NEW YORK — From doorsteps in Windsor Terrace to market stands on the Upper West Side, an army of Democrats continue to battle for New York’s 10th and 12th Congressional Districts as they put their campaigns into high gear, with Election Day on Tuesday.
The races in the two Manhattan districts are the most-watched components of the city’s otherwise sleepy summer primary. The contests are expected to decide who will represent the lion’s share of Manhattan and a swath of brownstown Brooklyn — the general election is seen as a formality in the deep-blue districts.
Two longtime liberal lawmakers, Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, are slugging it out in the 12th District, after a court-ordered redrawing smashed his Upper West Side territory and her Upper East Side district into a single seat.
In the 10th District, which spans from Manhattan’s West Village to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, a diverse field of experienced lawmakers from the state, city and federal level are seeking to trip up Dan Goldman, a political newcomer who led in a recent public poll.
Goldman helped impeach former President Donald Trump and was endorsed by The New York Times editorial board last week. In July, the one-time federal prosecutor put almost $2 million into his own campaign, according to campaign finance records.
His more progressive rivals have banded against him, and a pair — Elizabeth Holtzman, a former congresswoman, and Councilwoman Carlina Rivera — tore into the ultrawealthy front-runner at a news conference in lower Manhattan on Friday morning.
Declaring abortion to be the most urgent issue facing Americans after the Supreme Court erased Roe v. Wade, Rivera asserted that Goldman had changed his position on the issue “four times in three weeks.”
“I don’t believe he can be trusted,” said Rivera, who recently led an abortion protections push in the Council. “There are not enough elite circles or talking-point walkbacks in this world to convince me otherwise.”
Holtzman, 81, said it is a critical time for the district to elect a woman as its House representative.
She called Rivera a “passionate and intense and fearless public servant.” The councilwoman, in turn, called Holtzman “an icon, a trailblazer for all women.” Holtzman served in the House from 1973 to 1981.
The chummy event followed another unusual team-up between rivals earlier in the week: On Monday, Democratic Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., convened a news conference to accuse Goldman of trying to buy the election.
Together, the events came as twin blitzes on Goldman’s aggressive spending and his waffling remarks about reproductive rights.
“They can run a negative campaign if they want,” Goldman said of his rivals as he addressed reporters outside the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.
On abortion, he added: “I have been unequivocally clear that a woman has a 100% right to choose.”
“My personal view is that it’s entirely up to a woman to make this decision,” said Goldman, the race’s most centrist leading contender. “Men should have no role in this decision, and the government should have no role.”
In July, he told Hamodia, a Jewish news outlet, that he would not object to a state law barring abortions after a fetus is considered viable.
But like any low-interest House primary race, the contest may boil down less to policy than to the intensity of the candidates’ outreach. So far, early voting has resulted in an anemic turnout with only 230,000 New Yorkers going to the polls within the past week, according to the Board of Elections. The city is home to 3.4 million active Democratic voters.
On Friday morning, Rivera, of Manhattan’s Kips Bay, dropped into Brooklyn’s Park Slope to press her case to voters, then headed to the Lower East Side to greet NYCHA residents.
Holtzman, of Boerum Hill, talked to voters at a Second Ave. Subway station in Manhattan and took a trip to the iconic Lower East Side cafe Russ & Daughters. Meanwhile, Jones decamped to Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, to knock on doors, then traveled to Prospect Heights to linger with locals.
Jones, one of the first openly gay Black members of Congress, moved to Carroll Gardens after being drawn out of his current district north of the city. Seen as a rising star in the party, he has nonetheless faced an uphill battle winning over his neighbors or dispelling questions about his politically motivated relocation.
Niou, of the Financial District, was set to talk to voters at the 7th. Ave Q stop near Grand Army Plaza, and Goldman, of Tribeca, worked to get out the vote in Chinatown. Niou is perhaps the race’s most progressive choice.
At the border between the 10th and the 12th District, Maloney held a gun violence-focused news conference in her official House capacity.
The 76-year-old Maloney has seemed tireless in her attempts to hold onto the district that she has represented since 2013, and has pushed the boundaries of campaign ethics. (Gothamist reported Thursday that she flooded the district with taxpayer-funded mailers; her campaign said in a statement that she has “always communicated with her constituents” and pointed disapprovingly at dark-money attacks that have targeted her.)
Maloney may be falling behind. An Emerson College survey published Thursday showed Nadler up 19 percentage points. Both Congress members have served in the chamber since the 1992 election.
On Friday, Maloney greeted voters at a market on E. 78th St, her home turf. On his side of Central Park, Nadler, 75, headed to the 97th St. Greenmarket.
And Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old East Village lawyer hoping to retire both lawmakers, introduced himself to voters on the Upper East Side before wrapping up on the Upper West next to a hopping Kool Man ice cream truck.
Eric Koch, Patel’s spokesman, said the pace of the day was “frantic.”
“Lots of stops,” Koch said. “Lots of energy.”
