Six weeks after election day this race is over - what took so long?
On Tuesday, public defender Tiffany Caban conceded the Democratic primary for Queens, New York district attorney to Queens Borough President Melinda Katz (D), ending a six-week-long dispute over the election's outcome.
The primary to succeed Richard Brown, who died in May 2019 after 28 years in office, drew national attention after presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren endorsed Caban. Political observers compared the race to last year's Democratic primary for a Queens-based Congressional seat in which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) unseated fourth-ranked House Democrat Joseph Crowley (D). Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Caban while Crowley fundraised for Katz.
On June 25, Caban appeared to be the winner with a lead of 1,100 votes over Katz. But after absentee and provisional ballots were certified July 3, Katz took a lead of 20 votes. The city's elections board completed a full manual recount on July 29 which found Katz ahead by 60 votes. Caban challenged the recount results before the Kings County Supreme Court, saying that the board had invalidated a number of ballots which she argued should have been counted. In his ruling Tuesday, Judge John G. Ingram found that most of the ballots named in Caban's challenge were not valid, meaning there were not enough ballots remaining in question to change the election's result.
89,858 votes were cast in the 2019 Democratic primary, while 3,777 votes were cast for the office at the last election in 2015. Katz will face attorney Daniel Kogan (R) in the November 5 general election.
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