Jordan Set To Upset Perkins For Central Harlem City Council Seat

HARLEM, NY — Kristin Richardson Jordan is set to defeat incumbent Bill Perkins in Central Harlem’s District 9 City Council primary, according to new results released Tuesday, a result that would shake the neighborhood's political foundations.

Jordan, 34, took a 275-vote lead last week after the Board of Elections released the ranked-choice results from all votes cast in-person. On Tuesday, the Board added more than 2,700 absentee ballots to the mix and Jordan retained her lead, though it narrowed to just 100 votes.

Now, Jordan, a neighborhood activist, poet and teacher, is poised to topple Perkins, 72, a household name in Harlem who has faded from public view in recent years as he deals with mysterious health problems.

The only votes that remain uncounted are 942 absentee ballots citywide that had been flagged for various issues. To win re-election, Perkins would need to make up his 100-vote margin through those ballots when they are counted next week, a highly unlikely outcome.

The Perkins campaign could not immediately be reached for comment about the results, while Jordan celebrated her likely victory.

H.A.R.L.E.M! We disrupted the district with #RadicalLove and broke the machine!

Our community has been sold out by the establishment and we're ready for change & new leadership. We're reviving Harlem's Black radical history and putting the service back in public service. pic.twitter.com/5ShulERcW4
— Kristin Richardson Jordan (KRJ) NY City Council 9 (@Kristin4Harlem) July 6, 2021

Perkins has represented District 9 since 2017, on top of a previous two terms from 1998 to 2005 — interrupted by a decade in the State Senate. In recent years, however, he has largely disappeared from the public stage as he deals with unspecified health issues. His surprise re-election campaign has barely registered in the neighborhood — he has no website or social media, has spent just $4,180, and has not responded to media requests — but remained formidable due to his high name recognition.

Amid complaints that Harlem was not being adequately represented on the Council, a whopping 12 Democrats lined up to challenge Perkins for the nomination — including his former chief of staff, a staffer with the Manhattan Borough President’s office and a former NYPD official.

No challengers, though, caught on as much as Jordan, a self-described democratic socialist who called her campaign a “grassroots movement.”

Speaking to Patch last week, Jordan said she was optimistic about how ranked-choice voting would shake out, noting that her campaign had encouraged voters to rank her second or third if they already supported someone else.

“We actually campaigned for number twos,” she said.

Jordan said her campaign was driven by issues, rather than personality. Her top priorities include police accountability and gentrification, with her platform including calls to cut NYPD funding, halt evictions, raise taxes on the wealthy and stop NYCHA privatization plans.

“The story is this grassroots movement that started, literally, in my mom’s kitchen with six people two and a half years ago and grew from there,” she said. “It’s not about me, it’s really about Harlem.”

Perkins shocked many observers when he launched his re-election bid in March. One Harlem political insider who previously worked alongside Perkins told Patch that Perkins's health had been "deteriorating for years," and had led him to become disoriented and combative toward others.

Last year, City & State magazine singled Perkins out among city lawmakers for his poor attendance record in the City Council, his low number of bills passed, and his office's unresponsiveness to constituent emails. He responded to the publication in an email, saying his public service was "not about the number of tweets or press stories or even being at every meeting."

Jordan was narrowly trailing Perkins on primary night, when only first-choice votes had been counted, before making up the ground through ranked-choice voting. That may make District 9 one of the few races citywide where the winner is different from the first-choice leader.

If Jordan wins the nomination and November's general election, she would take office in January.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Shaun Abreu was victorious in West Harlem's District 7, while Diana Ayala was easily re-elected in East Harlem's District 8.

Related District 9 coverage:

• Here's Where Central Harlem Candidates Stand On Your Issues
• Harlem's 3 City Council Races: Where Things Stand
• Bill Perkins Jolts Harlem Council Race, Launches Re-Election Bid
• Harlem City Council Races: What Issues Matter To You?