After a hard-fought and often mud-slinging election season, Democratic attorney Kalman Yeger won in a landslide over Yoni Hikind last night in the 44th District City Council general election covering Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood and Kensington.
According to City Board of Election results, Yeger had 11,066 or nearly 67 percent of the electorate to Hikind’s 7,754 votes or about 29 percent of the vote.
“I am truly grateful for the support we received in our community across the board. There’s no division because we proved that we have brotherhood all across the community. No matter what people say, we had support in every part of our neighborhood from the Orthodox community to the Hasidic community, the Roman Catholic community – in Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Midwood, Kensington and the parts of Gravesend that we represent,” said Yeger to a large crowd of supporters at the Stars And Stripes Democratic Club, 7321 15th Avenue in Bensonhurst.
The race for the seat began shortly before the primary season began when current City Councilmember David Greenfield announced he was stepping down at the end of his term to head the Metropolitan Council On Jewish Poverty, and because it was past the deadline to hand in Democratic Party petitions to run in the primary, he was able to transfer the party line to Yeger, a longtime Democratic political associate.
This caused Greenfield’s political rival in the district, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, to put up his social worker son, Yoni Hikind, to run on his created Our Neighborhood Party line.
From there the race turned into a dirty shadow campaign with both political camps leaking and putting out negative stories and rumors about each other in local and citywide media, and on social media.
But as Greenfield noted in the victory celebration, the entire district came out strongly for Yeger and that he won overwhelmingly in every polling and election district.
And in the end the councilmember-elect proved to be a gracious winner, recognizing the tremendous support he received from labor, and among others, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Kings County Democratic Party Boss Frank Seddio, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and Conservative Party Boss Jerry Kassar as Yeger also carried the Conservative Party line. He also spoke about uniting the community and carrying on Greenfield’s legacy of doing great work in the district.
“The road was made easy for me. I wasn’t working against a broken government. I was working for a great government where the council member [Greenfield] worked so well that there was nothing to complain about. It was about continuing great service. We want to continue that work and we will continue to that great work,” said Yeger.
Yeger comes to the job with a wealth of experience, having spent years both on the local community board and as a Democratic Party operative. He also threw an olive branch to Hikind and his other opponent in the race, Harold Tischler.
“I want to thank my colleagues in this race, Heshy Tischler and Yoni Hikind, who I’ve known for a long time and deserves our respect for the race that he ran. I do congratulate them for being out there,” said Yeger.
