HellGate: It's YIMBY vs. NIMBY in Lower Manhattan's City Council Race

Written By Shira Ben-Ami

Incumbent Christopher Marte's anti-development positions have earned him some loyal fans— as well as challengers from the pro-growth movement within the Democratic Party.

This year, the anti-development Lower Manhattan City Councilmember Christopher Marte is facing a primary challenger with diametrically opposed views—and as he tries to save his seat, Marte has falsely claimed a series of endorsements he didn’t actually earn. 

Marte was the only Manhattan lawmaker to vote against the City of Yes housing plan, has made a name fighting plans to build housing on the site of the Elizabeth Street Garden, voted against making outdoor dining permanent, and got the City Council to intervene and kill sidewalk seating at a bar in his district, Le Dive. 

His stances have earned him some loyal fans in the neighborhood who see him as a crusader against displacement, but also drawn backlash from the burgeoning pro-growth movement within the Democratic Party. That wing of the party is now embodied by Jess Coleman, an attorney running for Marte's seat who is focused on building more housing, defending congestion pricing, and taking public space away from cars for uses like outdoor dining. Another challenger, former NYPD counterterrorism official Elizabeth Lewinsohn, has focused on public safety.

"People are kind of waking up to the fact that the sort of NIMBY opposition to housing of all forms is at the crux of the problem," Coleman told Hell Gate. "There's a shift happening in our politics on the left." He added, "This is very much an internal ideological battle."

In that battle, Marte is making some dubious claims about his support, a review by Hell Gate found. His campaign website, until recently, listed at least five endorsements from organizations that confirmed to Hell Gate that they are not actually backing him this year: Those five groups are the United Federation of Teachers; StreetsPAC; NYIC Action, the New York Immigration Coalition's political arm; and two local unions, the Tile, Marble & Terrazzo Union Local #7 and the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 30. 

The UFT actually endorsed Lewinsohn this year, and said it would contact Marte to ask him to correct his website. The union backed Lewinsohn for "her commitment to early education programs, her determination to fully fund our public schools; and her determination to work for better pay for educators and more affordable housing for City workers," said spokesperson Alison Gendar. 

StreetsPAC and NYIC Action also endorsed Marte in 2023, but declined to endorse him this round. The Tile, Marble & Terrazzo Union Local #7, whose backing Marte also claimed and which was featured as an endorser on his 2023 campaign website, has not made any endorsements yet this year, said political director William Nagel. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 30 confirmed it hasn't endorsed Marte either. 

Marte also listed the endorsement of a sixth organization, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA). CSA, which endorsed Marte in 2023, did not respond to requests for comment about whether they're backing him again, but Marte and his district are not on CSA's list of 2025 council endorsements. 

Several of the false endorsements were removed from the candidate's website after Hell Gate inquired about them. The International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers was also formerly listed as an endorsement and has since been removed; the union didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Marte said the endorsements were left up from the 2023 campaign, though his website was elsewhere updated to reflect that he won the 2023 election. "It was a mistake," he said, adding the site has been corrected. 

"Since my first election in 2021, I've won this seat by a large margin because my constituents trust me to fight the toughest battles in City Hall. The causes I fight for—public health care, affordable homes—and the causes I fight against—displacement, 24 hour workdays—put a target on my back each election season because there's a lot of powerful people who's [sic] profits are threatened by my policies," Marte said in a text message to Hell Gate. "But every time, no matter the PACs or the mudslinging, voters from every single neighborhood downtown reaffirm that they trust me to represent them over special interests."

StreetsPAC hasn't made an endorsement yet but expects to in the coming weeks, said executive director Eric McClure. Marte hasn't responded to their candidate questionnaire this year, and they interviewed Coleman about a potential endorsement. "We expect all candidates to go through our process for each election cycle, so it's a little misleading that he would have our endorsement up on his website," McClure said. 

Marte has genuine backing from the Working Families Party and the New York League of Conservation Voters, among others—decisions that surprised some of his detractors. Coleman is backed by pro-housing development group Open New York, as well as the Stonewall Democrats and the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. Besides the UFT, Lewinsohn has support from the district’s former councilmember, Margaret Chin. 

Coleman said that after years of mounting frustration while serving in Community Board 1—"what I saw was just constant blocking of progress"—he jumped into the council race after Marte’s vote on the Adams administration's City of Yes zoning reforms, which scaled back parking requirements and allowed larger developments near transit stations, despite being watered down quite a bit in negotiations. 

"The real estate industry shouldn't run this city. Working people should. I represent neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and Chinatown where unchecked market rate development has led to skyscrapers that sit empty, drive up speculation, and cause rents to skyrise, and displace immigrant communities," Marte said in his speech against the package. "The City of Yes is a 'yes' to only the real estate developers. It's a plan to put our trust in developers, the same ones that evict us, displace us, and destroy our communities."

Coleman said Marte's speech was full of "misinformation" and "demagoguery."

"It is incontrovertible at this point that we have an incredible housing shortage in this city," he said. "And we need to deal with that." He blamed Marte for attempting to block more than 1,000 new apartments in the Lower Manhattan district alone, including affordable senior housing planned for the site of the Elizabeth Street Garden in SoHo, which just hit another roadblock; housing towers in Two Bridges; and a project planned for a parking lot in the South Street Seaport which drew opposition because it is in a historic district. 

Coleman said he would also prioritize defending congestion pricing amid President Donald Trump's attempts to shut it down and restoring a year-round outdoor dining program after the council's decision to make it seasonal drove many restaurants away. 

"Congestion pricing has been like magic for Lower Manhattan," he said, criticizing Marte for speaking at a rally opposing the tolling program. He called the demise of outdoor dining illustrative of why many young people have been alienated by politics. "They see a good thing happening in their neighborhood for once, and suddenly it's taken away," he said. (Marte's position on congestion pricing is that residents of the congestion zone should receive a 90 percent toll discount, and he has cast those who refer to him as a NIMBY as being "simple-minded.") 

One area where the rivals do agree is opposition to the jail planned for Chinatown as part of the City's plan to close Rikers Island and replace it with smaller jails in each of the boroughs. Chin, the area's former representative, played a pivotal role in passing the borough-based jail plan. Coleman said he sees no contradiction between his opposition and his broader anti-NIMBY politics. "We can’t just say Rikers is closed and then just build a bunch of smaller Rikers," he said. 

Marte and Coleman have both maxed out public matching funds and have $162,858 and $178,821 on hand, respectively. Lewinsohn has raised the most in private money but isn’t participating in the matching funds program, and has $60,632 on hand.




Shira Ben-Ami
Next

The New Republic: New York Democrats Are Sabotaging Their Biggest Policy Success