Richards declares victory in BP reelection bid
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Queens Borough President Donovan Richards appears to have won his bid for reelection over Elizabeth Crowley. City Council photography/Campaign photo
By Jacob Kaye
Incumbent Donovan Richards is the presumed winner in the race for Queens borough president after he eked out a victory over former City Council member Elizabeth Crowley, the latest Board of Elections count shows.
The second batch of unofficial results from the BOE released late Tuesday night factored in absentee ballots and showed Richards ahead of Crowley by a little more than 1,000 votes following the ranked-choice count’s redistribution of ballots.
Though the counting isn’t over – there are currently around 950 absentee ballots that can be “cured” or corrected by voters citywide – and the results haven’t yet been certified, Richard’s victory is all but shored up.
However, should Richards’ margin of victory drop below half a percentage point – he’s currently up by 0.6 percent – a manual recount will be triggered.
Taking to Twitter Tuesday night after the BOE’s second batch of results were released, Richards wrote, “We won.”
However, the occasional online provocateur who has a penchant for tweeting the looking eyes emoji didn’t stop there.
“[Elizabeth Crowley] told me she would win, because BLM would die? What’s good now?” Richards wrote. “We beat your racist ass.”
The former City Council member in the 31st District went on to suggest that Crowley asked him about being appointed to a deputy borough president’s position. He flatly declined to give her the job Tuesday night.
“As a Black man, I faced my own fair share of prejudice and I will not be silent when racist tactics are clearly at play,” Richards said in a statement to the Eagle. “Since our victory in the June 2020 Democratic primary, Ms. Crowley has repeatedly insinuated that she would have won if not for the death of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter movement across our country.”
“She later attempted to bully me into giving her a job within our administration with veiled threats of a divisive and dirty campaign if I did not,” he added. “I’m proud of the positive campaign we ran throughout this election. The people of Queens voted for me to get the job done. Now let’s get back to work.”
Crowley has yet to concede and did not respond to request for comment for this story.
Should Richards’ victory hold, he’ll be the first Black man to be elected to serve a full term in the Queens borough president’s office.
This year’s borough president’s primary was a bit of a rematch – Richards, Crowley and Jimmy Van Bramer, who finished in a distant third, all ran for the seat during the special election last year after it was vacated by now-District Attorney Melinda Katz.
Richards won a little more handily last year, beating Crowley by around 12,000 votes.
This year’s primary was determined largely by ranked-choice voting. Richards was listed as the first choice on 80,251 ballots and Crowley was the top pick for 80,104 voters – a difference of a little over 100 votes.
When Van Bramer was eliminated from the count, voters who picked him as their top choice had their ballots redistributed to their second choice. Though fairly evenly distributed between the two leaders, 11,727 ballots went to Richards and 10,844 ballots went to Crowley.
Over 11,700 voters whose top choice was Van Bramer declined to pick a number two candidate, eliminating their ballots from the count.
This story was updated to include a statement from Donovan Richards at 1:35 p.m., on Wednesday, June 7, 2021.
