New Majority NYC drops slate of City Council 2025 endorsements

Elsie Encarnacion, Kayla Santosuosso, Virginia Maloney and Andrea Gordillo are among a slate of New York City Council candidates getting an early endorsement in their respective upcoming Democratic primaries from the New Majority NYC – an influential organization dedicated to building Democratic women’s political power in the city. 

The New Majority NYC, formerly known as 21 in ‘21, has played an instrumental role in bolstering the number of women represented in the City Council since the organization was founded in 2017. Progress has been sweeping, with voters electing 31 women to the 51-member body in 2021, well surpassing the organization’s initial goal. Now with ten competitive open City Council seats – three of which were held by term-limited women – and over a dozen women incumbents facing strong challenges, the New Majority NYC is rolling out endorsements for 34 women, hoping to protect and sustain the hard-won progress. Most of those endorsements were made specifically for the first-choice slot through ranked-choice voting, but a handful were for other rankings.

“We’re deeply concerned that we are going backwards in our goal. We have 31 women in the council. We don’t feel that we’ll have 31 women next year,” said Ebonie Simpson, executive director of The New Majority NYC. “We do hope we can maintain the majority, but we’re unclear if that will happen either.” The first round of endorsements were shared exclusively with City & State.

While the City Council primary election isn’t until June 24 and the general election not until Nov. 4, the New Majority NYC generally releases its endorsements relatively early in the cycle. That’s to give the organization more time to support candidates through the petitioning process so they can secure their spot on the ballot and to help them build ground support through canvassing, fundraising and collaborating with other organizations to help them be as “visible and known as possible,” according to Simpson. Newer candidates will also be matched with mentors to lend them further guidance and support. Endorsement decisions were made based on campaign professionalism, candidate viability (particularly through the lens of fundraising), their understanding of local, district and city-wide policy, and their alignment with the New Majority NYC’s values. The organization did not endorse any of the four Republican women incumbents in the council.

Simpson said the stakes are high. While there are still a lot of unknowns, in a worst case scenario, women could lose up to six or seven seats to male candidates – meaning the historic majority would be lost, she said. That could have an impact on who is appointed the next City Council speaker in 2025 – and perhaps even on the types of issues that are prioritized by the body in the future. A report released by the New Majority NYC last fall argued the City Council’s women-majority took on long overlooked issues like maternal health and domestic violence.

Lower Manhattan’s District 2, currently represented by term-limited Council Member Carlina Rivera, is one such competitive Democratic primary race being closely eyed by the organization. The New Majority NYC gave Gordillo, chair of Community Board 3 and a longtime nonprofit leader, the first-ranked endorsement, community activist and nonprofit leader Sarah Batchu the second-ranked slot, and prior City Council candidate Allison Ryan the third-ranked endorsement. Batchu and Gordillo in particular have proven themselves to be prolific fundraisers despite being first-time candidates, but they are contending with limited name recognition compared to the two well-known men in the race – Assembly Member Harvey Epstein and the scandal-scarred former Rep. Anthony Weiner. 

In District 8, another competitive open seat in East Harlem and the South Bronx, the New Majority NYC endorsed Encarnacion – the chief of staff of term-limited City Council Member Diana Ayala – for the first-ranked slot and Bronx Community Board 1 Chair Clarisa Alayeto for the second-ranked slot. There’s a lot of unknowns in that race. While Encarnacion has so far led the field in fundraising, the already crowded Democratic primary could still see competitive new entrants like “Exonerated Five” member Raymond Santana. 

Democrats Santosuosso, chief counsel in term-limited City Council Member Justin Brannan’s office, and Maloney, the daughter of former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, also scored endorsements in District 47 and District 4 – both open seats. The lone candidate challenging a sitting City Council member who received a first-ranked endorsement is Elizabeth Lewinsohn, former policy head at the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau and a member of Community Board 1. She’s challenging City Council Member Chris Marte for the Lower Manhattan District 1 seat.

While the New Majority NYC gave incumbent City Council Member Shahana Hanif the first-ranked endorsement for the District 39 seat in Brooklyn, the organization still gave challenger Maya Kornberg, a senior research fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, the second slot.  

The organization plans to release endorsements for some of the other council districts in the coming months, including term-limited Council Member Francisco Moya’s District 21 seat in Queens and term-limited Council Member Rafael Salamanca Jr.’s District 17 seat in the Bronx. 

The New Majority NYC also endorsed incumbent council members Julie Menin, Gale Brewer, Carmen De La Rosa, Pierina Sanchez, Althea Stevens, Amanda Farias, Sandra Ung, Tiffany Cabán, Linda Lee, Julie Won, Nantasha Williams, Lynn Schulman, Selvena Brooks-Powers, Jennifer Gutiérrez, Crystal Hudson, Sandy Nurse, Alexa Avilés, Rita Joseph, Susan Zhuang, Farah Louis, Mercedes Narcisse and Kamillah Hanks.