Thank You!

I want to thank you and all of the community leaders and volunteers who put so much hard work into our effort. A big thank you also goes out to all of the residents, friends and unions who gave to our campaign. I'm proud to have been able to employ many people from the neighborhood to help extend our message, and I would like to thank all of them for their hard work. Finally, thank you to the more than 5,000 people who voted for our campaign. I am proud to say we ran this race with honor and integrity, sticking to the issues that matter most to the people in this community: affordable housing, job creation and education. And I'm also proud to be a member of a community that is so involved and politically engaged. We had unprecedented voter turnout this year with 19,290 people voting in this council race – only the Upper Westside of Manhattan had higher turnout! 

As you may know, the reality of this race was that there was an incredible amount of special interest money invested into it. The real estate lobby, JOBS FOR NY, contributed over $250,000 to win this election for their candidate which also included almost $28,000 of negative untruthful mailers to discredit me and another opponent of their selected candidate. In addition, there was a great deal of political support from local politicians who decided early on in the process which candidate should be elected to represent this community. From the very beginning my message spoke about a desire to protect the families that are already in this community and to build housing that is truly affordable to the people in our community. As I walked the district and spoke to residents that message was well-received and earned us great support. Unfortunately, it was drowned out by billionaire real estate developers, investors and politicians with a different agenda.

We campaigned on the promise of organizing, preserving and building affordable housing. On creating new industry and bringing new jobs into the 35th, on investing in our schools. Despite the election's outcome I will continue to work towards that goal. The residents of Crown Heights have already begun to come together and organize around preserving affordable housing, and I am eager to continue that work with them. I hope that you will join me in the call to our elected officials to deliver on their promises. I wish our next city council member, mayor, comptroller and other elected officials the best of success, and I hope they continue to listen to the people of the community and properly represent us.

Now that the campaign is over, I will continue to live and work for justice in this community. You can join me at our next meeting of Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform, or contact me at edefox@gmail.com. Once again, thank you to everyone for all of your support!