Deborah Glick backs district leader to succeed her in Assembly

Outgoing Assembly Member Deborah Glick has picked a successor. 

The Assembly member is backing local District Leader Jeannine Kiely, who also serves as President of Friends of the Elizabeth Street Garden. Kiely filed today to run for the seat, state campaign finance records show. But she’s far from the only Democrat eyeing the Assembly District 66 seat. 

Kiely confirmed to City & State that she’s planning to run and will launch her campaign in the next month. 

“I’m very excited to run. I love this community. I’ve lived in the 66th Assembly District for 30 years, and it’s my home,” Kiely said.

Glick said that once she decided she wasn’t seeking reelection, she called Kiely to ask if she’d be interested in running to replace her. “I am very happy that she is,” the Assembly member said, adding that Kiely has “not just the intelligence but the experience and commitment and the knowledge of the neighborhood” needed to take over the job. 

Kiely is the former chair of Community Board 2 and currently chairs the community board’s traffic and transportation committee. She is also a co-founder of Literacy Academy Collective, an education nonprofit. In 2013, she co-founded Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden to fight for the lot to be opened to the public; the group no longer manages the day-to-day operations of the garden, but continues to advocate for its preservation. 

The garden is a hot button issue in the district and symbolic of YIMBY/NIMBY debates citywide. The city pushed for years to develop a senior apartment building on part of the lot, which has faced fierce resistance from locals and fans of the park. Council Member Chris Marte struck a deal with Mayor Eric Adams to preserve the space entirely, but Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has recently come out in favor of building the rentals. 

Though Kiely is the only one who has made it official, plenty of other Democrats are weighing whether to toss their hat in the race. State Committee Member Ben Yee – who, along with Kiely, is a member of the Downtown Independent Democrats club – told City & State he is “very much considering” running for Glick’s seat.

Yee worked as the New York digital director for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, and he has served in various good government groups and initiatives since then. He described both himself and Kiely as “stalwarts of the district,” but he believes he has a natural base of support in the good government world. 

“I have a bunch of ideas that I’m currently fleshing out … about how government could operate better, and how we could safeguard against people like Donald Trump, and honestly, the ambitions of the modern Republican party,” Yee said.

District Leader Arthur Schwartz initially considered a run after Glick announced her plans to retire, but he is now throwing his support behind Kiely. 

“She’s wonderful. Really community oriented person, ‘activist to her bones’ person,” he said. 

Yee and Kiely would likely have more in common with each other than with someone like Ryder Kessler, the co-executive director of Abundance New York who unsuccessfully ran for the seat in 2022. Some downtown politicos are bracing for either Kessler, or someone aligned with his YIMBY politics, to make a bid for the seat.  

“I have heard from people that have regular dealings with him that he’s already putting together a run,” Schwartz said of Kessler. 

Kessler himself did not confirm or deny whether he plans to run.

“I’ve been hearing from many community members about the race, and it’s been gratifying to have those conversations as I decide how to best be of service,” he told City & State in a text message. “At the moment, though, I am laser-focused on my organization’s work on tomorrow’s votes to pass the charter amendments.”

Allen Roskoff, president of the influential Jim Owles Democratic Club, said he was hoping for a candidate in favor of building housing in Elizabeth Street Garden’s lot. The Jim Owles club previously backed Kessler’s unsuccessful attempt to unseat Glick in 2022 and YIMBY candidate Jess Coleman’s unsuccessful primary challenge against City Council Member Chris Marte earlier this year.

“Deborah Glick was perhaps the most NIMBY member of the assembly,” Roskoff said. “That has to be undone. We can’t have another person who opposes any and everything.”