City Council District 12 — a legislative district whose boundaries include the Wakefield, Baychester, Eastchester, Olinville, Co-op City, Edenwald and Williamsbridge sections — is quickly earning a reputation as one of the city’s most consistent election turnout districts.
Prior to the June 27 primary, the 2021 primary in District 12 saw a voter turnout of 21%, the highest in the borough. On Tuesday, 6,860 ballots were cast — it was the highest turnout of any of this year’s Bronx City Council races — and those votes overwhelmingly allowed incumbent Kevin Riley to emerge from a three-person Democratic race.
Riley secured 82%, which he emphasized with a celebratory Great Gatsby GIF on Twitter, against Aisha Ahmed and also-ran candidate Pamela Hamilton-Johnson, according to unofficial results from the city Board of Elections. By eclipsing the 50% ranked-choice voting threshold, Riley avoided additional rounds of vote tabulations.
Riley, 35, assumed the seat via special election in 2020, handily defeating Hamilton-Johnson and Neville Mitchell, following the ouster of his controversial predecessor Andy King.
Council District 12 is the Bronx’s only majority-Black district and for some longtime voters like James Starks, “voting is a hard-fought right taken seriously” in a district with 103,756 registered voters, he told the Bronx Times on Monday.
November provides a general election challenger in Republican Dewayne Lee — a political unknown with no online presence regarding his campaign — but it may just be an obligatory roadblock for Riley en route to a full second term.
Among active voters in the Bronx, 79% are registered Democrats, compared to only 3% Republicans.
Riley’s primary performance also improved from his 2021 run, the year ranked-choice voting was first implemented.
In 2021, Hamilton-Johnson reached 40% in the third round of voting in 2020, while Riley garnered at least 50% of the vote through all three rounds.
This year, Riley blitzed through the field with 5,648 votes, with neither Ahmed nor Hamilton-Johnson reaching the 1,000-vote threshold. One voter, who cast an early ballot in Edenwald last Thursday, wondered how the primary would’ve fared if Riley’s predecessor had made the ballot.
King — who was removed for a slew of ethics violations in 2020 — attempted to reclaim his seat this election cycle, but the city Board of Elections, and later the courts, ruled he was ineligible to run. However, 2025 is in play, if the 61-year-old opts to throw his hat back into the ring.
