use, or transportation on her campaign website.
How to vote
Make sure you’re registered to vote at your current home address. Then, either vote by mail (everyone’s eligible!) or find your in-person voting location. In-person early voting is available from June 14th to 22nd, and election day is June 24th.
Let’s go elect a great slate of officials, and build towards an even greater New York.
> a budget larger than 48 states
wow, TIL!
Cuomo and Mamdani are polling in first and second, respectively, with a large gap to third. Could you elaborate on your decision to leave #5 blank?