Eddie Gibbs Wins Harlem Assembly Election, Making History

EAST HARLEM, NY — Eddie Gibbs easily won Tuesday's special election for an East Harlem State Assembly seat, becoming the first ex-offender to serve in the state legislature and cementing a racial shakeup for a longtime Latino seat.

Gibbs, a Democrat, held 80 percent of the vote with nearly all in-person votes counted, compared to 10 percent for Republican Daby Benjaminé Carreras. The remarkably low-turnout election saw just 1,119 votes cast in a district that includes 85,000 registered voters.

Gibbs, 54, will now represent the 68th District seat that covers East Harlem, and parts of the Upper East Side and Central Harlem, spanning from East 92nd to 132nd streets between St. Nicholas Avenue and the East River.

The vacancy in the district was created last fall when Robert Rodriguez, who had held the seat since 2011, was appointed Secretary of State by Gov. Kathy Hochul. When neighborhood Democrats chose Gibbs, who is Black, as their nominee last month, his victory signaled a sea change for a seat that had been mostly held by people of Puerto Rican descent in recent decades.

Gibbs works as a consultant and a political operative. In a Patch candidate profile, he said he would focus on housing and public safety if elected to the Assembly, with an emphasis on NYCHA and job programs that would serve as crime diversions.

His election is historic in another respect: Gibbs appears to be the first state lawmaker to have served time in prison. He was convicted of manslaughter in the 1980s for fatally shooting a man who was attacking him at the NYCHA Johnson Houses in East Harlem, and served more than four years in prison before being released early.

Gibbs told Patch last month that his past is "no secret," but believes his story is one of redemption, citing his 30 years of service to the neighborhood following his release.

"Till this day I'm still very apologetic and disappointed by my actions and I make no excuses for them," he said.

His selection as the district's Democratic nominee came at the end of a tense party meeting in December, where community leaders whipped votes for Gibbs's rivals, who were mostly Latino. (This Assembly seat was New York's first to be represented by a Latino when Oscar Garcia Rivera was elected in 1937.)

Gibbs's nomination signals a shift in the political dynamics of the neighborhood long known as Spanish Harlem, or simply El Barrio. Indeed, East Harlem's Hispanic population declined from 49 to 45 percent between the 2010 and 2020 Census. (Its African-American population also dropped, from 37 to 28 percent.)

"I love East Harlem, and I’m looking forward to fighting for my neighbors in Albany — no matter who you are, what you look like, or how much money you have," Gibbs tweeted on Wednesday.

Related coverage:

• East Harlem Assembly Election: Eddie Gibbs Candidate Profile
• Eddie Gibbs Makes History As Harlem's New Assembly Nominee
• Harlem Assembly Race Heats Up: Who Will Replace Robert Rodriguez?