While the June 24 primary elections will hugely impact the course of New York City politics, they were set to be less pivotal for Greenpoint and Williamsburg’s District 33, with our incumbent city council member, Lincoln Restler, running unopposed.
That’s changed now, with a new challenger throwing their name into the hat.
Brooklyn Heights resident Sabrina Gates filed to run shortly before the April 3 deadline, City & State reports. Though Gates has yet to start fundraising, she’s earned the backing of the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s chair, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.
An Eric Adams ally, Bichotte Hermelyn has faced several allegations of corruption and cronyism since taking office in 2020 and frequently spars with the more progressive wing of the party’s slate, including Restler.
A judge recently rejected Restler’s challenge that the Gates campaign improperly collected signatures.
This marks the second time Restler and Gates will face off in the city council primary. Both ran in 2021. Restler captured a little less than 50% in the first round of ranked choice voting, with Gates coming in at 5.5%. We spoke to all the primary candidates at the time; check out our interview with Gates here.
Gates denied that Bichotte Hermelyn played a role in her decision to run, though she told City & State that she valued the chair’s opinion.
Lincoln is a little too far left for me but he is honest, sincere, an extremely hard worker and has done a lot of great local hands on work around my area especially the senior centers. He has my vote.
This opponent is tied in with the most alleged corrupt pol. in modern NYC history and too boot got a get out of jail card by kissing the backside of Trump.
I just saw councilmember Restler speak at the Northern Greenpoint Construction Task Force meeting today. First time seeing him speak, and his passion about the community, knowledge about every single development project and park, ability to bring both developers and city stakeholders and community together in one room, and commitment to affordable housing and parkland for GP, were great. 100% for Team Restler