Marmarato Unseats Velázquez in Bronx Council District Upset
The historic Republican victory stemmed in part from Marjorie Velázquez’s support of a rezoning on Bruckner Boulevard
By Abigail Nehring November 8, 2023 6:30 pm
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The Bronx Republican Party declared mission accomplished Tuesday night in the Bronx’s 13th City Council District, where deep divides over affordable housing, upzoning and development near the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro-North expansion project played a role in unseating incumbent Marjorie Velázquez.
Republican challenger Kristy Marmorato clinched a narrow win over Democratic incumbent Velázquez, giving Republicans their first City Council seat in the borough in 40 years. Marmarato — an X-ray technician who has gained endorsements from former New York Assembly candidate Gene DeFrancis, among other Bronx politicos linked to former president Donald Trump — pulled ahead with 52 percent of the vote Tuesday night as unofficial election results came in.
Marmorato declared victory shortly before midnight to cheers from supporters at Brewski’s Bar & Grill on East Tremont Avenue, just a few blocks from Throggs Neck Associates’ 324,082-square-foot mixed-used development spanning four blocks of Bruckner Boulevard. The project has pitted neighbors against each other and inspired a wave of protests and counter-protests last summer ahead of the election.
Velázquez was initially reticent about the developer’s rezoning application, which will add 348 units of housing and was supported by unions including Laborers’ Local-79 and SEIU 32BJ. But the councilmember ultimately voted to approve the zoning application in October 2022, providing Marmarato a runway to criticize her opponent’s stance on development in the leafy, low-density neighborhoods of Throggs Neck, Pelham Bay and Morris Park.
The district ranks 47 out of the city’s 51 City Council districts for new housing development, producing only 95 new units of housing over the past nine years, according to the New York Housing Conference’s (NYHC) housing tracker.
“I think that’s the definition of underdevelopment,” said NYHC’s Brendan Cheney. He added that the Republican caucus’s Not-In-My-Backyard stance “doesn’t make sense in a district that is producing among the least new affordable housing or even new housing.”
The candidates lapsed into personal attacks during a debate on BronxNet a week before the election, with Marmarato accusing her opponent of being “into overdevelopment.”
“Everybody’s going to be completely dependent on the city for housing, and it’s going to turn into a socialist society,” Marmarato said.
That message, along with Marmarato’s position on crime and quality-of-life issues, struck a chord with voters.
All 51 City Council seats were up for re-election this year after the city’s district lines were redrawn in 2022. Elsewhere, Democratic Councilmember and City Council finance chair Justin Brannan defeated fellow incumbent Ari Kagan, a former Democrat who ran on the Republican line, in one the city’s most closely watched races in South Brooklyn.
Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.
