Bayside's District 23 City Council Race: Lee Leads Early Results

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Linda Lee, a non-profit leader, has taken a narrow, early lead as the first-choice, in-person votes roll in for the District 23 City Council race in Bayside

As of Wednesday morning, Lee led the early results with 31.2 percent of the vote, trailed closely by Jaslin Kaur at 26.3 percent and Steve Behar at 13.2 percent, with over 90 percent of scanning machines reported.

Wednesday's results include only the first-choice, in-person votes cast in District 23. Final results will not be known until mid-July, when absentee ballots have been counted and voters' second through fifth choices have been factored into the ranked-choice calculation.

Bayside Patch hasn't fully covered the race to represent District 23 because the eastern district only covers the Bayside Hills portion of Bayside.

But, in the weeks leading up to the election, Patch has reported on the race, as Lee and Kaur reported incidents of sexism from several of their male opponents, and Kaur was deemed "too dangerous" to elect by a political action group that's been criticized for its ties to Donald Trump.

Eight Democratic candidates ran to replace District 23's incumbent Council Member Barry Grodenchik, who was eligible to run for a second term, but chose to retire.

When it comes to the district's fundraising race — which is one way to see how campaigns are faring in elections that have no polling — half of the candidates secured maximum public funding: Lee, Kaur, Debra Markell , and Harpreet Toor (listed in descending order of how much money they have made overall, also taking into account private donations).

Among those candidates Toor narrowly led Markell in the number of in-district donors, though Kaur outpaced every other candidate in terms of the number of donors overall — by nearly 1,000 people.

While Lee and Markell gathered a handful of endorsements each from elected officials, Kaur led the endorsement race too, with high-profile progressive endorsements from the likes of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and a slate of progressive groups and organizations.

For more information about Bayside's city council races, check out Patch's coverage of the nearby District 19 city council race.