PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — Working Families Party candidate Diana Richardson won Tuesday’s special election to replace Karim Camara in the state Assembly, preliminary vote tallies show.
Richardson won by more than 50 percent of the vote, with 99 percent of election districts reporting, according to Board of Elections results. With the win, she became the first WFP candidate elected to state office in New York, party officials said.
She beat out three other candidates for the District 43 seat, which covers parts of Crown Heights, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and East Flatbush. Two Democrats, district leaders Shirley Patterson and Geoffrey Davis, received 24.7 percent and 3.8 percent of the vote, respectively. A fourth candidate, Republican Menachem Raitport, garnered 20.6 percent of the vote.
Up until the results rolled in, the election was something of a question mark after a botched nominating process left the Democratic party line open, forcing all three Democrats in the race to run on third-party lines. Patterson ran on the Independence Party line, but received endorsements from many big-name Brooklyn Democrats including Eric Adams and state Sen. Jesse Hamilton. Davis ran on the self-created Love Yourself party line.
Richardson thanked her supporters at a party Tuesday night at St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church on Hawthorne Street, surrounded by her 11-year-old son Isaac and a crowd of labor union representatives, state director of the WFP Bill Lipton and other supporters, including Councilman Jumaane Williams, Assemblywoman Latrice Walker and Comptroller Scott Stringer.
"Not only did we win, we won 2-to-1," she said to loud cheering. "I am so happy for what's about to happen in the 43rd Assembly District. We are going to get organized around our issues. Leadership is visual and you will never have to look far to find me."
Voter turnout was 12 percent, according to state Board of Elections data, with just over 8,200 votes cast on Tuesday out of 67,883 active registered voters in the district.
