Tight Central Harlem City Council Race Is Headed For Recount

HARLEM, NY — The close City Council race in Central Harlem will remain officially undecided for a while longer after the latest results showed challenger Kristin Richardson Jordan leading incumbent Bill Perkins by just 104 votes — within the margin to trigger an automatic recount.

Jordan, 34, still appears likely to prevail and has already declared victory, since a recount would be unlikely to change a margin that wide. Still, the District 9 primary is on track to be the last in the city to be certified.

Tuesday's updates from the Board of Elections showed Jordan leading with 9,017 votes in the final ranked-choice voting round to Perkins's 8,913. Factoring in nearly 7,700 "exhausted ballots" that included neither candidate, the margin between Jordan and Perkins was 0.41 percent — within the 0.5-point margin that forces a hand recount under New York law.

"As of this morning, we believe that there is one Council race, the 9th Council district in Manhattan, that will require a manual recount," said BOE deputy executive director Dawn Sandow during Tuesday's meeting, adding that the need for a recount will be confirmed once a deadline has passed for a few dozen voters to correct their absentee ballots.

In an email, Jordan told Patch that if ranked-choice voting "were respected at the state level there would be no doubts we are outside the margin for a recount."

"We hope taxpayer money won’t be wasted on it," she said, adding that the results vindicated her campaign's ground-level strategy.

Keith Lilly, a longtime Perkins aide who had served as a de facto campaign spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comment about the results.

If Jordan's lead holds, her victory over Perkins would mark a sea change in Harlem's political landscape. A poet, teacher and democratic socialist, Jordan has called for halting evictions, raising taxes on the wealthy and working toward the abolition of police.

Perkins, 72, is a longtime legislature whose stature has faded in recent years amid a retreat from public life that has coincided with unspecified health problems.

Though his re-election campaign was anemic, Perkins won more first-choice votes than any of the 12 Democrats who were seeking to unseat him. Ultimately, though, Jordan earned enough second- through fifth-choice votes to be pushed over the edge, making District 9 one of just two Council races citywide whose outcome flipped after ranked-choice results were released.

Assuming Jordan wins the Democratic nomination and November's general election, she will take office in January.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Shaun Abreu was victorious in West Harlem's District 7 City Council race, while Diana Ayala was easily re-elected in East Harlem's District 8.

Previous coverage:

• Jordan Set To Upset Perkins For Central Harlem City Council Seat
• Here's Where Central Harlem Candidates Stand On Your Issues
• Bill Perkins Jolts Harlem Council Race, Launches Re-Election Bid