Incumbent Laurie Cumbo last night took the District 40 race in a landslide victory, easily beating out Green Party Candidate Jabari Brisport and Republican Party Candidate Christine Parker.
The preliminary numbers report that Cumbo won 20,251 votes, or 67.45 percent of the electorate, while Brisport received 8,619 votes, or 28.71 percent, and Parker received 1,103 votes, or 3.67 percent. The district includes Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights and Crown Heights
“I thank you for this very much,” Cumbo told her campaign team at her election party, commending them for the work they’d done that day. “I know today was rainy, it was cold, it was everything that you didn’t want it to be on a day like today. But you all were out there, you stayed the course; I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.”
The 29-year-old Brisport, a self-proclaimed eco-socialist, ran a daring campaign based around a radical left-wing platform. Said platform earned him immense support from the Green Party, as he won the primary election against Scott Hutchins with an overwhelming 88.9 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, Parker, the cousin of New York State Senator Kevin Parker, had the distinction of being the only Republican candidate in the district who ran against the incumbent. The candidate named education as her “primary passion,” and her support for school choice constituted the cornerstone of her campaign.
Neither of their efforts proved to be successful against the wildly popular incumbent, however. Crystal Hudson, a dedicated worker on Cumbo’s campaign, says that she was unsurprised by Cumbo’s landslide victory, given the amount of diligent campaigning she and her team did.
“The margin was so large because we’ve been doing the work for so long,” said Hudson. “We’ve been campaigning with large numbers, and canvassing, and establishing our presence in the neighborhood.”
Entering her second term New York City Council, Cumbo said that she’s going to make affordable housing and the renovation of NYCHA housing her top priorities.
“NYCHA is going to be my number one priority going into term two,” said Cumbo. “I want to make sure that NYCHA buildings have proper security, lighting, safety measures and recreational upgrades. I also want to make sure that during the next four years, we create as much low-income housing as possible, and increase our efforts beyond the legislation that we’ve passed to ensure that tenants have legal council when going to housing court.”
At the conclusion of the night, Cumbo, now the mother of a child nearing three months old, said that she’s more determined than ever to make her district a viable place to live.
“Now I know really what it’s like to raise a family and to have a little one,” said Cumbo. “So this really means a lot to me in terms of the ability to create a community where we can raise our children, and create safe communities where our children can flourish.”
