Jenna: Good evening and welcome to MetroFocus.

I am Jenna Flanagan.

On a night when abortion rights fueled democratic winds across the country and hopes for 2024, the parties scored several victories in New York, but it was not all bad news for Republicans either.

In the most closely watched race in southern Brooklyn, Democrat Justin Brennan cruised to victory over two incumbents.

One of the biggest matchups where Republican Kirsty M armorato claimed victory over incumbent Velasquez.

Then, there is the exonerated Central Park five-member, Yusef Salaam, who has gone from wrongly imprisoned to representing central Harlem after running unopposed last night.

Outside the city, Republicans continue turning Long Island red, flipping the Suffolk County executive's office and what could be a bellwether race for 2024.

Joining us now to put it all in perspective is our go to expert on New York politics, journalist Ben Max.

Ben hosts Max Politics podcast, which is available on major podcasting platforms.

Welcome back to MetroFocus.

Ben: thanks for having me.

Jenna: Give us a sense of what the turnout was.

How broad of a swath was it?

Ben: I hesitate to talk about broad numbers in part because there will roughly be one-third of council races where the incumbent was not opposed or in the Democratic nominee in the case of Yusef Salaam was not challenged in the general election, so taking a broad approach of the entire city I don't think makes a lot of sense.

We know turnout was very low, somewhere roughly in the 10% range, but all eligible voters could have gone out to vote, because they could, of course, write in the candidate they wanted to.

There were the two state ballot questions.

With those questions did not apply to New York City directly.

In part, it is a challenge because there was not that much for some voters to really come out and turnout for peer we did see in some of these competitive races more turnout than others, and in some of the more competitive races, turnout was not great, so it varied across the city quite a bit.

Jenna: What do we know now about the balance of power in City Hall?

Ben: City Council has 51 seats, all of for election this year.

Some were not particularly competitive.

A lot of incumbents running for reelection.

It turned out in the end that just four incumbents won't be returning to the Council.

That is still significant in its own way, and there were a couple of upsets in the primary and now in the general.

But what is very interesting is even though you see the Republicans flip a seat in the Bronx that you mention, the way it is all turning out here, the balance of power in the city Council is going to stay basically the same, 45 Democrats, six Republicans.

There are two or three conservative Democrats who caucus with Republicans and mostly vote with them, but you still have this vast Democratic super majority in the New York City Council and the balance of power not really changing here via these elections could one of the most interesting races you mentioned was Justin Brandon -- Brannan, two city Council members ended up facing each other.

Brannan won by a far wider margin then anyone expected, including his own campaign.

Brannan is a member of leadership, chairman of the finance committee, a southern Brooklyn area where Republicans have won recent races for status and become a so that was an interesting bellwether that the Democrat meant -- Democratic incumbent was able to hold by a wide margin.

It speaks to some of the questions around balance of power, but overall, the city Council will stay about the same in terms of Democrats versus Republicans, 45-6.

Jenna: If city Council stays about the same, does this give us any indication of what we can expect legislation wise from City Hall?

We did not really see the mayor on the campaign trail with a lot of these Democrats.

Ben: One thing that is interesting is the city Council Adrian Adams, who did not face reelection her cell, and she will need to be reelected in January once the new council is seated, and that is all but certain to happen, she is more of the moderate, a liberal to moderate, in some cases more centrist Democrat, similar to Mayor Adams.

However, the city Council does have a fairly big progressive caucus of about 20 Council members does lean a little further to the left than the mayor.

I don't think we will see a lot of changes in those dynamics because things are pretty much staying about the same, so it will be probably about these next two years and a bit more still of this push and pull between the city Council that is a little more toward the progressive end of the spectrum and the more centrist mayor in Eric Adams as we get into 2025, where the mayor will be up for reelection, and the city Council fully be back on the ballot yet again because of how everything unfolds after the census and redistricting.

Jenna: Of course.

I want to circle back to 2025, but talking about things that might be staying the same or shifting, did we learn anything from two of the races that really focused on Latino voters and Asian votes?

Ben: One thing that is really interesting is most of the highly competitive races that were on the ballot here, there were only about a half-dozen, several of them were really focused in districts with large Asian-American populations, including this brand-new district in Brooklyn, the 43rd District, which was created based on census numbers as a "Asian opportunity district," in the Democrat Susan Zhuang won that seat.

She will be joining the City Council as a new member in this newly created seat.

But across the district, we did not see, seemingly, further movement toward the right, towards Republicans from Asian-American voters and others in the city.

There have been gains for Republicans in recent years, but it looks like, again, in a low turnout, off year election, there's not many things we want to conclude from this, but it looks like there was a bit of a ceiling hit, in terms of Republican gains.

There's also a big difference here, it seems, between when there is a major Republican candidate at the top of the ticket helping votes, so there are some differences, and in the city Council races, things become very localized and very dependent on get out the vote efforts and all of that, where Democrats have mostly big advantages.

Jenna: Circling back to your point about 2025, which I know his heart, because I know everybody is focused on the, 2024.

Is there any indication as to whether or not we can see a primary challenge to Mayor Adams, perhaps from City Council, coming from the left ?

Ben: I think the possibility of a challenge to Mayor Adams from his left, and that does not have to necessarily mean the far left, but it is a big section of Democrats, because he is a moderate to centrist, but I think some challenge from his left is almost inevitable.

Who it is going to come from is a big open question mark.

I recently wrote about the dynamics for "New York" magazine, talking to progressives, liberals, and moderates, and there is big dissatisfaction with Mayor Adams from the progressive left, but the question is, can people by a -- identify a candidate to unite a more liberal left and progressive left behind somebody who can run a big territory and unite all of those Democrats against an incumbent mayor who will be very, very powerful, most likely, come his reelection bid.

Now, obviously the FBI just raided his chief fundraiser's apartment, and we don't know where that is going to go in a number of scandals that could happen, so a lot change, there's a lot of discussion about trying to challenge the mayor from the left in 2025, but as you got at, one of the biggest questions is, who will actually step up to do it?

And there are major question marks around those possible names.

Jenna: Of course.

You know, I want to zoom out a little bit from the city and for a moment touch on what happened in Long Island, because it seems as if Long Island is red at this point.

Ben: Long Island, especially with the Suffolk County executive's office flipping from Democrat to Republican, the long-term Suffolk County executive was not on the ballot, he was term limited out.

That was an opening for Republicans to continue their gains, and they did.

This is one of the only areas of the entire New York state that has been moving more Republican in recent years, but it has been doing it in a pretty big way.

Long Island is going further red.

In some ways, it is a surprise that Democrats have been able to hold onto the County executive seat in Suffolk for as long as they did.

We are definitely seen some shifts there, while Westchester and some of the Hudson Valley suburbs have become more blue.

The trends of New York politics are always happening in some ways, and we've even seen some Republican gains, as we talked about, in parts of New York City.

But Long Island seemingly heading further and further to the right.

Jenna: I'm also wondering, because a few days ago we spoke with the Siena College poll, and they were telling us about issues they were finding that New Yorkers seem to be more concerned about, of course the migrant crisis, crime, and I'm wondering how much of those played out or if there is any way to tell at least as of right now, based on how campaigns are run, how heavily those issues weighed on voters who didn't -- who did turn out.

out.

Ben: So I think one of those, to me, surprising and most interesting aspects of the New York City Council raises are the migrant crisis, concerns about crime, which of course overall has been dropping for the last year or so, don't seem to have given Republicans the type of boost that they thought those issues would.

For example, there were a lot of high hopes among Republicans that these would help Ari Kagan win in southern Brooklyn or Ying Tan win in that newly-created Asian district of Admission.

Both of those candidates pull those out by wide margins, and that was more surprising.

In eastern Queens, it was an interesting race where councilmember Vickie Paladino, a pretty far right Republican, she barely beat Tony Avella in 2021, and she beat him by a wide margin.

Speaking to some of the localized issues, the power of incumbency, but it was really interesting to see in New York City that the migrant crisis does not seem to have given a huge boost to Republicans.

In the Suffolk County executive race, clearly Republicans and centrists and independents on Long Island have been moving further to the right, around issues like crime, maybe some concerns about the migrant crisis, though I don't think this has impacted Suffolk County in a big way at this point, but there are always discussions about what happens to New York City, moving on to Long Island, whether that is truly having or -- happening or not.

Jenna: All right, well, there's definitely a lot to follow.

Very quickly, everyone has been talking about the race in Harlem and the win of Yusef Salaam.

Ben: It is such a significant moment for him to start representing Harlem.

It will be interesting to see how he takes on criminal justice, especially to him as a member of the exonerated five.

Jenna: We have to leave it there, but I want to thank you for joining us again on MetroFocus and giving us much-needed context for election night.

Ben: My pleasure.

Thanks for having me, Jenna.