Pheffer Amato wins tight Assembly race two months after Election Day

Stacey Pheffer Amato will head back to Albany this month to represent Assembly District 23. The incumbent beat out Republican Thomas Sullivan by 15 votes in a race that stretched two months beyond Election Day in November. Photo via NYS Assembly

By Jacob Kaye

It took nearly two months, but the residents of Queens’ Assembly District 23 finally have someone to represent them in the lower house of the legislature.

Incumbent Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato was crowned the winner in the District 23 race on Wednesday, beating out her Republican challenger Thomas Sullivan by a mere 15 votes, unofficial results show. The city’s Board of Elections is expected to certify the race at some point later this week.

While the vote differential in the final count may seem slim, it’s nowhere near as tight as it has been at other points in the race. After a New York City Board of Election hand recount in December, Pheffer Amato was found to have a one-vote lead in the race for the district, which includes parts of Howard Beach, Ozone Park, Breezy Point, Belle Harbor, Rockaway Beach and Arverne.

The incumbent, who was first elected to the seat in 2016, will return to Albany at least one day after her colleagues launched the 2023 legislative session on Wednesday.

“I know this has been a long and difficult process for everyone involved,” Pheffer Amato said in a statement. “The wheels of our American democracy do not always turn as quickly as we’d like, but preserving the integrity of our elections, ensuring the accuracy of the count, and defending the right of every voter’s voice to be heard is more important than expediency.”

Sullivan, who twice challenged and lost to State Senator Joe Addabbo, said that he was “disappointed but not defeated” by the outcome in the race, adding that he was relieved it was finally complete.

“The most important thing is that you give your constituents…a reason to go out and vote,” Sullivan told the Eagle. “And that's been a challenge with the Republican Party in Queens for a long time – the attitude is, ‘My vote doesn't count.’”

“If I had a vote for every time one of my friends, family members or associates months ago said, ‘If you lose by one vote, I'll feel bad,’ well, thanks a lot, that was the case,” he added.

The eventual outcome in the race had become more and more expected in recent weeks, after several judicial rulings were issued in Pheffer Amato’s favor.

Shortly after Election Day on Nov. 8, Pheffer Amato sued the BOE and Sullivan over the rejection of 94 absentee ballots, all of which had not been placed in an “affirmation” envelope, or a smaller envelope that holds the ballot and is placed inside a larger, mailing envelope.

The incumbent and her attorneys from Sweeney, Reich and Bolz, the powerful law firm closely tied with the Queens County Democratic Party, argued that because the BOE failed to send notice to voters that their ballots had been rejected and that because new state election law favors counting ballots over rejecting them, the ballots should be included in the final tally.

Queens Supreme Court Justice Joseph Risi agreed, ordering the BOE to count the absentee ballots as is.

However, Sullivan quickly appealed the decision, arguing that the loose ballots invited the chance of ballot tampering.

A panel of justices in the Appellate Division, Second Department on Tuesday, Dec. 13 partially upheld Risi’s decision, ordering the BOE to send the individual voters their ballots to be cured, or fixed for its defects.

While a majority of the absentee ballots up for debate were cast in favor of Pheffer Amato, a portion were also cast for Sullivan.

Of the original 94 ballots, 73 were cured and returned to the BOE. Sullivan came out on top in the absentee ballot count on Wednesday – 37 were cast for him, while 36 were cast for Pheffer Amato, according to Sullivan.

Where Pheffer Amato made up the difference was in the count of around a dozen ballots that were rejected during the BOE’s hand recount of the race in December.

The ballots were tossed because voters “double voted,” by both filling in the bubble for their preferred candidate and writing their name into the write-in section of the ballot.

Pheffer Amato added the ballots to her suit and again Risi ruled in her favor in late December.

Nearly all of the “double vote” ballots counted toward Pheffer Amato’s tally on Wednesday. Additionally, around a half dozen affidavit ballots were counted on Wednesday, a majority going to the incumbent.

The slim margin of victory makes the race for Assembly District 23 one of the closest races in recent New York City electoral history. For comparison, then-Borough President Melinda Katz beat now-City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán in the 2019 Democratic primary for Queens district attorney by 55 votes – a vote differential three times larger than the vote differential in AD 23.

It was easily the closest race Pheffer Amato has been in during her six-year electoral history. Though she’s faced Republican challengers three times before, she’s beat each of them out by well over 10,000 votes each time.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t take Sullivan’s challenge seriously, however.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, her campaign ran an online video advertisement – an unusual practice in a local race – that noted Pheffer Amato’s opposition to “defund the police” and her commitment to “strengthen” the state’s bail laws. The two issues, and the general issue of the city’s crime rate, were at the center of a number of Republicans’ campaigns this election, including Sullivan’s pitch to voters.

Sullivan said that he “hopes” his near-victory would have some influence on how Pheffer Amato legislates in Albany during her upcoming two-year term.

“Crime is a non-partisan issue, it affects Democrats and Republicans alike,” he said. “Affordable housing affects Democrats and Republicans, the environment, as well.”

A large number of election districts in AD 23 voted heavily in favor of Republican Lee Zeldin in the race for New York governor won by Kathy Hochul in November.

Though it’s his third time running for office, Sullivan had yet to experience a prolonged legal battle over disputed ballots, as he did this cycle.

He has, at times, cast doubts on the electoral and judicial process offering no evidence to support his claims. Though he hasn’t outright alleged fraud in the race, he’s raised a number of doubts about the intentions of the judges ruling on the race and the strength of the city and state’s election laws.

On Wednesday, Sullivan said that he felt Pheffer Amato’s push to get the additional ballots cast was done only because she knew they’d skew in her favor, and not in the name of democracy, as she said in multiple statements over the past several months.

“It's just the integrity of some of these folks, and what they will do to win, and the money they will spend to win an election – and this [election] had some of that,” he said, adding that he felt George Santos, the Republican congressman-elect who lied about his resume and background, should resign.

Sullivan added that he expects he’ll run for office again at some point in the future.