Huntley launches new Assembly campaign against Zinerman

It’s time for Eon Huntley to ride again. 

The socialist candidate celebrated his official campaign launch at the extremely crowded Therapy Wine Bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant, with New York City Council Member Chi Ossé and state Sen. Jabari Brisport at his side. 

Huntley is a retail worker and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which is backing his primary challenge to incumbent Assembly Member Stefani Zinerman. Huntley previously challenged Zinerman in 2024 and came within 6 points of unseating her. 

Supporters gearing up for a second run said this time already felt different. 

“This is something new,” said Nonye Brown-West, a DSA member and the emcee for the night, pointing to the crowds packing in at the bar and the presence of other electeds – including Ossé, who had kept his distance from the race last time around. “I didn’t see this during his last campaign.”

Huntley agreed that he’s starting from a stronger place this time. “I’ve continued to build my connections and relationships, and I think that's evident in the room,” he said.

Huntley and his supporters are feeling ambitious following Mamdani’s victory, especially his success in winning over Black voters. The mayor-elect started out in a rough spot with older members of the community but drastically increased his share of the vote after winning the Democratic nomination – he won 61% of the vote in the 479 precincts with the highest numbers of Black voters in the general election.

Ossé’s backing is a new and welcome boost for Huntley; the council member declined to endorse either him or Zinerman in 2024. But in the afterglow of Mamdani’s primary victory, he made a point to tell the incumbent that he would work to get her out of office. 

“Let it be known that I will be supporting a challenger against my State Assemblymember,” Ossé tweeted in early July. If it wasn’t clear enough, he posted again in August that he was “gonna make sure she loses.” 

Zinerman had the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in her fight against Huntley in 2024, while Brisport supported the upstart DSA candidate from the beginning. Some observers described the primary as a proxy war between Jeffries and DSA; Ossé is entering that battlefield as he weighs a run against Jeffries himself. 

In his speech, Huntley touted Mamdani’s numbers in Black Brooklyn as proof that the area was ready for new leadership.

“It wasn’t just in Bed-Stuy, it was all over Central Brooklyn. It was in Flatbush, it was in East New York,” the candidate said. “All these places that people had doubts about what Black people wanted, about a socialist politics that’s actually addressing the material needs of the working class – they said ‘No, that’s what we want.’”

Zinerman and her supporters (Jeffries chief among them) seized on the optics of Huntley’s campaign in 2024: a hip, young candidate flanked by plenty of white DSA canvassers, running to unseat an older incumbent favored by the Black Democratic establishment, all against the backdrop of increasing gentrification. 

A little over a year later, Mamdani’s affordability-focused campaign was able to thread the needle with an emphasis on keeping native New Yorkers in the city. 

On Tuesday night, Huntley and Ossé both made sure to highlight Black displacement in the neighborhoods in their remarks. 

“We’ve seen a crazy displacement in this neighborhood. We’ve seen the rents rise. We’ve seen a change, and we’ve just lost so much in this time. And we have individuals that are so-called leaders, but they don’t seem to have any vision,” Huntley said.

Ossé said it had been “a difficult four years” to push an agenda focused on housing affordability, citing “an individual in office who’s been pushing back on that progress.”

“As individuals who got elected to uplift this community, to push back against the historic Black displacement that we've been seeing within this district,
we know that now’s the time to elect Eon Huntley,” Ossé said to cheers from the crowd. 

The Council member also framed a Huntley win as important for the incoming mayor. “We need allies in Albany who will fight to tax the rich,” Ossé said. 

Ossé is reportedly on rocky terms with Mamdani, since the mayor-elect (along with a significant number of DSA members) is not supportive of an uphill battle from the left to unseat Jeffries. But at the Huntley camp, Ossé was received with gratitude. 

When asked about whether recent headlines about Ossé were causing any stress, a Huntley volunteer said the team was “very supportive of Chi” in general. 

“Chi is a really good person. He was an endorser on day one,” the volunteer said. “And when someone supports your campaign, you care about them as well. So it’s very important that we show unity in all of this right now.”

When asked if he had any thoughts on Ossé’s plans, Huntley said “I’m just waiting to watch and see like everyone else.”