This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

It looks like New York City Council Member Keith Powers may have found a soft place to land. Now that Manhattan’s Democratic county committee has nominated him to be the party's candidate in the upcoming special election to fill the Assembly seat vacated by now-City Council Member Harvey Epstein, Powers looks poised to head to Albany. And just think – all he had to do first was lose a borough president primary!

Her narrow loss in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary aside, Kathryn Garcia just keeps winning. The well-respected technocrat is the new executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. On her new lengthy to-do list: a new midtown bus terminal, redesigning the Kennedy Airport road network, harbor deepening, airport terminal projects and an ambitious new 10-year capital plan. Pro tip: it’s never time for traffic problems in Fort Lee. 

With the exception of the brief takeover of his Twitter by a Bitcoin-loving hacker, Brad Lander’s campaign against Rep. Daniel Goldman got off on a strong foot. Not a bad salve for losing the mayoral race mere months earlier. With endorsements from the Working Families Party, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, it was an impressive show of consolidation right out the gate – so much so that DSA-backed City Council Member Alexa Avilés decided not to run for the seat.

Generally, nobody wants to be on Rikers Island. But even for those who do want to go to visit incarcerated family members and friends, the process is a nightmare. That’s according to a new report which found that a single hour’s visit can take up to five or six hours. It’s unclear whether Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie will remain in the new administration, but for the time being, Rikers continues to be in crisis. Just this week, a man died in DOC custody, the 14th person so far this year.

Just like former Assembly Member Helene Weinstein last year, state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal will leave the state Legislature without managing to get the Grieving Families Act signed into law. He hasn’t sponsored the measure for its entire 30 year history, but he has heralded it for several years at this point, including each of the other three times lawmakers approved the measure. Every time, the governor has vetoed the bill, and this year was no different. Now the fight falls to Assembly Member Jen Lunsford.

No coasting to the Republican gubernatorial nomination for Rep. Elise Stefanik. She now has to contend with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who officially launched his campaign following months of speculation. Stefanik doesn’t even have President Donald Trump on her side. Asked about the primary, he declined to choose between two “great people” whom he considers friends. Trump did try to convince Blakeman not to run before, but we all see how that turned out.