Rafael Salamanca Jr. is eyeing Bronx borough hall. He has to topple Vanessa Gibson to get there.

New York City Council Member Rafael Salamanca Jr. needs a new job. Term-limited from his South Bronx seat at the end of this year, the Democrat and chair of the council’s powerful Land Use Committee had a few possible paths to pursue.

He could go the route of fellow former Bronx elected officials including Marcos Crespo, Ruben Diaz Jr. and Latoya Joyner and take a job at Montefiore Einstein. He could wait for a higher office to open up – like fellow term-limited members Keith Powers and Justin Brannan, who are running for Manhattan borough president and city comptroller this year. Or he could primary an incumbent elected official who, like most others in her position, was otherwise looking at an easy path to reelection.

Salamanca chose option No. 3. He is running against Vanessa Gibson, a former member of the Assembly and City Council who in 2021 became the first Black person and first woman to be elected as Bronx borough president.

There are strategic advantages to not waiting to run until Gibson would be term-limited in 2029. Salamanca would face more competition in an open primary, and, out of office for a few years, would be less fresh in voters’ minds than he is now. “He’s never had a problem with my leadership before, and now, all of a sudden, he has a problem because he will no longer have a job at the end of the year,” Gibson said in an interview. “Term limits are real.”

But borough president is a position that Salamanca, a Bronx native and son of Puerto Rican immigrants, has had his eye on for a while. After dropping a run for the open seat in 2021, Salamanca instead remained in the council, logging a few extra years as land use chair, giving him a front-row seat to development citywide at a time when both interest in developing in the Bronx and some voices of opposition to it are booming. Now, he’s making the case that the borough’s top job is in need of a change.

“I want to offer Bronxites a different option and a vision that I have of a more affordable and safer Bronx,” Salamanca told City & State recently, as the two-person Democratic primary race reaches its final weeks. “I think that that’s what we lack right now in Borough Hall.”

Salamanca’s campaign, however it came about, is one that Gibson can’t ignore. His challenge creates a rare tug-of-war with an incumbent for Bronx Borough Hall – one the Bronx hasn’t seen in recent decades, as the last few people to hold the position have faced uncompetitive primaries after their first terms.

Gibson has the backing of the county Democratic Party, major labor unions and elected officials. But Salamanca has enough campaign cash and some tangible wins in his record to mount a serious challenge, and one that could test the voting power of Latinos in the only majority-Latino borough.

The “unsaid” part

Last fall, before he threw his weight behind Gibson, Rep. Adriano Espaillat drew attention to the lack of boroughwide Latino representation.

“In the Bronx, which is the borough of SalsaRengue – meaning salsa and merengue – you don’t have one boroughwide Latino elected official,” Espaillat, an Upper Manhattan power broker whose district includes a chunk of the Bronx, told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer in November.

Both Gibson and Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark are Black women, and both were the first Black women elected to their respective positions. Prior to Gibson, the borough president’s office was occupied by three Latino men – Diaz Jr., Adolfo Carrión Jr. and Fernando Ferrer. All three either explored a mayoral run or actually mounted one.

The borough’s demographics – roughly 55% Latino, 29% Black, 9% white and 5% Asian – suggest a path for Salamanca to appeal to Latino voters in the district, though he hasn’t said that’s a key part of his plan and Gibson has done well in Latino neighborhoods in the past, too.

“He may see a path for (himself) just because of the demographic realities,” said political strategist Eli Valentin, calling that an “unsaid” part of the race. “A high Latino turnout will help Salamanca, at least that’s conventional thinking – and I will subscribe to that kind of thinking. But I’m not sure it's going to happen,” he said. In a recent piece in City Limits, Valentin noted that turnout overall in the Bronx not only lagged behind other boroughs in 2021, but Latino turnout citywide has lagged too.

“Identity politics always plays a part, but it’s about electing the best elected officials who are going to do the job,” said Assembly Member Landon Dais, who has endorsed Gibson.

Gibson has the incumbent’s advantage and the endorsements to match. In addition to the Bronx Democratic Party, she has won the endorsements of state Attorney General Letitia James, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Reps. Ritchie Torres and George Latimer, and major labor unions District Council 37, 1199SEIU and 32BJ SEIU, among others.

Some observers are closely watching high-turnout Riverdale as a neighborhood that could help decide the race. Gibson is backed by the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club, which is aligned with the area’s mini Dinowitz dynasty: Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz and his son, Council Member Eric Dinowitz, who are also backing Gibson.

But Unity Democratic Club, also in the northwest Bronx, has backed Salamanca. And Salamanca has snatched away the support of other local clubs that could give him power outside his own district, including the Liberty Democratic Association in the northeast Bronx.

And former Rep. Jamaal Bowman is throwing his support behind Salamanca too – a nod that could whip up some votes on the left or among Bowman’s Co-Op City supporters, depending on how much the ousted former member of Congress hits the pavement for Salamanca. Another factor that could whip up support on the left? Gibson attracted criticism earlier this spring for a campaign fundraiser held by Gene DeFrancis, a Republican who ran for Assembly and who has defended the Proud Boys.

“When I saw our current Borough President cozying up to MAGA donors, it became crystal clear: we need leadership with clarity, conviction, and a real commitment to the Bronx,” Bowman said in a statement. “That’s why I’m proud to stand with Ralph.”

Gibson said she’s been working with DeFrancis to support businesses on Allerton Avenue – he’s involved with the merchant association – and noted that DeFrancis has not actually donated to her campaign. “I acknowledge the concern that came out,” she said. “I do not support the Proud Boys. I do not support this president.”

Are you better off?

In mounting this challenge, Salamanca is forcing Gibson to play defense – and to answer the notoriously difficult question: Have you made the borough a better place to live than it was three years ago?

The “better off” question is challenging for any executive to answer, but the office of the borough president has been described as a particularly powerless one. Borough presidents are entrusted with community board appointments and giving advisory guidance on land use issues, and they can disperse discretionary and capital funding to local nonprofits and institutions like schools and libraries. Their greatest power may lie in their bully pulpit.

Gibson is nonetheless working to make the case that she has utilized those limited powers well. She touts investing $50 million in education – providing equipment for science labs and renovating classrooms, for example – and allocating capital funding to the New York City  Police Department for security cameras. She’s pushing for more funding in the upcoming budget for security cameras to fight illegal dumping. Gibson often highlights economic development and job creation as a priority – one that she says gets at a root cause of violence. This year, she secured a $20 million economic development investment from the state in the Morris Park area and through a partnership with the state Department of Labor, her office is hosting a series of job fairs.

“We are trying to tap into places where the Bronx has never gotten its fair share,” Gibson says. “I am all about opportunity. Money that we deserve, money that we have been denied, and money that we rightfully need to revitalize our borough.”

And Gibson has supporters who are eager to elect her to a second term. “It is very clear how much Vanessa loves the Bronx,” said Yvette Buckner, co-chair of the board of The New Majority NYC. The organization was first launched to campaign for a female majority in the City Council, but for the first time this year endorsed in other races, including the mayor’s race and the Bronx borough president race, where they’re endorsing Gibson. “She is a great ambassador. She is a great facilitator. She is a great person to get resources. And she is a person who is a champion and will make sure that the Bronx has everything it needs to to be successful,” Buckner added.

Like in any Democratic primary, there’s plenty of overlap between the candidates’ priorities. Salamanca has put a finer point on his housing record, claiming responsibility for bringing 10,000 new affordable housing units to his district. (A New York Housing Conference report credited District 17 with creating the highest number of affordable housing units at 17,182 units between 2014 and 2023.)

Salamanca also points to investments he has made as a council member in public schools and security cameras in parks and playgrounds.

Both Gibson and Salamanca are riding the fence on the proposed casino by Bally’s at Ferry Point, though they’ve both said they’re in favor of letting the process play out.

Pitching himself as a competent manager – a description that’s easy to say and hard to define, as the mayor’s race has shown – Salamanca has criticized how Gibson has managed the borough’s 12 community boards. In the past three years, Bronx Community Board 11 has garnered attention for combative meetings, an op-ed penned by its vice chair that maligned Black Americans that led to his demotion, and Gibson’s eventual ouster of him and five other members.

“There are community boards in the Bronx that need guidance,” Salamanca, the former district manager of Community Board 2, said during a debate hosted by BronxNet TV that airs on June 9. Without getting into any specifics, he added, “I’m hearing that as I’m speaking to my district managers. They’re not getting any guidance from Borough Hall.”

Gibson, in response, noted that her office has made community board applications more accessible, including by providing them in Spanish, and called on the mayor’s office and City Council to provide community boards with additional resources to operate efficiently.

They both have the funds to campaign aggressively. Salamanca has outraised Gibson in private contributions, helped in part by real estate donors who he doesn’t dispute his position as land use chair has helped to attract. “I’ve never let someone contributing to my campaign make the decision as to how I govern,” he said, noting that he’s not pro-development at any cost. But an investigation by New York Focus showed that he has directed discretionary funding to housing projects whose developers are donors – not just to Salamanca’s previous City Council campaign accounts, but to a secondary state-level campaign committee discovered by the outlet that is tied to his unpaid and unchallenged district leader position. Over the past three years, that account has raised over $244,000 and spent over $268,000 – potentially an accounting error – on expenses including food, his wife’s paycheck as treasurer in addition to transportation, the outlet reported. Salamanca’s campaign said the account is not being used to benefit his borough president run.

Despite outraising her in his borough president account, Salamanca has claimed just half the amount of public matching funds that Gibson has, making them pretty even with just over $1 million in their respective coffers. But Salamanca is also benefiting from the support of a super PAC funded by Airbnb, which is spending widely in City Council races and on behalf of Salamanca. So far, they’ve allocated around $100,000 to social media ads and mailers that describe Salamanca as the candidate for “cleaner streets, safer neighborhoods, better quality of life.”