After months-long delay, Queens will pick a new borough president Tuesday
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Republican candidate Joann Ariola and Democratic candidate Donovan Richards face off for Queens borough president. Photos courtesy of Ariola campaign and City Council Photography
By David Brand
Two visions of Queens have emerged in the race to be the next borough president — one, a place of hope and progress, the other a dangerous dystopia marred by rising crime and disruptions to the status quo.
The campaign literature makes that clear in the final days before Tuesday’s election to replace ex-Borough President Melinda Katz.
An optimistic flier mailed to Queens Democrats by the campaign for Donovan Richards last week shows the Far Rockaway councilmember standing in front of Queens Borough Hall at a rally for small businesses this past summer.
“Together Let’s Make Queens Better!” the copy reads. The reverse side lists Richards’ endorsements from nearly every elected official in the borough, including Reps. Greg Meeks, Grace Meng and Hakeem Jeffries.
The same week, a two-sided flier from Republican nominee Joann Ariola reached Queens conservatives. The mailer also features a photo of Richards, but this time, he’s hovering above a cemetery on Halloween night. A scene contained in a crystal ball below shows young people storming a barrier near a graffiti-covered statue while a police vehicle burns.
“Donovan Richards as borough president would be very scary,” the mailer reads. It features an anti-endorsement, from Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch, a Richards foil.
The last-minute mailers were the last steps along the winding road to become Queens’ next borough president. Voters will finally choose the county’s next executive Tuesday, eight months later than expected.
When Katz left office to become Queens’ district attorney, Deputy Borough President Sharon Lee stepped in to replace her until a March 24 nonpartisan special election. But the COVID crisis compelled Gov. Andrew Cuomo to cancel the contest two days into early voting. Lee has remained at Borough Hall.
The five Democrats running for borough president instead geared up for the regularly scheduled June 23 primary. A sixth, former Queens prosecutor Jim Quinn, did not file for the primary and could no longer run, narrowing the field.
Richards won the Democratic contest, defeating former Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley, Councilmember Costa Constantinides, retired NYPD Sergeant Anthony Miranda and Flushing businessman Dao Yin.
He is heavily favored to win tomorrow’s election in a borough where Democrats outnumber Republicans eight to one — and where more than 250,000 voters have already cast their ballots at early voting sites.
But two challengers are vying to break the Democrats’ grip on the borough. Queens Republican Party Chairperson Joann Ariola ran unopposed in the GOP primary, and Yin decided to stick it out, running on the third-party Red Dragon line.
Richards is confident in victory and slowed down his fundraising after winning the Democratic primary June 23, having amassed and spent more than $1.1 million since he announced his candidacy in 2019.
Ariola and Yin have both outraised Richards since September, and they each received $100,000 more in public matching funds than Richards between Oct. 8 and Oct. 29.
Victory seems like a long shot, but Ariola’s has managed to unite a fractured Queens Republican Party. She said her message of public safety will appeal to not just Republicans, but moderate Democrats as well.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better opportunity for me as a candidate to become borough president,” Ariola told the Eagle in September. “I believe the city is being destroyed.”
Richards takes an opposite view. In his role as the Council’s Public Safety Committee chair and a representative from Far Rockaway, he has confronted two crises affecting Queens: the coronavirus and institutional racism.
He has advocated for more COVID testing in his district, one of the hardest hit by the public health crisis in all of New York City. And he has also championed police reform and voted against the most recent city budget because he said it did not adequately cut funding to the NYPD.
That vote, however, came just a few years after Richards supported adding more officers to the police force.
The fact that policing has become among the most prominent issues in the race for Queens borough president reflects the current moment in New York City but is somewhat absurd.
Borough presidents have little say in matters of law enforcement. It’s true that the office serves as a bully pulpit that allows candidates to stump for whatever policies or funding priorities they want to see, but borough presidents have few real powers.
When it comes to nuts-and-bolts responsibilities, the borough president makes advisory recommendations on land use issues, appoints members to the borough’s 14 community boards, and allocates funding from a $65 million discretionary capital budget.
Richards has strong ties to real estate developers who propose many of the land use plans the next borough president will weigh in on. The Real Estate Board of New York spent big on an independent expenditure ad campaign on his behalf in June, just days before the primary. He also received several contributions from developers in the months after announcing his candidacy.
He faces criticism from progressives, but he frames those relationships as a positive for his constituents, for whom he has helped secure affordable housing and community investments.
“There's no community in Queens that’s seen more investment than ours. So that's what people are looking for and I think I have the blueprint of how to achieve that for the entire borough,” he told the Eagle and Gotham Gazette in May.
Richards pointed to the $1.5 billion he helped secure for sewer infrastructure in Southeast Queens when he was chair of the environmental protection committee and $139 million through the Downtown Far Rockaway rezoning. That project includes about 2,000 units of affordable housing, new libraries, parks and commercial space.
“In a community like mine, you can literally and physically come in and see 10,000 units of affordable housing being built,” he said.
A December 2019 report by the Eagle and the organization Measure of America highlighted the deep racial, ethnic and gender disparities that exist on all 14 community board in Queens.
Richards has pledged to address those disparities by easing the application process and adding members of diverse income levels to the boards.
“I would like to see more public housing residents on our community boards and also look at ways to make it easier for people to join,” he said. “People all have different lived experience, and it's crucial that we have those different viewpoints."
One thing is for certain in the race for borough president: Whoever wins on Tuesday won’t get much of a break from the campaign trail.
They’ll have to run again in the usual Queens borough president election. The primary is in June 2021 — seven months away.
