Albany Election Winners Poised to Shake Up Real Estate

A new wave of politicians is coming to Albany.

The fight to represent New York in the state Senate and Assembly served as a fraught battleground of left-leaning candidates facing off against incumbents. Their wins — particularly those endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (as well as the Working Families Party) — stand to have an outsized impact on influencing city and state policy on the real estate industry and beyond.

While many candidates won by touting progressive DSA/WFP-backed bona fides, a few winners didn’t fit neatly into that mold and one more establishment incumbent was able to retain his seat. Here’s where some of the most noteworthy races landed.

The new guard

Assembly District 38 in Queens

Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar — a close ally of former mayor Eric Adams and the first South Asian American woman elected to the state Legislature — lost her reelection bid to immigrant rights attorney David Orkin.

Orkin received just shy of 59 percent of the vote, beating Rajkumar by a whopping 19 points — a resounding loss for a five-year incumbent. The DSA, WFP and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Orkin, and though Mayor Mamdani did not formally back him, it is rumored that he helped recruit Orkin to challenge Rajkumar. Orkin capitalized on the perception of the mayor’s support with campaign materials featuring photos of them together.

Tenants’ rights and housing affordability were central to Orkin’s campaign in the Ridgewood, Glendale and Woodhaven district. He pledged to expand good cause eviction protections, support a statewide right to counsel and broaden access to housing vouchers.

Orkin also supports the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, essentially a state version of the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, better known as COPA, to give tenants partnered with nonprofits the right of first refusal to purchase buildings when they go for sale.

Conversely, the real estate industry lined up behind Rajkumar. Two Trees CEO Jed Walentas gave $5,000, while Alice and Sam Tisch contributed a combined $7,500. An SL Green subsidiary chipped in another $3,000. The Real Estate Board of New York’s PAC and the New York City District Council of Carpenters each donated $3,000 to her reelection effort.

Rajkumar largely ran on an anti-DSA campaign and boasted a slate of weighty endorsements from mainstream Democrats and labor unions, including Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, state Sen. James Sanders Jr., District Council 37 and 32BJ SEIU.

In April, Orkin sued to get Rajkumar kicked off the ballot after her campaign was accused of forging petition signatures — including from a journalist and from one of Orkin’s campaign volunteers — but a judge dismissed the case on procedural grounds.

Assembly District 58 in Brooklyn

Eon Huntley handily beat five-year incumbent Stefani Zinerman by 22 points with the dual endorsements of DSA and WFP bolstering his second attempt at securing the Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights district after a 2024 primary loss to Zinerman.

On the issue of real estate, City Council member Chi Ossé framed the Zinerman-Huntley dynamic as a face-off between developer influence and affordability.

“If you are unsupportive of building affordable housing on parking lots, if you accept money from Michael Bloomberg aligned groups, anti-Palestinian groups, and big real estate PACs, AND if you aim to stoke division in our beautiful community of Bed-Stuy: you are more than guaranteed to lose an election here,” Ossé wrote in an Instagram post.

Zinerman’s backing by SL Green and the Moving Brooklyn Forward independent expenditure, which drew sizable donations from Extell chairman Gary Barnett and Two Trees, ultimately wasn’t enough to defend her seat from Huntley.

Deed theft, a major flash point in the area, has been a priority for both Zinerman and Huntley. Their posture on real estate, however, greatly differed — with Huntley railing against the developers who donated to the incumbent’s race.

“This neighborhood’s soul is being ripped out by landlords and real estate developers who see our homes as nothing more than assets from which to squeeze a profit,” Huntley’s housing platform reads. “Renters and homeowners alike are under threat from the same predatory real estate companies.”

Huntley’s platform also outlines priorities that include funding upgrades to NYCHA housing in the district, supporting Assembly member Emily Gallagher’s plan for a Social Housing Development Authority and expanding Good Cause Eviction protections for renters in small and new buildings.

Mayor Mamdani didn’t officially endorse in this race against an incumbent, but appeared alongside Huntley during the campaign.

The edge cases

Senate District 13 in Queens

Some candidates didn’t receive DSA backing, but still rode the incumbent-beating train. Assembly member Jessica González-Rojas secured the nomination to switch to the State Senate as the Democratic nominee to represent Jackson Heights, Corona and East Elmhurst, beating seven-year incumbent Jessica Ramos and ex-State Senator Hiram Monserrate.

González-Rojas was a WFP-backed winner who, like other candidates challenging state legislative incumbents, didn’t receive the mayor’s explicit endorsement.

An ongoing feud between Ramos and billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen over his Metropolitan Park casino project in the district became a flash point in her race against González-Rojas, who supported allocating parkland for the casino in Flushing Meadows Park.

Ramos introduced a bill Monday that would have blocked a donation from Cohen to the Assembly member’s spouse Danny Rojas, executive director of tech education nonprofit All Star Code, which received money from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation in 2025. The bill seeks to prohibit immediate family members, romantic partners and anyone living in the same household as a state legislator from getting paid by any entity with business before the state or local government in their district.

“The Assemblywoman’s husband has a not-for-profit that received money,” Ramos said at a June 11 candidate forum. “We want to know how much did All Star Code take?” Cohen has denied that the donation had anything to do with the casino proposal.

An independent expenditure committee that supported González-Rojas’ campaign received a record-breaking $850,000 donation from a similarly named entity, Progress for New York Inc., one week before primary day.

González-Rojas’ housing platform for the senate includes pitches for a “21st-Century Mitchell-Lama” program that would use public investment to build permanently affordable co-ops and rentals, support for legislation to create a statewide Social Housing Authority and fully funding the Housing Access Voucher Program at $250 million.

Senate District 25 in Brooklyn

One incumbent held his seat, in part thanks to a DSA push plus the backing of the WFP and the mayor. State Sen. Jabari Brisport, Mayor Mamdani’s former roommate, fended off a challenge from the center by Marlon Rice. The 57-point win underscores the leftist incumbent’s staying power in the Brooklyn neighborhoods he represents, which include Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Ocean Hill.

Brisport is pushing legislation to crack down on NYCHA code violations through a searchable public database and has championed a four-bill package aimed at curbing deed theft. He also backs a “flip tax” on property transfers, designed to deter speculation and generate revenue for affordable housing.

During his first term he sat on the State Senate housing committee, passing legislation to restrict foreclosures and evictions for a two-year period and making certain zip codes “Cease and Desist Zones” to prevent aggressive real estate solicitation practices.

The remaining establishment

Senate District 27 in Manhattan

Assembly member Grace Lee landed the coveted Lower Manhattan seat held by outgoing State Senator Brian Kavanagh, beating former Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou by 25 points.

Lee was one of the few candidates to win a Democratic nomination for the state legislature with backing from major real estate players, including the Tisch family and Downtown for Change, an independent expenditure committee that received $50,000 from Extell’s Gary Barnett.

Niou had Working Families Party backing, plus financial support from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades and Platinum CEO James Halpin, but was unable to secure enough votes to send her back to Albany as a state senator. Mamdani opted not to endorse in this race, despite the lack of an incumbent on the ballot.

Lee’s platform includes funding a Housing Access Voucher Program, building social housing and capping utility bills at six percent for low-income households. She aligned with Niou on opposing the construction of a new high-rise jail in Chinatown in favor of more “deeply affordable housing” on the proposed site, pitching a relocation of the borough-based detention facility to the vacant Manhattan Correctional Center complex nearby.

As an Assembly member, Lee used her seat to pass Good Cause Eviction protections for tenants, spearheaded an effort to secure $400 million in emergency rental assistance program funding for NYCHA and Section 8 residents and voted for 485x developer abatements, as well as an office-to-residential conversion tax credit.

Her platform also lists among her accomplishments in the assembly that she “reined in real estate brokers,” citing her role in passing a two-year cap on residential real estate listing agreements intended to shield homeowners from unfair long-term contracts.

Assembly District 66 in Manhattan

In the crowded race to fill outgoing Assembly member Deborah Glick’s Lower Manhattan seat, local District Leader Jeannine Kiely is leading five other candidates with 27.6 percent of the roughly 15,000 ballots cast — but the race is too close to call.

The race has become a sort of referendum on NIMBY versus YIMBY politics in a district spanning the West Village, Soho and Tribeca, and the development-skeptical candidate is winning.

Kiely founded the Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden, which alongside Glick and other opponents, sued the city to block plans for 123 units of senior housing on the Nolita site. The city ultimately abandoned its plan for the garden, but its project remains a hot-button issue in the district and a symbol of citywide development debates.

One of Kiely’s competitors, Ryder Kessler, is on the opposite end of the housing policy spectrum as co-founder of the pro-growth group Abundance New York, which supported housing on the garden site. But Kessler is currently in third place with 22.7 percent of the vote — a partial rebuke to pro-development politics.

Civil rights attorney David Siffert is Kiely’s closest rival with 27.2 percent of the vote.

Glick selected Kiely as her successor late last year, calling Kiely to ask if she’d be interested in running to replace her once Glick decided she would not seek reelection.

Glick was a frequent antagonist of the real estate industry, as a long-time supporter of a pied-à-terre tax, a critic of luxury development and opponent to efforts to lift the city’s residential density cap, which Albany approved in 2024. As her preferred pick, Kiely’s politics are likely to fall along similar lines.

Kiely, a member and former chair of Manhattan’s Community Board 2 and current Democratic district leader for the 66th Assembly District, Part B, entered the race with support from a roster of establishment Democrats and influential teachers unions. Her supporters include Rep. Jerry Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the United Federation of Teachers and the New York State United Teachers.

Assembly District 70 in Manhattan

Harlem Assembly member Jordan Wright is the lone incumbent challenged by a DSA-backed candidate to maintain control of his seat.

Wright was elected to the Assembly in 2024, taking over the seat once occupied by his father, Keith Wright, the leader of the Manhattan Democratic Party, and was recently elected the head of the Manhattan Young Democrats. He fended off Conrad Blackburn, a staff attorney with the Bronx Defenders, with 53.9 percent of the vote — defeating Blackburn by a solid 8 points.

Housing affordability emerged as a central issue in the race.

Wright campaigned on boosting housing production across income levels, touting his role in securing investment for housing and pledging to bring more funding to the district.

Blackburn seized on the issue from a different angle, arguing that Wright had failed to tackle the neighborhood’s shortage of homes for low- and middle-income residents.

He centered tenants in his housing platform, backing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, community land trusts and limited-equity co-ops. He also called for a “Harlem Green Social Housing District” aimed at spurring sustainable, mixed-income development.

Wright’s win came as outside Super PACs poured more than $900,000 into anti-Blackburn efforts, the most directed at any DSA-backed candidate in Tuesday’s primaries. The second-largest target was Huntley, who faced about $600,000 in outside opposition, but ultimately defeated incumbent Assembly member Zinerman.