What makes a state legislator run for City Council?

Carmen De La Rosa did it. Mark Weprin did it. Charles and Inez Barron, in two remarkably efficient decades, took their turns doing it too. State legislators trading their seats for City Council is nothing new. In the 2025 election cycle, three state legislators have so far filed to run for City Council seats. But what drives a politician to give up a non-term-limited office in the – in some ways – more powerful state Legislature for a term-limited one in the Council is not just about the easier commute and pay bump. 

Assembly Members Harvey Epstein and Eddie Gibbs, along with state Sen. Simcha Felder, have all filed to run for open seats in the Council next year. Epstein is running in the East Village, Felder is running for the Brooklyn seat held by outgoing Council Member Kalman Yeger (who is making a reverse switch to the Assembly), and Gibbs has filed to run in the East Harlem-Bronx district occupied by term-limited Council Member Diana Ayala. A handful of other state lawmakers are running for other city-level seats, including mayor and borough president. Thanks to off-year election cycles, state lawmakers can run for city office without giving up the opportunity to run for their existing seats again if the bid doesn’t work out.

While serving in the state Legislature has obvious advantages – a lack of term limits and an opportunity to pass statewide policy among them – the council provides not just a $6,000 base salary bump and a local job, but the opportunity for members to have more immediate influence over their districts, including through land use actions decided at the council level and more pork-barrel spending to allocate in their districts.

“I don’t have that city money to throw around”

Democratic political consultant Ryan Adams recalled a recent meeting with an unnamed Assembly member who lamented the discrepancy in discretionary spending. “I don't have that city money to throw around,” they quipped. Individual City Council members can spend on eligible not-for-profit organizations in their districts through a variety of discretionary vehicles in the budget. Council members get a base lump sum of $760,000, with an additional allocation of $25,000 to $100,000 based on poverty levels in their districts. On top of that, council members get a base $5 million to spend on capital projects – installing air conditioning in school classrooms, for example, or delivering new computers to local libraries. Members can access additional money through a speaker’s fund. 

In the state Legislature, by comparison, the process is murkier, and, Assembly Member turned Council Member Carmen De La Rosa said, more discretionary. Assembly Member Ron Kim noted that the pot that members get for programmatic funding for organizations in their districts fluctuates based on the year, but estimated that it’s around $150,000, in addition to a more consistent allocation of around $1 million in capital funding. There are opportunities for additional funding determined by leadership, as well as separate grants through the State and Municipal Facilities fund. Mike Murphy, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said that there’s not really a set amount for the Senate either, as it fluctuates year to year. 

Base funding may be higher in the council, but Adams noted that a skilled state legislator knows how to get funding. “A really good state Assembly member doesn’t need a big discretionary budget,” he said in an interview last month. “A really good state Assembly member knows where the state money is, and can help funnel it to the right people.”

But becoming a “really good” member might take more time in the Legislature than it does in the council. 

Term limits = more instant gratification

Democratic political consultant Trip Yang, whose firm is working on Epstein’s campaign, argued that a freshman City Council member will have more relative power than a freshman Assembly member.

There’s a big fish/small pond element to the council, where the fish get cycled out every eight years or so. Compared to the 150 seats in the state Assembly and the 63 seats in the state Senate, the City Council has a total of 51 seats. The state Legislature not only has more members competing for power, but members who can hold onto that power for decades, sometimes making it more difficult for a freshman legislator to compete. “It takes longer to accrue power because there are no term limits in the Assembly,” Yang said. To accomplish your priorities and have influence in the Assembly, Yang said, chairing a prominent committee and building good relationships with leadership is essential, but that can take years. 

Those kinds of relationships with the speaker and committee positions are important in the council too. But additional levers of power built into the council role can democratize the body more, Yang said. The practice of member deference, in which the body typically defers to the local council member on land use issues in their district, is one such lever. On day one, “You’re already a power broker. Everyone’s coming to you,” he said.

Some politicians who have made the switch to the council – or are working on doing so – noted that council members can have a more direct impact on their constituents, often through daily quality-of-life issues. While there’s nothing that prevents state legislators from taking up that work too, the council works more closely with – and directly oversees – city agencies. If the city Department of Transportation ignores a call from a council member about street lights being out in their district, they might have to answer for it the next time they sit before the council for an oversight hearing, De La Rosa noted. “I feel like there’s a sense of urgency from the council, because we are the oversight body of these city agencies, and at the end of the day, they want to be responsive,” she said.

For Epstein, who was elected to represent parts of the East Village and Kips Bay in the Assembly in 2018, all of the above reasons factored into his decision to run for an overlapping council seat – even though he noted that the state Legislature’s policy-making authority is broader than the council’s. The most obvious difference between serving in the two levels of government – one of the most frequently cited reasons for the allure of the City Council – mattered to Epstein too. “For me, obviously I live in the city, so I take away the commute,” he said. “It’s a better family decision – you’re home every night.”