The Manhattan legislator said she has enough votes to secure the leadership post come January.
NEW YORK — City Council Member Julie Menin announced Wednesday that she’s secured enough votes to become the chamber’s next speaker, declaring victory in a race that could leave Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani governing opposite someone widely seen as a check on his incoming administration.
Menin released a list of 35 Council members and their quotes pledging support — a supermajority well over the 26 votes needed to declare victory in the 51–member body. Her supporters largely hailed from outside the Council’s Progressive Caucus — a nexus of pro-Mamdani members — and included more moderate Democrats and Republicans.
In declaring victory, Menin struck a collaborative tone with the other side of City Hall.
“With this broad five-borough coalition, we stand ready to partner with mayor-elect Mamdani’s administration and deliver on a shared agenda that makes New York more affordable through universal childcare, lowers rent and healthcare costs, and ensures that families across the city can do more than just get by,” Menin said in a statement.
Her main competition in the race was Brooklyn Council Member Crystal Hudson, who had earned the backing of progressive members and the endorsement of health care worker’s union 1199SEIU. Mamdani and his transition team have largely stayed out of the race, never openly declaring support for a particular candidate nor seeking to aggressively sway members — a sharp departure from his two predecessors who both inserted themselves in the speaker’s race.
Emissaries from DC 37, the city’s largest municipal labor union, were urging members Wednesday morning to hold off on confirming their support for Menin, according to two people with knowledge of the exchanges. Their efforts appeared to be unsuccessful, though, as the roster of pledged lawmakers only grew throughout the morning.
Members will officially vote to pick the next speaker on Jan. 7, which means Menin will need to keep her coalition intact for weeks to remain the prohibitive favorite for the job. That leaves ample time for anyone opposed to her candidacy to try to peel off support. This is the earliest a candidate has declared victory in the speaker’s race in the modern era of the council, going back to 1986. The current speaker, Adrienne Adams, secured the necessary support on Dec. 17.
Hudson’s campaign and Mamdani’s transition team both declined to comment. Council Members Amanda Farías, Selvena Brooks-Powers and Christopher Marte are also candidates for speaker. Marte is now pledging his support to Menin.
A person close to Menin’s effort, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter, said her support is largely driven by unions including the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ; political leaders including Rep. Gregory Meeks, head of the Queens Democratic Party, and state Sen. Jamaal Bailey, head of the Bronx Democratic Party; and early Menin supporters like Council Member Shaun Abreu.
While the race appeared to be settling into a stalemate ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend, Team Menin held a late-Tuesday meeting in Southeast Queens — Meeks’ home turf — where they confirmed their numbers and began to lock down firm commitments.
Some members found the effort to be overly aggressive.
“It was a late-night, strong-arm bully play that started by my count, last night, and I think it was sort of a bluff that worked to bank a bunch of numbers,” said one Democratic Council member who was granted anonymity to speak about internal deliberations. “They started calling people saying something along the lines of ‘the train is leaving the station, we’re releasing quotes, it’s now or never.’”
Menin has a long history in city government. As a Jewish resident of Manhattan’s Upper East Side who’s married to a real estate developer, she represents a segment of the Democratic Party that ardently opposed Mamdani’s election.
She didn’t endorse a candidate for mayor and even declined to back Mamdani after he won the Democratic primary, arguing it would be inappropriate for a speaker candidate to do so.
But Mamdani and Menin share some key allies — namely organized labor including HTC and 32BJ, alliances that could help smooth over any spats and avoid the acrimony that defined the relationship between Mayor Eric Adams and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. (The two are not related.)
Menin, 58, was a corporate lawyer before making a name for herself in politics as the chair of the lower Manhattan community board after 9/11. She held a variety of top roles in former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, leading the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment before leading the city’s 2020 census effort.