During the June 22 primary, residents of District 25 in Jackson Heights, Queens, will use ranked choice voting to elect their new council member. Photo Credit Sajina Shrestha.
You see brightly colored posters taped on businesses and storefronts when you walk 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens. Each one is about a candidate running for the District 25 New York City Council seat in the June primary.
Council Member Daniel Dromm will be term-limited out of office. Nine people want the job.
The district covers Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. It is one of the most diverse districts in Queens. According to the Queens community district profiles, 66.6 percent of residents are Hispanic, more than half are foreign-born, 32.8 percent are Asian and 52 percent self-identify as having limited English proficiency.
We interviewed three prominent city council candidates about their campaigns.
Carolyn Tran is a city council candidate who has worked with Council Member Dromm. She has built trust with different communities through her work in the council member’s office.
“I plan to represent the same way that I have been showing up for the last decade, which is by letting the community lead and tell me what it is they need from their representative and doing the work for them,” said Tran. “I’m not a person that believes in what I can do for people, but it’s more what I can do with people and movements.”
Tran stresses the importance of community leaders. She intends to work closely with community organizers on issues ranging from economic justice to public health and LGBTQ+ rights.
Shekar Krishnan, city council candidate, believes in solidarity across different communities. He emphasizes the need to support immigrant communities and communities of color. He wants to make his office a welcoming space for everyone.
“I think that the only way to do this work as an official,” he explained, “… is to ensure that a city council office is as accessible, from a language standpoint, from a cultural standpoint to every single immigrant community. That’s the only way to make sure that government services that are inaccessible are actually reaching the people that they should be serving the most.”
Krishnan, an Indian American, speaks fluent Spanish and his campaign is multilingual. He has held virtual events about trans advocacy, funds for excluded workers, and rank choice voting in Spanish, Bengali, and Nepali.
Yi Chen, another highly visible candidate, has worked with former New York State Assembly Assistant Speaker Felix Ortiz as his Asian Community Liaison Director. He says he wants to create an open line of conversation between different communities.
“It begins with hiring and diversifying my office first and hiring community members from diverse communities. What I am going to also do is bring together all the community members to create an advisory council in my office,” Chen said. “In that way, I can bring in a couple of leaders from the Nepali community, the Pakistani community, the Bangladeshi community. We have all the community leaders at one table, and we can discuss what is going on.”
Chen’s campaign works closely with many communities in Elmhurst to deliver groceries to elders and help immigrants apply for benefits.
During the June 22 primary, residents will use ranked-choice voting to elect their new council member. This means they get to choose more than one candidate in order of their preference, and the candidate who gets the most votes wins.
Tags: Carolyn Tran City College Journalism Council Member Daniel Dromm Cuny District 25 diversity Jackson Heights New York City Council NYC Politics Queens Ranked-choice voting Sajina Shrestha Shekar Krishnan The City College of New York Yi Chen
