Candidates for UWS Assembly District 69 Make Their Case at Political Forum

By Scott Etkin

During a political forum Tuesday night, Eli Northrup and Stephanie Ruskay, the two Democratic candidates for New York State Assembly District 69, displayed considerable common ground on how they would approach issues of affordability, housing, healthcare, and immigration.

The forum, at Goddard Riverside Senior Center on West 88th Street, brought together the party’s candidates seeking to go to Albany to represent the northern part of the Upper West Side and all of Morningside Heights.

Over the course of the evening, both expressed support for relaxing (but not completely undoing) environmental review regulations in order to build more housing. Both agreed that retail landlords should be penalized for vacant storefronts, and both supported using funds from taxing the rich (such as Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed pied-à-terre tax) to create ambitious new policies like universal healthcare. 

The similarities didn’t end there. Northrup and Ruskay both self-identify as progressive. One of the biggest applause lines of the night was when Northrup said that, to him, the label means “fighting for progress, but fighting for it independently of a machine [and] of corporate PACs.”

Still, there were some moments of disagreement. One arrived when moderator Jeff Coltin, editor-in-chief of the politics media outlet City & State – who kept the discussion at a brisk pace by using one-minute time limits on the candidates’ responses – asked whether the city’s Rent Guidelines Board should “freeze the rent” for affordable housing units. 

Ruskay, a first-time candidate for political office who is a rabbi and the associate dean of the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights, said she wouldn’t begrudge people who got a rent freeze, and that “freeze the rent” makes for a good slogan, but it might negatively affect people in market-rate apartments.  

Northrup, who previously ran for this Assembly seat in 2024 and is the legal director for a nonprofit serving the public defender needs of Bronx residents, said that affordable housing has helped generations of New Yorkers stay in the city; he said he was in favor of the rent board freezing and even rolling back prices. 

Another disagreement came over the bills calling for protest “buffer zones” to be implemented outside of educational institutions and houses of worship (Mayor Mamdani agreed to sign the council’s bill for buffer zones at houses of worship but vetoed one for buffer zones at educational institutions, which he said was defined too broadly to include universities, museums, and hospitals).

There is also a bill at the state level that would criminalize any protest within 25 feet of a house of worship.

Ruskay supports buffer zones, which are meant to ensure people feel safe going to and from these institutions. “In the world as we wish it was, I don’t think that you should have [to] have a buffer zone,” she said. “But in the world that we actually live in right now, I think that we do need one.”

Northrup, on the other hand, said he opposed buffer zones as defined in the bills at the New York state level, saying that making it a crime to protest within a certain distance of an institution – without being intimidating or threatening – “wouldn’t pass constitutional muster,” according to a variety of groups, including Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. Instead, Northrup called for ensuring safety through the NYPD and “effective legislation, not symbols.”

The only outburst from an audience member during the event, which had a capacity crowd of around 70 people, came during a contentious moment discussing where the candidates get money for their campaigns. Coltin noted that Northrup is endorsed by the Working Families Party, which has its own Political Action Committees (PACs) and which also receives money from other PACs. 

In response, Northrup said that he is proud to be endorsed by Working Families, which “is a party just like the Democratic Party or the Republican Party [and] they’re subject to the same rules as those parties.”

He then countered, saying “the worst landlord in New York City is funding a PAC that is supporting my opponent in this race.” In response, Ruskay said she was unaware of the donations until Northrup told her. “It’s not informing how I act,” she said.

The dollars involved in this state assembly race pale in comparison to the contest for the NY-12 congressional seat, which covers most of the Upper West Side. Northrup and Ruskay declined to give a formal endorsement in the congressional race, but their responses indicated tacit support for Rep. Micah Lasher, who is vacating his Assembly seat in District 69 in a bid to replace longtime Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

In her closing statement, Ruskay said she had a lifelong commitment to democracy and a “track record of organizing, of making institutional change, of bringing coalitions together, staying with them for the long term, and agitating really when things aren’t working.”

Northrup’s closing statement emphasized his experience as a lawyer and doing advocacy work in Albany. “I think what you get with me is experience and readiness,” he said. The goals of both candidates, many of which are similar, “require coalition building, but they also require navigating Albany in an effective way.”

The primary election for District 69 is on June 23rd, with early voting starting on June 13th. 

Read More: 

• WSR Talks With Eli Northrup About His Campaign to Represent the UWS and Morningside Heights in the Assembly
• A WSR Conversation With Stephanie Ruskay in the Run-Up to the UWS-Morningside Heights State Assembly Election

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