Kristy Marmorato, the Bronx GOP-backed candidate for City Council District 13, declared victory in the Republican primary on Wednesday afternoon.
Preliminary results released Wednesday by the NYC Board of Elections (BOE) show Marmorato maintaining a lead over George Havranek by 56 votes after the third round of ballots in ranked-choice voting. While absentee ballots are still being counted, Havranek would need to make up substantial ground to overcome the vote totals.
Marmorato will face Councilmember Marjorie Velázquez in November’s general election showdown if Wednesday’s results hold. Velázquez, a first-term councilmember, won the Democratic primary against three challengers last Tuesday with 67% of the vote.
Feeling ecstatic when reached on Wednesday, Marmorato told the Bronx Times she is confident she won the primary and that she will win over district Democrats to beat Velázquez in the general. If she succeeds, she will be the first Republican elected to public office in the Bronx since 2004.
“I’m grateful, I’m happy for my team,” she said. “We’ve outworked the other candidates, and that’s what it comes down to. We put the time in, we made the effort.”
Marmorato has been criticized by her Republican opponents for her relationships within the establishment — her brother is the Bronx GOP Chair Michael Rendino and her husband, Gino Marmorato, is the Bronx GOP BOE commissioner.
“In the face of nasty personal attacks and mud-slinging, Kristy Marmorato kept her focus on what matters to Bronx voters and outworked her opponents in delivering her message directly to the voters,” Rendino said on Wednesday. “Kristy is the right candidate with the right message and she will be victorious again on Election Day in November.”
Wednesday’s unofficial results only include absentee ballots scanned before June 27 (the day of the primary), but absentee ballots could be received up until July 5, according to the BOE website. As of Monday, 113 out of 212 distributed absentee ballots have been returned in the race, according to BOE tallies, but BOE spokespersons have not clarified how many of these ballots are included in the ranked-choice totals, or how many affidavit ballots there are.
Wednesday’s BOE report shows results from a second round of ranked-choice voting, which eliminated write-in candidates, and a third round, which eliminated Hasime “Samantha” Zherka.
In the third round, Marmorato took home 51.5% of the votes, or 952 votes, according to unofficial tallies by the BOE. Mirroring the pattern of the race, Havranek trailed behind her with 896 votes, or 48.5%.
Havranek managed to pick up 61 of Zherka’s voters, but it wasn’t enough to close the gap with Marmorato, who captured 46 of Zherka’s voters. Fifty-five of Zherka’s remaining votes didn’t go to either candidate.
Last Tuesday night, Marmorato came close to victory with just over 96% scanners reporting, reaching nearly 48% with 870 votes. The election would have been called had she reached the 50% benchmark that night, but instead, the race progressed to additional rounds of tabulations thanks to ranked-choice voting.
That night, Havranek garnered 44% and 796 votes, which he confidently described as “striking distance” of Marmorato. Zherka ran a distant third with just 144 votes.
But in contrast to his attitude on election night, Havranek — who outraised all the candidates in both District 13 primaries — had a solemn tone on Wednesday.
“There is no crying in baseball and there is no crying in politics,” he told the Bronx Times. “The winner goes on, the loser goes on to fight another battle, another day. That being said, we have things on hold as I reevaluate the campaign with my family, friends and supporters. And bear in mind our community’s battle will continue against entrenched leadership.”
Havranek, who has previously spoken about running on his own independent We The People ballot line in November, declined to comment further.
The results aren’t final until all absentee and affidavit ballots are processed, and the BOE will release reports each week until every ballot is counted. The updated results will be posted on Tuesday, July 11, and the election will be certified after July 17.
Marmorato, Havranek advance to second round of voting in razor-thin CD-13 GOP primary
Reach Aliya Schneider at aschneider@schnepsmedia.com or (718) 260-4597. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
