Gothamist76%
Does the home of Stonewall still need a gay NYC Council seat? Election set for Tuesday. 31%
By Ryan Kost81%
4/27/2026, 10:31:02 AM
Topics: New York City Council
BS Summary: This article contains 35 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Anecdotal, and Negativity Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 12.6% saturation with 335 hits. Analysis detected 3,258 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,653 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 40.1% and a BS Rank of 31% (11,727 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 69.70% of the article peer group.
Gay candidates had been trying for years to secure a seat on the New York City Council.
The summer of 1991 felt like a turning point.
The 3rd District had just been deliberately redrawn around the West Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen to create what advocates called a “gay-winnable” seat.
“There was this crackle of optimism, right?
Like, we could win this one,” said Jimmy Van Bramer, who spent that summer campaigning for Tom Duane.
Van Bramer said he worked at a polling site near Manhattan Plaza on Election Day, handing out palm cards for Duane.
When the polls closed, he ran the numbers back to the campaign's Chelsea headquarters on Eighth Avenue.
Then they waited.
Duane had run two years earlier and lost, and while the new district lines had been drawn, nothing was certain.
Finally, the race was called.
Duane was headed to the general, and in the heavily Democratic district, there was no doubt he would win.
He would be the first openly gay member of the New York City Council.
Van Bramer remembers looking around the room.
“All of these grown men and women were crying,” he said.
“There was this enormous emotional outpouring that not only had Tom won, but that gay people had finally broken through.”
Duane's win set a precedent that night.
In the years to come, the 3rd Council District would be held by a succession of openly gay representatives — Duane, his chief of staff Christine Quinn, Corey Johnson and, most recently, Erik Bottcher.
The seat is now up for grabs in a special election this Tuesday.
Four candidates are running to replace Bottcher in a free-for-all shaped by housing, federal attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and a fight over the City Council’s direction — and only one of them is openly gay.
Behind it all lies a question nobody at that party in 1991 would have imagined asking: 35 years later, does the 3rd Council District still need to be a gay seat?
Van Bramer, who went on to represent a district in Queens for a decade, hasn't endorsed a candidate, but he has thought about the question.
A gay candidate, he said, can’t take the race for granted.
“Queer representation in politics is still important.
It will always be important," he said.
"But if people want this to remain a district that's represented by an out queer person, then they better win.”
The race’s fractured endorsement landscape speaks to how complicated the question is.
After Bottcher left for the state Senate in February, much of the city's gay political establishment lined up behind his chief of staff, Carl Wilson — the openly gay candidate.
Quinn and Johnson, the other two former holders of the seat, endorsed Wilson.
So did Bottcher, who has spoken publicly about gay representation as part of Wilson's appeal.
So did Council Speaker Julie Menin.
Duane, however, endorsed Layla Law-Gisiko, a French-Tunisian immigrant and longtime Chelsea district leader running on land use and housing.
The two have worked together to protect tenants at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea NYCHA complexes facing a proposed redevelopment, and to oppose an anti-trans appointee to a local school advisory board.
Jimmy Van Bramer shares images from the August 1989 edition of OutWeek featuring Thomas Duane and Dave Taylor.
Thomas would lose his election that year for Council District 3.
However, two years later, following a citywide redistricting, he would become the district’s and the city’s first out gay councilmember.
Ryan Kost / Gothamist
“It's not who you are,” said Duane, who went on to become the first openly gay state senator after his time on the Council.
“It's how hard you fight.”
Also in the race is Leslie Boghosian Murphy, the chair of Community Board 4, who calls herself the "community candidate."
Her backers include former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger and former U.S.
Rep.
Carolyn Maloney, along with block association leaders across the district.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani's endorsement of Lindsey Boylan has been the race's most controversial.
Boylan, a former state economic development official, was one of the first women to publicly accuse Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.
Last year, she campaigned hard for Mamdani in his race against Cuomo for the mayor's seat.
Beyond the questions of identity and representation, the race is another front in the battle between Mamdani and Menin, who have clashed over taxation and the city budget.
Wilson, with broad union and political club backing, had been the race’s clear front-runner before Mamdani’s endorsement gave Boylan a considerable boost in recent days.
Most news coverage has focused on the two of them, and the remaining candidates have been treated as long shots.
Boylan and Wilson have much in common.
Both say affordability is the defining issue of the race.
Both have spoken about defending trans healthcare and immigrant New Yorkers against federal attack.
Both have pledged to join the Council's Progressive Caucus if elected, and either would become its 24th member — a threshold that would give progressives nearly half of the Council’s 51 seats.
Still, Boylan, a democratic socialist like the mayor, would be a close ally as Mamdani heads into budget negotiations with Menin.
Mamdani’s endorsement of Boylan drew criticism from some older gay activists, who said the mayor was ignoring the seat's history.
For them, the district, where the modern gay rights movement began, carries a special meaning.
What's more, if Wilson doesn't win, Manhattan will lose its only openly gay representative on the City Council.
“So in the borough where Stonewall happened and all the historic foundings of the movement, we risk losing the seat and we risk having nobody at the table as part of the Manhattan delegation,” said Allen Roskoff, a veteran gay rights activist who was involved in the push to create the district in the 1990s.
Still, Boylan is not short on queer support.
State Sen.
Jabari Brisport, the first openly queer legislator of color in New York, has endorsed her.
So have Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, trans activist Rabbi Abby Stein and the actor and former gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon.
Brisport said he respects the work that went into fighting for representation in the first place, but he doesn’t “believe in quotas.”
“No one is owed a seat,” Brisport said.
“It's up to the voters of that district to say who best represents them.”
The candidates themselves approach the question more delicately.
Boylan says she has a “deep respect for how people feel,” but points to her own history of advocacy alongside the trans community and the endorsements she has received.
Law-Gisiko, the only immigrant in the race, argues that advocacy doesn't require shared identity and lets Duane’s endorsement speak for her.
Boghosian Murphy rejects the framing outright — “I just don't want to face one marginalized group against another.”
Wilson called his identity “an added plus,” emphasizing his decade of on-the-ground work in the district.
The history of the district, he said, is “a really important legacy to maintain for whoever becomes the next councilmember.”
Van Bramer still has a copy of the Aug. 21, 1989 edition of OutWeek Magazine, “New York’s lesbian and gay news magazine.”
On the cover is a picture of Duane and another out politician, the “gay candidates” taking on “the body politic.”
That was the summer that Van Bramer came out.
He was 19 years old.
At his first Pride rally, he said, he picked up a guide listing gay groups around the city.
He called the one that seemed most “him,” the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, and spent the summer volunteering for Taylor on the Upper West Side.
Van Bramer remembers meeting up with friends at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street, then heading down Christopher Street to the piers, where they’d sit by the water and listen to music.
After that, they’d go out to the bars, which never seemed to card.
Uncle Charlie’s.
Boy Bar.
On Sundays, Club Mars.
He’d go to ACT UP meetings, too.
“You would see all of this queer power and community and you’re like ‘F--- yah!
This is amazing,’” Van Bramer said.
“You could be gay and walk down Christopher Street arm-in-arm, or hang out at the piers, go to the bars, do activism.
I was just 19 years old, but I was looking at Peter Staley and Maxine Wolfe and even Larry Kramer, these legendary people.”
Underneath that freedom was something else, though.
Nearly 30,000 New Yorkers had died from HIV/AIDS by that point, and the epidemic hadn’t even reached its peak.
Hate crimes were happening at “alarming rates,” Van Bramer said, and many of the LGBTQ organizations were not getting the funding they needed.
“We knew that we needed to break through … and it needed to happen urgently so that the political establishment would take us seriously,” Van Bramer said.
“It was a matter of life and death.
It was a matter of existence.”
As OutWeek put it: “Although electing ‘our own’ won't end homophobia or cure AIDS, it will mean visibility.
It will also mean access.”
When Duane took office in 1992, he set about building the legislative infrastructure a community under siege needed.
He was the lead council sponsor behind the codification of what is now the city’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration, pushed through over Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's attempts to eliminate it.
He lobbied to expand New York's domestic partnership rules to include full health benefits for the partners of city workers.
In the years and decades that followed, LGBTQ New Yorkers built upon those early wins.
They also began winning elections across the city.
Now New York is represented by queer politicians at nearly every level — in Congress, in the state Senate and Assembly, on community boards.
The City Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus lists six members across every borough but Manhattan.
About a decade ago, after he’d stepped down from his District 3 seat, Duane stopped by the Council’s office building.
Corey Johnson, the councilmember at the time, waved him down.
“We're having a meeting of the gay caucus,” Duane remembers him saying.
“You want to come and say hello?”
Duane says he walked in and found a group of six openly gay council members “from all over.”
Before he left, they took a picture.
“It’s a fabulous picture,” Duane said.
He’s at the center with three members on either side, all “representing diverse districts.”
“It was like ‘My job here is done,’” Duane said.
“It was everything I had always wanted … everyone could win everywhere.”
Council District 3 runs along the west side of most of lower Manhattan, its northernmost edge on 55th Street in Hell's Kitchen.
As you head south, there’s Hudson Yards, a sprawling, sparkling behemoth on the waterfront.
Further down is Penn South, the affordable-housing co-op.
Chelsea is right next to it, with some of the most expensive real estate in the city and also thousands of units of NYCHA housing, with plans underway for redevelopment
And finally, the Village, a mix of older artists and gay activists living alongside young financiers.
In a neighborhood that’s been built up and out so much over the decades, the candidates don’t seem to think that the argument over identity will decide most votes.
When they campaign and when they canvas, they begin their pitches with housing and affordability.
Lindsey Boylan canvasses in Hell’s Kitchen on April 21.
It's an especially acute concern in what Law-Gisiko describes as the "most speculative" district in the city, with the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses redevelopment, the Port Authority Bus Terminal rebuild, Hudson Yards phase two, the Penn Station redesign, the Gateway Program and the Manhattan Cruise Terminal renovations all in the mix.
They also talk about transit, schools, retirees on fixed incomes and Trump's crackdown on immigrants and trans rights.
Rabbi Abby Stein, a trans activist who has endorsed Boylan, said she believes these are the sorts of fights that matter.
Policy positions, she said, are more important than identity.
She pointed to a Council bill supported by Menin that would restrict protests around schools and education facilities.
Mamdani vetoed the bill on Friday, arguing it could apply to universities and teaching hospitals as well.
Wilson’s campaign said he would vote to override that veto.
A law like that, Stein said, would make it hard for the trans community to push back on anti-trans groups in schools and on hospitals that have stopped providing gender-affirming care.
“When we say representation, we're not saying we want someone who checks off a box in office,” Stein said.
“We want someone who will represent our communities in office … I think everyone has a moment where they agree that someone's policies overpower representation on its own.”
On a chilly afternoon last week, Boylan canvassed in Hell’s Kitchen, moving among the luxury buildings, asking doormen to ring up to penthouses, and six-floor walk-ups where artists hung their work outside their doors.
“It's great training for the job,” Boylan said at one point.
“It's fun to meet people and then you’re also like ‘Whoa, I didn't even know this was right here.’”
Despite the endorsements and a recent spate of headlines, the race has been a relatively quiet one, so every interaction counts.
When early voting closed Sunday night, just 4,541 votes had been cast.
Most of Boylan’s ring-ups went unanswered, but on 39th Street, she got buzzed up to an apartment in a tall art deco building.
When the elevator opened, the resident was in the hallway, waiting.
“Oh, you’re running for office,” he said.
Boylan went straight to her pitch.
“I spent a decade managing public parks, then I was the housing secretary of the whole state.
And sometimes people know me 'cause I was the first woman to come forward against Cuomo.
So I know how to work hard and also fight back.
I got Brad Lander's endorsement and the Mayor's endorsement.
And I would love, if you like what you see, for you to consider me.”
The man thanked her, took a flier and started heading back to his apartment.
Boylan called after him, “Beautiful building, by the way!”
Carl Wilson, canvassing near the Chelsea Recreation Center
Ryan Kost
A few days later, Carl Wilson was doing a version of the same thing.
He was up at 8 a.m. with a group of supporters, canvassing near the Chelsea Recreation Center.
Early voting was underway inside.
“Good morning.
Don’t forget, special election going on,” Wilson said again and again.
A couple people told Wilson they’d already voted for him.
Most just passed by.
A woman stopped to ask him about his thoughts on public education as her daughter tugged at her shirt.
Wilson was ready.
“I will just say I am a product of public schools.
I believe deeply in them, and will be a fighter for them,” he said, before naming several schools where he had worked with principals to secure resources.
A few minutes later, Darren Rosenblum, a supporter, stopped to say hello.
He had been living in Chelsea on and off since the early 1990s.
He was on his way to drop off a bag of clothing donations at St.
Anthony's, then to vote, then to the shoemaker, then to the gym.
He wanted Wilson to know the farmers' market was on that weekend, in case he wanted to drop by.
Rosenblum described Wilson as “persuasive” and “grounded,” and said Wilson had done a lot for the community.
There was also another reason Wilson had his vote.
“I feel like it's an important thing to continue to have gay representation for the district,” Rosenblum said.
He's “not always that fixated on identity,” he added, and he understands gay people are getting elected elsewhere, too.
Still, Rosenblum said, “symbolically, it means something to me to have District 3 represented by someone who is gay.”
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