The June 23 Democratic primaries marked victories for many progressive candidates at the state and local levels.
In many of the major races, voters chose progressive candidates instead of their more moderate counterparts. But results from the Board of Elections reflected a preliminary count of votes from those who physically went to polls and did not include those who voted via absentee ballot.
The BOE reported that it distributed more than 700,000 absentee ballots to registered Democrats, yet only 77,000, or 11 percent, were returned.
As of Wednesday, June 24, these are the unofficial results of some of the prominent Bronx races:
In the 14th Congressional District race, incumbent Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swept up the victory against her challengers. With 449 of 449 districts reporting results, she earned 27,460 of the total votes, or 69.5 percent. At press time, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Badrun Khan and Sam Sloan earned 7,393 (18.73%), 2,040 (5.17%) and 932 (2.36%) of the votes respectively.
In the 12-candidate race in the 15th Congressional District, Ritchie Torres led the polls with 12,421 votes or 29.44 percent of the total votes. Assemblyman Michael Blake and Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr. each received 7,905 (18.74%) and 6,032 (14.30%) of the votes, while Samelys Lopez and Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez earned 5,387 (12.77%) and 4,648 (11.02%) of the votes respectively.
In the race for the 16th Congressional District, progressive candidate Jamaal Bowman earned nearly twice the votes of incumbent Congressman Eliot Engel. With 698 of 732 districts reporting results, Bowman received 27,174 votes (60.76%) to Engel’s 15,372 (34.37%) votes.
With all 219 of the districts reporting results, incumbent Senator Luis Sepulveda earned 9,716 (45.33%) of the votes, while his closest competitor, Pamela Stewart-Martinez, received 6,390 (29.82%) of the votes.
In a landslide win, incumbent Senator Alessandra Biaggi defeated James Gisondi. Biaggi earned 15,307 (78.03%) votes to Gisondi’s 2,469 (12.59%) votes.
The following are the unofficial results from the five State Assembly District races in the Bronx:
State Assembly District 78:
- Assemblyman Jose Rivera (3,854 votes – 71.64%)
- Francisco A. Spies (660 – 12.27%)
State Assembly District 79:
- Chantel Jackson (2,222 – 24.67%)
- Cynthia Cox (1,982 – 22.01%)
- George Alvarez (1,493 – 16.58%)
- Eric Stevenson (1,103 – 12.25%)
- Elvis Santana (1,062 – 11.79%)
- Dion Powell (310 – 3.44%)
State Assembly District 81:
- Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (5,630 – 55.71%)
- George Diaz (3,750 – 37.11%)
State Assembly District 82:
- Assemblyman Michael Benedetto (8,817 – 77.77%)
- Egidio Sementilli (1,422 – 12.54%)
State Assembly District 85:
- Kenneth Burgos (3,541 – 51.71%)
- William Russell Moore (2,365 – 34.54%)
State Assembly District 87:
- Assemblywoman Karines Reyes (5922 – 70.37%)
- Garfield Holland (1,573 – 18.69%)
To see the results from all the races visit nyenr.elections.ny.gov.
