Upper East Side City Council Race Hangs In Ranked-Choice Balance

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Days after the primary election, the Upper East Side's District 5 City Council race is one of many across the five boroughs whose outcome still hangs in the balance of ranked-choice votes and absentee ballots.

First-round results show Julie Menin leading the hard-fought, seven-way race with about 33.9 percent of the vote. But that total only includes first-choice votes cast early or on Tuesday.

In second place is Tricia Shimamura, who trails Menin by 2,172 votes, having won 23.4 percent of first-choice picks. Rebecca Lamorte and Kim Moscaritolo were in a more distant third and fourth place, at about 12 and 11.4 percent, respectively.

The next major update will come on Tuesday, June 29, when the Board of Elections will release ranked-choice results for ballots cast in-person. Meanwhile, more than 5,100 absentee ballots had been turned in by Democratic voters in District 5 as of Friday evening, though they will not be counted until mid-July.

On Friday, both leading candidates told Patch that they were optimistic about their chances.

"We have a path and that’s very clear," said Shimamura, expressing hope that other candidates' supporters had ranked her lower down on their ballots, and noting that her campaign had encouraged absentee voting.

Menin said she was confident her lead would hold, calling it "a clear testament to the strong support we have in every corner of District 5."

Ben Kallos, the District 5 incumbent who ran for Manhattan Borough President, was in a distant third place in that race after the first round of voting, trailing State Sen. Brad Hoylman and fellow Councilmember Mark Levine.

Outside spending still debated

At least three candidates — Moscaritolo, Billy Freeland and Christopher Sosa — have already conceded the race. Lamorte said Tuesday night that her campaign had "a path forward to victory," thanks to ranked-choice voting.

Shimamura, too, may have reason to believe that rivals' supporters favored her over Menin. At times, five of the candidates formed a sort of informal alliance against Menin, criticizing the boatloads of outside money that poured in to support her campaign. (That alliance was not as explicit as in other districts, like Upper Manhattan's District 7, where five candidates formed a ranked-choice coalition against the frontrunner.)

"Ideologically, I was very aligned with some of the other candidates who are lower down in the results," Shimamura said.

All told, outside groups spent $349,000 to support Menin, according to the latest filings — more than any other Council candidate in the city, and nearly double the amount that a single campaign would be allowed to spend. Paying for everything from mailers to a billboard truck, the money came from a mixture of PACs aligned with real estate developers, labor unions and business owners.

Menin, who was barred by law from coordinating PAC spending, reiterated on Friday that she disavowed "all outside spending." Asked why the groups had chosen to support her, she said, "You'd have to ask them."

"The continued focus on this outside spending is yet another attempt to take away from hundreds of thousands of phonecalls, tens of thousands of doors knocked, and hundreds of meetings with community members our campaign made to connect with the 5th district," Menin later added in a statement.

In any rate, the effectiveness of such spending is far from clear. In the mayoral race, for example, outside interests spent millions trying to support candidates like Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire — only for them to finish nowhere near the top. Other City Council candidates, too, received an influx of PAC support but finished well short of victory.

"There’s really an unclear picture on whether any of the outside spending mattered at the end of the day," City Councilmember Keith Powers, who was re-elected unopposed to his East Side district, — and who supported Menin’s campaign — told Patch.

More Upper East Side election coverage:

• Here's Where The Upper East Side Candidates Stand On Your Issues
• Big Bucks Pour Into Upper East Side Council Race As Primary Nears
• Outside Spending In Upper East Side Council Race Draws Scrutiny
• UES Council Candidates Face Off In Person: Important Takeaways