Republicans made inroads across the five boroughs Tuesday, with more ballots cast for Donald Trump than any Republican presidential candidate in more than two decades.
That red tide was high enough in Southern Brooklyn for former NYPD sergeant Steve Chan to oust Democrat incumbent Iwen Chu, giving Republicans their first State senate seat in the borough since Marty Golden — another police officer turned politician — was voted out in 2018.
Chan’s win came as Asian-American voters in the district have shifted to the right, motivated in part by opposition to a forthcoming Bensonhurst homeless shelter.
Members of Brooklyn’s GOP gathered at the Bay Ridge Manor Tuesday evening were triumphant as the results rolled in.
“It is absolutely a red wave, but it’s a wave because people are frustrated,” Richard Barsamian, Brooklyn’s Republican Party chairman, told THE CITY.
“That red wave cannot happen without crossover Democrat support. We’re only opposed to those Democrats who decide that they want to stray from moderate, common-sense representation of the people.”
Chan defeated the incumbent soundly, besting Chu by more than 5,000 votes and 10 percentage points.
‘More Republicans Elected in Brooklyn Than in 60 Years’
In the borough’s two other competitive local races, Republican Assemblymembers Alec Brook-Krasny and Michael Novakhov both appeared to hold the seats they’d flipped red in 2022. But Novakhov was up by just 270 votes as of Wednesday afternoon and his Democratic challenger Joey Saban said he was waiting for the absentee ballots to be counted before conceding.
“We can definitely take this seat in two years,” former Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Frank Seddio was overheard saying at Saban’s watch party in Homecrest Tuesday evening. The 78-year-old, who the county party has nominated to be a commissioner on the city’s Board of Elections, bemoaned that “We have more Republicans elected in Brooklyn now than we have in 60 years.”
In the 17th State Senate District, which encompasses parts of Sunset Park and Bensonhurst, Chan, a former NYPD officer, made fighting Mayor Eric Adams’ plan for the neighborhood’s first and only homeless shelter a central plank of his campaign.
“Chan always supported us” in protesting against the 86th Street homeless shelter, said Lina Chen, a Bensonhurst community activist who immigrated from China in 2005. “People call him and he comes right away, Iwen Chu, never,”.
Speaking to THE CITY at Bay Ridge Manor Tuesday evening, Chen said she’d voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but had since been organizing for Republicans, first fighting to maintain tests to determine admission to elite public high schools and to roll back bail reform, and more recently against the forthcoming shelter.
“The community needs common-sense people,” she said.
Opposition to the forthcoming homeless shelter exploded into the headlines in July when local Democratic City Councilwoman Susan Zhuang, who has aligned herself with Republicans in the conservative district, bit a police officer. Protests have continued daily since.
The shelter is slated to house long-term homeless New Yorkers rather than newly arriving migrants from the Southern Border, more than 200,000 of whom have arrived in New York City shelters since 2022. Still the two issues were intertwined for many voters.
“Starting with the migrant issue, I do see that they were trying to open a migrant shelter around here recently,” said a 33-year-old first time voter named Dave as he cast an early ballot Bensonhurst last week. “They were doing it around schools, they were doing it around daycares. I was really against that,” he said, explaining why he voted Republican up and down the ticket.
Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, said she was confident Democrats could reclaim Chu’s seat in the future. “We did well in Southern Brooklyn, and deeply congratulate all our Brooklyn Democratic victors, as well as those who fought hard races but fell short,” she said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Brooklyn Democratic Party didn’t return a request for comment immediately. Justin Brannan, the Democratic City Councilmember who represents Bay Ridge, said Tuesday’s results represent years of set-backs for members of the party who’ve been organizing to try to keep South Brooklyn in Democratic control.
“People are angry but we need leaders who will speak to that anger instead of exploiting it to divide us further,” he said. “Today is a great day for demagogues. It’s a very bad day for everyone else.”
