DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
Jo Anne Simon ★ Preferred Candidate, Ranked 1st
Age: 68 Occupation: New York State Assembly Member, (District 52) Education: Iona College (B.A. Speech Pathology), Gallaudet University (M.A. Deaf Education), Fordham University School of Law (J.D.)
To read the candidate’s responses to CU’s questionnaire, click here.
Jo Anne Simon is a State Assembly Member who has represented the 52nd District (northwest Brooklyn) since 2015. In the Assembly, Simon has sponsored legislation on gun control and campaign finance regulation; and served as chair of the Committee on Ethics and Guidance, the Subcommittee on Workplace Safety, and the Legislative Ethics Commission. Previously, she was a district leader and the president of the Boerum Hill neighborhood association. Before entering politics, Simon founded a disability civil rights law firm in Downtown Brooklyn. Citizens Union preferred her in her first campaign for the Assembly.
Simon’s foremost campaign priorities are reforming the roles of the Borough President in land use review procedures and community board appointments, and using the office’s capital funds to improve and augment eco-friendly transportation infrastructure. She has spoken about the need to “reset” the city’s land use paradigm, which she says is “fundamentally unfair to communit[ies]” and “developer-driver,” in order to build more affordable housing. As a replacement for ULURP, she envisions a long term planning process driven by local community boards and diverse leadership. Additionally, Simon wants to make Brooklyn’s 30 miles of waterfront environmentally resilient.
Simon has a long record in advocating for voting rights, government and police transparency (she was a co-sponsor of the repeal of section 50-a, which had shielded police records from public scrutiny), and campaign finance reform. She was also a Citizens Union member in the early 2000s. If elected, she would be the first ever female Brooklyn Borough President.
Simon has an impressive track record as an Assembly Member, civil rights attorney and community activist. She has a strong grasp of the powers of the office, and would make an excellent Borough President for Brooklyn, which is why Citizens Union prefers her in this race.
Antonio Reynoso ★ Preferred Candidate, Ranked 2nd
Age: 38 Occupation: City Council Member (District 34) Education: Lemoyne College (Bachelor’s)
To read the candidate’s responses to CU’s questionnaire, click here.
Antonio Reynoso is a second-term Council Member representing the 34th District, which includes the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn and Ridgewood in Queens. Citizens Union preferred Reynoso in his 2013 campaign for Council, in which he defeated Vito Lopez, a longtime State Assemblyman who had been forced to resign from the Assembly due to accusations of sexual harassment.
Reynoso serves as the chair of the city’s Committee on Sanitation, and has passed legislation on waste equity (setting limits to the amount of trash processing that can be done in any particular area of the city) and heightened environmental standards for private waste management companies. He has sponsored numerous police reform bills, such as the “Right to Know” Act, which, among other provisions, mandated that NYPD officers inform civilians that they may refuse a voluntary search. He also fought against–and defeated–the de Blasio administration’s plan to rezone 300 blocks in Bushwick .
Reynoso’s biggest priorities as Borough President would be “truly” affordable housing and “real” police accountability. He says that he will introduce council bills on city-wide composting and commercial rent relief, and use capital funding to procure state-of-the-art birthing centers for every Brooklyn hospital (in order to combat the disproportionate mortality rate of Black women giving birth). Additionally, Reynoso promises to fight to provide each community board with a comprehensive planner, and has outlined a plan to reform the Board of Elections by making state and county boards nonpartisan, rather than bipartisan (hiring must be made based solely on qualification, and measures of professionalism and impartiality should be implemented at every level of the board).
Citizens Union believes Reynoso to be an energetic candidate who can build broad coalitions, and who would use the Borough President’s office to bring a diverse range of voices into the planning process. We prefer him as our second choice in the Brooklyn Borough President Democratic primary.
Khari Edwards ★ Preferred Candidate, Ranked 3rd
Age: 47 Occupation: Former Vice President at Brookdale Hospital Education: Thomas Edison State University (BASc Liberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies)
To read the candidate’s responses to CU’s questionnaire, click here.
From 2013 until 2020, when he resigned in order to focus full-time on his Borough President campaign, Khari Edwards was vice president of external affairs at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in eastern Brooklyn. He acted as an advocate for residents in nearby communities and as a liaison between the hospital and local government. Edwards sees that experience as ideal preparation for the role of Borough President: “I represented 1.3 million Brooklyn residents for Brookdale.”
But Edwards also has more conventional political experience. Before Brookdale, he worked for four years as a special advisor to the Democratic Leader of the NYS Senate, and for two as a regional representative for the Governor’s office. Edwards has also served as the Brooklyn Council President for the Make a Wish Foundation, and founded “It Starts Here,” a Brookdale Hospital-based program to combat gun violence.
Edwards says that his top priorities are reforming community boards and the ULURP process in order to build more affordable housing. Additional priorities include using capital funding to invest in education, and reinvigorating small businesses. He also says that he intends to introduce legislation to make resiliency building guidelines mandatory, rather than “advisory,” that he favors giving community boards binding up/down votes on ULURP applications, and that he would appoint a “Director of Community Boards” to support and coordinate District Managers.
Edwards would bring to the office strong administrative leadership, political experience, and a real commitment to strengthen the communities of Brooklyn. Citizens Union prefers him as a third choice in the Brooklyn Borough President democratic primary.
Robert Cornegy
Age: 55 Occupation: New York City Council Member, (District 36) Education: Mercy College (Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management), Mercy College (Master’s in Organizational Management)
To read the candidate’s responses to CU’s questionnaire, click here.
Robert Cornegy has represented Brooklyn’s 36th District (Bedford-Stuyvesant, northern Crown Heights) in the City Council since 2014. He chairs the Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings, and the Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Task Force. Citizens Union supported his election to the City Council.
Cornegy has sponsored numerous pieces of legislation throughout his time in the Council, including the “Kalief Browder Re-Entry Success Act,” which requires that the Department of Corrections provide vocational, educational, and therapeutic services for anyone detained in a city jail for more than 10 consecutive days; commercial tenant anti-harassment legislation; and a lactation law, which mandates that all public buildings maintain rooms for women to use for breastfeeding. He was instrumental in the establishment of NYC’s “Chamber on the Go” program, which provides mobile support services to small businesses.
Cornegy’s campaign priorities are affordable housing, economic development “with an emphasis on creating more jobs that pay family- sustaining wages,” and affordable healthcare . Job creation would also be the guiding principle he would follow when evaluating development projects. He is in favor of community boards playing an increased role in ULURP, and says he will provide them with additional resources.
He would like to see borough presidents more involved in legislation at the City Council. CItizens Union was impressed by Cornegy’s thoughtful comments on the future of the Borough President office and appreciates his years of service at the City Council.
Kimberly Council
Age: 49 Occupation: Senior Reference Law Librarian Education: North Carolina Central University (B.A.), Pratt Institute (M.S.)
To read the candidate’s responses to CU’s questionnaire, click here.
Kimberly Council is an associate minister at the Historic Berean Baptist Church and a senior reference librarian at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. She has run for public office twice before, unsuccessfully (for City Council in 2013 and the State Assembly in 2014), and Citizens Union supported her in both those bids. Council has also served as President of the East New York Housing Development Corporation and a member of State Senator Velmanette Montgomery’s working group on juvenile justice.
Council says her priorities are COVID-19 recovery, affordable housing, and healthcare. She wants to turn City Hall into a “one-stop-shop” to help Brooklynites take advantage of all the programs that the city, state, and federal government have to offer; and she wants to create a “Mobile Borough Hall” to further increase accessibility. In terms of transparency, Council has said she wants to track and publicize city spending habits to show inequities among neighborhoods–and she promises to spend accordingly, in order to “level the playing field.”
Robert Elstein
Age: 42 Occupation: Teacher Education: Sarah Lawrence (B.A. Liberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies), Brooklyn College (M.A. Secondary Education and Teaching)
To read the candidate’s responses to CU’s questionnaire, click here.
Robert Elstein has taught high school English and theater at Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood for fifteen years. He is the founder of Beautify Brooklyn, a community clean-up coalition. Elstein says that his campaign’s three priorities are “save our schools,” “save our community,” and “save our earth.” His primary objective is to eliminate mayoral control of the city’s public schools (he favors a system which would provide more community oversight). He also supports a Green New Deal for New York City and reforms to ULURP.
Mathieu Eugene
This candidate was not available for an interview
Pearlene Fields
This candidate was not available for an interview
Anthony Jones
This candidate was not available for an interview
Trisha Ocona
This candidate was not available for an interview
Robert Ramos
This candidate was not available for an interview
Lamor Whitehead-Miller
This candidate was not available for an interview