With Candidates Everywhere, Democracy Is in Session on the Upper West Side

By Tracy Zwick

Four weeks out from Election Day, it can feel like candidates are as common as rescue dogs on the Upper West Side, and just as eager to win you over.

With rare open seats for both Congress and the State Assembly, more than a dozen candidates vying for them, and control of the U.S. House at stake, the UWS is a national electoral hotspot. And with leaflet-laden candidates, their surrogates, volunteers, spouses, children, and parents deployed to public forums, street fairs, bagel shops, and subway stops, it’s also a democracy classroom in action.

There’s no real doubt that a Democrat will replace retiring congressman Jerry Nadler, who’s been representing the UWS for 34 years – longer than many voters and some of the candidates have been alive. But the contest to become that Democrat is tight. A poll of likely Democratic voters released this week by non-profit Emerson College Polling showed the two leading contenders separated by just two percentage points, with 32% still undecided. The candidates hoping to win them over include a Kennedy scion, Kelly Ann Conway’s ex-husband, a nationally-recognized public health expert, a former engineer at Palantir-turned Upper East Side state legislator, and the UWS’s current State Assembly member, among others.   

That means New York’s 69th State Assembly district, which covers the UWS from about West 80th Street to West 125th Street, is also in play. It’s a lock for Democrats too, but with incumbent Micah Lasher running for Congress, voters will choose between Stephanie Ruskay and Eli Northrup, neither of whom has held elective office. 

Both have been actively introducing themselves to voters. 

I was lugging groceries home a couple of weeks ago when I met Northrup, at the corner of Broadway and West 105th Street. His campaign had recently taken over the former home of beloved local bakery Silver Moon. Its large storefront windows, which used to frame bakers in chefs’ toques rolling baguettes, are now papered with campaign posters boasting endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Columbia Democrats, and “Jewish Veteran’s for Northrup” [sic], among others.

Northrup, a public defender and director for the Bronx Defenders who ran against Lasher and lost last election cycle, was standing out front, hand extended, greeting potential voters. Though he wasn’t limiting himself to foot traffic on Broadway. His team told me he’d recently participated in a “Workout with Eli” fundraiser at a local gym and frequently visited the dog run in Riverside Park near West 105th Street. His campaign even organized a bar crawl across the district while petitioning to get on the ballot. 

I bumped into Ruskay in Straus Park, just a block to the north, a few Sundays ago, when I heard a commotion and peeked in to see what was happening. Ruskay, a mom of twins in a local public school, and a rabbi engaged in multifaith organizing, was speaking into a microphone to a dozen or so neighbors, laying out her opposition to ICE and talking up her affordability agenda. Former Manhattan Borough President and current NYC Comptroller Mark Levine stood by her side, as did local City Councilmember and the council’s Majority Leader Shaun Abreu.

“We need to elect Stephanie,” Abreu declared, after Ruskay finished her brief remarks. She would be the first woman to represent the district in 50 years, and the first female rabbi ever elected statewide. Abreu called her positions on housing and immigration “prominent” and said her organizing efforts in opposition to “our fascist federal government” were “resonating with neighbors in this district.” Flyers were distributed. 

A subway station at rush hour remains the NYC go-to for efficient political gladhanding. The only candidate I personally found near one was Lasher, on a Wednesday around 8 a.m., outside the 96th Street station on Broadway. He had the seemingly indefatigable City Councilmember Abreu with him. “Come meet your next congressman, Micah Lasher!” Abreu called out to constituents, as they rushed to work and school drop-offs. He guessed about one-in-ten stopped to say hello or take campaign literature.

“The closer I am to the station, the lower the numbers,” Lasher noted. “Once they see the countdown clock, forget it.” 

Asked who his best wing person is, Lasher gave props to his partner that morning: “Shaun’s awesome.” He reported that his former boss and one of his political mentors, Jerry Nadler, who has endorsed Lasher, “has come out with me, and that’s always incredible. But, honestly, it’s my mom. People love her.”

He’s not the only candidate with a lovable mom who’s willing to hustle votes. A few days later, I was headed to FedEx with my poodle when I saw Lori Bores, mother of the UES’s current State Assembly member, Alex Bores, on the corner of Broadway and West 102nd Street. She was holding a sign with a photo of her son, with “mom” written next to it in red with a hand-drawn heart. I declined a flyer, but asked her to tell me about her son. “He’s a good boy,” she said, detailing his educational history (Hunter High School, then Cornell) and commitment to public service. It didn’t take hard-core interrogation to learn of a recent first grandchild – clearly, in her book, one of the candidate’s signature accomplishments.  

Occasionally, the candidates find themselves at the same place, at the same time, and that can be awkward. Like when Lasher ran into Bores on Shabbat not long ago at Congregation Rodeph Shalom on West 83rd Street. “That was an unfortunate coincidence,” Lasher explained, “insofar as it was my father’s yahrtzeit.” Lasher’s a longtime member of the shul, and was there with his family commemorating the anniversary of his dad’s death. “Obviously, Alex couldn’t have known that,” Lasher stressed. Candidates often campaign at houses of worship, and Bores, who is not Jewish, was there with a supporter who was introducing him to congregants. 

I asked Abreu, a seasoned campaigner who recently won his first four-year term to represent District 7 on the City Council, about the best place to canvass. He pointed me to farmers’ markets, calling them “a town square of candidates,” and boy, was he right. Good luck getting out of an UWS farmers’ market these days without at least three election palm cards in your compostable bag of New Jersey strawberries and Hudson Valley duck bacon. 

That’s where I found Nina Schwalbe last Friday, on West 97th Street near Columbus Avenue. She wasn’t far from the She Wolf Bakery table, where she’d struck up a friendship with Anthony, who sold their breads. “I can’t afford to buy anything here!” Schwalbe said. But in the cold days of winter, she’d watch the stand for Anthony “when he went to the bathroom or whatever,” she explained. Sometimes there would be a goods-for-services exchange. “Especially in the winter, you get real solidarity out here.” 

“I ask everyone what’s bugging them most,” said Shwalbe, a global vaccine expert and public health leader. The two biggest issues she’s hearing about, she said, are healthcare and affordability, “by which most New Yorkers mean housing.” 

Schwalbe didn’t report any awkward run-ins but said she has seen a lot of her fellow candidates and their teams. “My political mentor, who’s the former prime minister of New Zealand, said early on: ‘You’re running for office, you’re not running against people.’”  Schwalbe’s taken that to heart, staying friendly with all the canvassers she comes across. “There are multiple candidates and that’s what democracy’s about. It’s a good thing,” she said. 

A bit farther south I met up with Caroline Shinkle, who was handing out materials at the Ninth Avenue Food Festival near West 57th Street on a warm Sunday afternoon. The only Republican in the race to replace Nadler that I encountered, Shinkle, a former corporate lawyer at Cravath who’s also had stints at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. and the Bank of Israel in Jerusalem, was by far the best dressed of the candidates. In head-to-toe pink, a stylish campaign tee and Gucci slides, she would have blended as easily in Palm Beach as the UES. 

“I love fashion,” she said, “so I decided to do something a little stylish today,” assuring me that the slides were actually quite comfortable. A former competitive tennis player and golfer, the first-time national candidate has now focused her hustle and drive on politics. “UWSers have been sort of surprised and impressed to see a Republican out here,” she explained. “They get a kick out of seeing someone representing a different point of view and being willing to get in the fight.” 

Shinkle was also the only candidate I met who seemed to have hard data on how receptive voters had been to material outreach. “We have KPI [Key Performance Indicator] data,” she explained. “Yesterday on Park Avenue we handed out about 2,000 palm cards. It’s important to know that, to fight the narrative that a Republican can’t get traction in NYC.” 

WSR reached out to all the candidates in an effort to meet them as they campaigned on the UWS. Some, including congressional candidates Lucian Wintrich and Laura Dunn, responded in writing to questions about their favorite places to meet voters on the UWS.  (Wintrich complained that “the other candidates have seized my favorite UWS bagel spots,” and Dunn reported campaigning “at the grand opening of Pure Blossoms on 96th & Amsterdam, the 600th marijuana dispensary in NY.”)

Others, including Jack Schlossberg and George Conway, did not answer questions or didn’t provide information about where and when they could be found meeting voters on the UWS. A representative for Schlossberg’s campaign said he had “campaign-related travel” that week, though voters could see “the clout candidate” on Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci’s Instagram feed during that time defending himself in the face of NYT reporting on “erratic behavior,” napping the day of his campaign launch, and a generally chaotic operation. The campaign did point out that Schlossberg had “attended the Hippo Playground Fair a few weeks back.”  

Town & Country proclaimed Schlossberg “the Upper East Side’s hottest ticket” on May 8th, labeling him “the must-have guest” of the “well-heeled donor class.” None of the other candidates reported encountering Schlossberg while canvassing on the UWS. 

An informal survey of voters at the Columbus Avenue greenmarket last Sunday indicated that candidates’ presence on the trail made a difference. Two UWSers from the Lincoln Square area, A.J. and Ivy, confirmed that, “actually, yeah,” it is important to see candidates in the neighborhood. 

Stephen Williams and his partner, who live near Lincoln Center, had taken some Bores literature and were mulling it over. Asked about the big names in the race, Williams was negative on Conway and said Schlossberg “seems like he has good intentions, but he’s probably bored and entitled.” Committed voters but as yet undecided, they were more serious about Bores, “because of the A.I. and tech features of his platform,” and “curious” about Lasher. “We need to spend more time at the farmers’ market!” Williams’ partner laughed. 

If they’d gone a few additional steps, they might have run into Lasher’s wife, Elizabeth, who was canvassing with one of the couple’s three children, Phoebe, a student at a local public elementary school. I asked Phoebe, who was stationed by a produce table along Columbus Avenue near West 78th Street, if she at least got an apple cider donut for her trouble, but she shook her head. She was apparently doing it for love, her political ideals, or a lack of babysitting – we’ll never know. She was busy handing out flyers, and I didn’t want to further interrupt her work.

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