Will the Queens special election be a 2013 replay?
When supporters of ranked-choice voting make their case for why the new voting system is good for Black and Latino New Yorkers, they’ll often point to a specific race: the February 2013 special election in City Council District 31 in Queens. There, a white, Orthodox Jewish candidate named Pesach Osina came within 79 votes – less than 1 percentage point – of winning a Southeast Queens district that – as of the 2010 census – was 68% Black, 16% Hispanic and just 11% white. Besides Osina, the other seven candidates on the ballot, including the winner Donovan Richards, were Black. The numbers showed that the Black vote was split among several candidates, while the parts of the district with a large Orthodox Jewish population voted overwhelmingly for Osina.