Lincoln Restler Wins 50th Assembly District Leader Seat
[Originally published in The Local / NY Times on Sept. 22, 2010]
From left to right, Jesse Strauss, Dan Campanelli, Lincoln Restler, Sarah Baker and Jordan Thomas.
Reform candidate Lincoln Restler is the new Democratic district leader for the 50th Assembly District after a final ballot tally showed him ahead of Brooklyn Democratic organization candidate Warren Cohn by 120 votes.
Restler’s victory over Mr. Cohn, the son of Steve Cohn, the district leader for more than three decades, weakens one of his political endorsers, State Assembly Representative Vito Lopez, one of Brooklyn’s most powerful Democrats.
“I will do everything in my power to build a new coalition of members in the State Committee, to bring a new and more progressive leadership to our party in Brooklyn,” Restler said today, minutes after the counting of absentee and affidavit ballots ended at the Brooklyn Board of Elections.
Cohn, who arrived at the counting process more than an hour after Restler, had no comment.
Restler, who is vice-president of the New Kings Democrats, a group of more than 200 Brooklyn Democrats in their 20s and 30s, said his first priority is to change the party’s process for selecting judges and making political endorsements.
“Approximately one-fifth of the State Committee has had immediate family members appointed as judges,” Restler said. “That is unacceptable and I will fight to change that situation.”
“Also, many parts of our borough have under-qualified representation,” Restler said. “The Brooklyn Democratic Party throws its support behind people they can control, not to people who can represent us.”
The Restler camp at the Brooklyn Board of Elections.
Restler’s running mate, Kate Zidar, made a strong showing in her loss to 26-year incumbent Linda Minucci. Another member of the New Kings Democrats, Marcos Salazar, was elected as a county committee member, a position that involves organizing local campaigns and developing the organization’s platform.
Sarah Baker, Restler’s campaign manager, celebrated the victory as if it were David against Goliath. She said the key to the race was energizing people to go to the polls for a vote.
“The math was not in Lincoln’s favor when we started this,” said Baker, who couldn’t vote for Restler last week because she lives two blocks outside the 50th District.
“I didn’t think it was possible to overcome the large machine we were running up against,” Baker said.
Baker defined herself as part of a new generation of grass-roots reformers, passionate to bring a better Democratic Party to her borough, to Albany and to Washington, D.C.
“The reform movement in Brooklyn is now bigger and younger than it has ever been,” Baker said. “We are going to continue to pursue more transparency and bring more people to the polls.”
“Politics in Brooklyn are a like a fortress,” said Salazar, a board member of the Fort Greene Association. “If he (Restler) were to lose, it would had been a step back for us.”
But Salazar noted, “Our generation is the generation that doesn’t give up.”
