Winners & Losers of 2023: Who came out on top in New York

Choosing winners and losers of the year for 2023 wasn’t easy. Not because there was a lack of notable events and scandals, but because the year seemed to lack a coherent political arc. 2021 saw the fall of Andrew Cuomo and the rise of Kathy Hochul. Last year was the year New York handed the House of Representatives to the Republicans. And this year was the year … of many things: an influx of asylum-seekers to New York City, major labor victories, a bruising legislative session for the governor, withering public trust in the mayor, an off-year election with abysmal voter turnout, the rise of AI as well as the beginning of a devastating war in Israel and Palestine that rocked New York. So this list highlights a varied group of bright stars who managed to stand out in the chaos. 

Presenting City & State’s 2023 Winners of the Year. (See the Losers of the Year here.)

Chris Banks, Kristy Marmorato, Yusef Salaam and Susan Zhuang

The new City Council members

The New York City Council will welcome four new members into the 51-member body in January. None were shoo-ins, and each one ran a campaign that warranted a place on this list. The most surprising upset came in the Bronx where X-ray technician Kristy Marmorato defeated an incumbent to become the first Republican to win elected office in the borough in two decades. Democrat Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five soared to victory in Harlem, buoyed by his powerful story and a strong grassroots campaign. Salaam defeated two longtime Harlem Assembly members in a closely watched primary. Democrat Chris Banks’ victory in the primary in East New York toppled a longtime political dynasty. And Democrat Susan Zhuang won the city’s first Asian-majority council seat in Brooklyn. We sent each new member a questionnaire about their priorities and their go-to bagel order, among other things. Meet the new members here.

– Sahalie Donaldson

Nancy Hagans

The nurses union powerhouse

New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans worked this year to rectify one of the biggest complaints from nurses coming out of the pandemic: short staffing and burnout. After a historic three-day strike by more than 7,000 nurses at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, Hagans finalized a labor contract in January that dealt with both issues. Nurses received a 19% wage increase over the next three years, and more than 170 new nursing positions were created in a bid to ease staffing concerns and increase retention.

Hagans parlayed that win into an appointment in February to the council of presidents of National Nurses United, the largest union of nurses in America. Since then, she hasn’t slowed down, testifying before the U.S. Senate in October that the nursing industry was in crisis and imploring lawmakers to introduce federal staffing guidelines to improve the experiences – and safety – of nurses and patients across the country. Hagans became a bona fide labor darling in the process. She garnered shoutouts from prominent New York lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas and had the honor of leading New York City’s Labor Day parade.

Hagans, who was born in Haiti, had an eye toward labor from a young age. When she first became a nurse, Hagans kept track of grievances she faced and ended up calling a meeting with supervisors and her union representatives to rectify the situation. After seeing the gusto with which Hagans understood and executed her rights, the representative invited her to become grievance co-chair, and Hagan’s career in union leadership began. She continued her career and became a highly rated ICU nurse, according to former colleagues, and rose up the ranks of union organizing before becoming New York State Nurses Association president in 2021.

We might be hearing more from Hagans in 2024. The labor agreements with nurses at three Montefiore hospitals in the Lower Hudson Valley expire at the end of the year, and her union is ramping up calls for staffing increases.

Hagans said in a November statement, “Let’s do whatever it takes to make sure Monte nurses win fair contracts that help deliver quality care for ALL New Yorkers – no matter the ZIP code!”

– Austin C. Jefferson

Eddie Caban

The first Latino NYPD boss

Eddie Caban was welcomed like a celebrity when he arrived at the annual Somos conference in Puerto Rico last month. Attendees swarmed around the New York City Police Department commissioner, who was dressed in a neat, light blue guayabera, to shake his hand and take selfies in the lobby of the Caribe Hilton in San Juan.

“Él está en su momento – he is in his moment. The first Latino police commissioner!” a City Hall staffer gushed.

Caban, a 32-year-veteran of the NYPD who was appointed in July by Mayor Eric Adams to be the department’s commissioner, had made it to the top and was representing, not just for other Nuyoricans like himself, but all Latino officers who had come before him. And Spanish New Yorkers had a police commissioner who was just like them.

“I just want to stay right here for one second and soak it all in,” Caban said, standing with his father, Juan, and Adams at his swearing-in outside the 40th Precinct in the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood. The mayor noted Caban was starting off strong, with shootings and murders already on the decline. Since then Caban has held the line on most major crimes, with some exceptions, including hate crimes.

The 56-year-old Caban, the Bronx-born son of a retired New York City Transit Police detective and president of the Transit Police Hispanic Society, began his career in the NYPD in 1991 as an officer patrolling the streets of the South Bronx. He quickly climbed the ranks and was promoted to captain in 2005.

Caban made his first mark on history in 2022 when he was appointed to be the NYPD’s first deputy commissioner in the Adams administration. The mayor at the time fulfilled a campaign promise to appoint a woman to head the NYPD and hired Keechant Sewell, former Nassau County Police Department chief of detectives, for the job. When Sewell left the position 18 months later, apparently over being micromanaged, Adams looked to Caban to take over. Caban at his swearing-in responded that he was “humbled” to serve on the mayor’s team and “to lead the greatest police department on the globe.” Adams, meanwhile, had a vetted administration member taking on the job when perceptions of high crime contrasted actual police data. It was no surprise why Adams chose Caban, while again seizing on the opportunity to make a historic appointment.

“I want to say thank you to my fellow New Yorkers for having their faith in me,” he told a crowd at the ceremony. He called himself a “young Puerto Rican kid from Parkchester,” and recalled that as a young police officer, “the top boss in the police department really didn’t look like me.” He gave his father credit for being his mentor and being an advocate “for those facing barriers in their careers.”

“He told me ‘Take the test son. Promotions will earn you a seat at the table,’” Caban said. “I’m blessed that my dad stood with us and can see the impact of his guidance come full circle.”

– Ralph R. Ortega

Ray Tierney 

Long Island’s favorite DA

If you’re from Long Island (as I am), you’ve long been familiar with the Gilgo Beach serial killer. Long Island’s own claim to true crime fame, the murders took place between 1996 and 2011. Most of the victims were sex workers who advertised on Craigslist. Between 2010 and 2011, police found the remains of 11 potential victims buried at Gilgo Beach. But the other part of being from Long Island was knowing that police and prosecutors had no leads despite their best attempts, causing the biggest criminal case to rock Long Island in decades to go cold.

Enter Ray Tierney, the Republican who won his seat as Suffolk County district attorney in a surprise victory in 2021 as part of a “red wave.” His Democratic predecessor Tim Sini had also tried to solve the serial killer case, announcing in 2015 while he was police commissioner that the FBI would get involved in the case after he helped to root out sweeping corruption within Suffolk County’s criminal justice system that allegedly stood in the way of such involvement. But even then, the case went nowhere.

Tierney did what no other prosecutor since 2010 has managed to do: charge a viable suspect with the murder of three of victims, with a strong path toward charging him for the murder of a fourth. He’s serving as the lead prosecutor in the case, the first time he’s stepped into the spotlight in such a way since taking office in 2022. And Tierney is taking a very hands-on approach to the prosecution, which will likely define his career.

Of course, Tierney did not make the arrest of the suspect alone. Rodney Harrison led law enforcement as the Suffolk County Police Department commissioner to finally crack the case and arrest the alleged killer earlier this year. But in a surprise move, Harrison announced in November that he would step down from his position – and now he’s under investigation by Tierney for allegedly falsifying timesheets to get more money when he officially leaves. Unless Tierney messes up the Gilgo Beach case, there’s likely little more he could do to ensure his own reelection in 2025, and to set him up for a lucrative post-government career if he so chooses.

– Rebecca C. Lewis

Stephanie Barber Geter

The activist righting Buffalo’s decades-old wrongs 

U.S. Transportation Department Secretary Pete Buttigieg doesn’t travel to Buffalo with a $55 million check on St. Patrick’s Day just so he can have wings and a Kimmelweck roll with his corned beef. Buttigieg – along with Gov. Kathy Hochul, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand – made the trip this year due to the efforts of Stephanie Barber Geter to right several decades of wrongs in her East Buffalo neighborhood.

Geter, the chair of the Restoring Our Community Coalition, has for years been at the forefront of advocating a plan to restore the original Humboldt Parkway in Buffalo and reconnect East Buffalo to the rest of the city. The plan is to build a new park over the Kensington Expressway, which divides the mostly Black neighborhood from the rest of Buffalo and was built in the 1960s. Buttigieg awarded the project $55 million, the largest Reconnecting Communities grant in the nation, part of a program under the federal infrastructure law to grow economic opportunities and remove barriers. Hochul has committed $1 billion in state funds to the project, which will cover a mile of the Kensington Expressway to reconnect the Humboldt Parkway.

The Restoring Our Community Coalition has cited the construction of the Kensington, and the connecting Scajaquada Expressway, as a primary cause for a rise in crime and blight in East Buffalo. The original Humboldt Parkway was part of Buffalo’s Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park system and served as a parkway dotted with six rows of elm trees to connect what is now known as Martin Luther King Jr. Park in East Buffalo, once a working class Polish neighborhood that is now largely Black, with Delaware Park which abuts Buffalo’s toniest neighborhoods.

In addition to the Kensington deck, the project includes repaving, new sidewalks, restored greenspace, new landscaping, repaired driveway aprons, a new roundabout and Americans with Disabilities Act compliance.

Geter has said the original decision to “disinvest in a community” robbed East Buffalo of “its best and most prosperous citizens” and said the project “represents hope.”

In March, Geter said she and her neighbors were more than a little bit surprised that Buttigieg, Hochul, Schumer, Gillibrand and the rest of the elected officials gathered for the press conference were willing to make East Buffalo’s dream a reality.

“The elected officials for once in my lifetime gathered together and decided that they would deliver the goods to this community,” Geter said. “We were honestly shocked.”

– John Celock