{"id":353639,"date":"2025-11-03T23:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T23:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/353639\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T23:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T23:00:09","slug":"deborah-glick-backs-district-leader-to-succeed-her-in-assembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/353639\/","title":{"rendered":"Deborah Glick backs district leader to succeed her in Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outgoing Assembly Member<\/a> Deborah Glick has picked a successor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Assembly member is backing local District Leader Jeannine Kiely, who also serves as President of Friends of the Elizabeth Street Garden. Kiely filed today to run for the seat, state campaign finance records show. But she\u2019s far from the only Democrat eyeing the Assembly District 66 seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kiely confirmed to City & State that she\u2019s planning to run and will launch her campaign in the next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very excited to run. I love this community. I\u2019ve lived in the 66th Assembly District for 30 years, and it\u2019s my home,\u201d Kiely said.<\/p>\n

Glick said that once she decided she wasn\u2019t seeking reelection, she called Kiely to ask if she\u2019d be interested in running to replace her. \u201cI am very happy that she is,\u201d the Assembly member said, adding that Kiely has \u201cnot just the intelligence but the experience and commitment and the knowledge of the neighborhood\u201d needed to take over the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kiely is the former chair of Community Board 2 and currently chairs the community board\u2019s traffic and transportation committee. She is also a co-founder of Literacy Academy Collective, an education nonprofit. In 2013, she co-founded Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden to fight for the lot to be opened to the public; the group no longer manages the day-to-day operations of the garden, but continues to advocate for its preservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The garden is a hot button issue in the district and symbolic of YIMBY\/NIMBY debates citywide. The city pushed for years to develop a senior apartment building on part of the lot, which has faced fierce resistance from locals and fans of the park. Council Member Chris Marte struck a deal with Mayor Eric Adams to preserve the space entirely, but Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has recently come out in favor of building the rentals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though Kiely is the only one who has made it official, plenty of other Democrats are weighing whether to toss their hat in the race. State Committee Member Ben Yee \u2013 who, along with Kiely, is a member of the Downtown Independent Democrats club \u2013 told City & State he is \u201cvery much considering\u201d running for Glick\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n

Yee worked as the New York digital director for Barack Obama\u2019s campaign in 2008, and he has served in various good government groups and initiatives since then. He described both himself and Kiely as \u201cstalwarts of the district,\u201d but he believes he has a natural base of support in the good government world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a bunch of ideas that I\u2019m currently fleshing out \u2026 about how government could operate better, and how we could safeguard against people like Donald Trump, and honestly, the ambitions of the modern Republican party,\u201d Yee said.<\/p>\n

District Leader Arthur Schwartz initially considered a run<\/a> after Glick announced her plans to retire, but he is now throwing his support behind Kiely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s wonderful. Really community oriented person, \u2018activist to her bones\u2019 person,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yee and Kiely would likely have more in common with each other than with someone like Ryder Kessler, the co-executive director of Abundance New York who unsuccessfully ran for the seat in 2022. Some downtown politicos are bracing for either Kessler, or someone aligned with his YIMBY politics, to make a bid for the seat.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard from people that have regular dealings with him that he\u2019s already putting together a run,\u201d Schwartz said of Kessler.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kessler himself did not confirm or deny whether he plans to run.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been hearing from many community members about the race, and it\u2019s been gratifying to have those conversations as I decide how to best be of service,\u201d he told City & State in a text message. \u201cAt the moment, though, I am laser-focused on my organization\u2019s work on tomorrow\u2019s votes to pass the charter amendments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen Roskoff, president of the influential Jim Owles Democratic Club, said he was hoping for a candidate in favor of building housing in Elizabeth Street Garden\u2019s lot. The Jim Owles club previously backed Kessler\u2019s unsuccessful attempt to unseat Glick in 2022 and YIMBY candidate Jess Coleman\u2019s unsuccessful primary challenge against City Council Member Chris Marte earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeborah Glick was perhaps the most NIMBY member of the assembly,\u201d Roskoff said. \u201cThat has to be undone. We can\u2019t have another person who opposes any and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Outgoing Assembly Member Deborah Glick has picked a successor.\u00a0 The Assembly member is backing local District Leader Jeannine…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":353640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[147074,5229,13260,405,403,13261,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-353639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-2026-new-york-state-elections","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-campaigns-elections","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-news-politics","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115488255183892093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}