DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
City Council District 43 – Bensonhurst, New Utrecht, Dyker Heights, Sunset Park
Over the past ten years, the city has seen the addition of 345,000 Asian Americans. This “Asian opportunity” City Council district links the neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst and has a 54% majority-Asian population. There has never been an Asian City Council member from Brooklyn.
Susan Zhuang ★ Preferred Candidate, Ranked 1st
Age: 37
Occupation: Chief of Staff, Assembly Member William Colton (District 47)
Education: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (B.S.), SUNY Oswego (M.A.), University of Southern Indiana (M.B.A.)
To read this candidate’s responses to Citizen Union’s questionnaire, click here.
Susan Zhuang has worked for William Colton, the longtime Assembly Member who represents some of the neighborhoods in this new council district, since 2015 and she is now his chief of staff.
She has told CU that her work in the Assembly taught her how to “cut through the red tape” while building a strong constituent services operation. If elected, Zhuang’s top priorities would be to improve public safety by increasing the number of Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking officers, expand school programming for special needs and gifted students, and address quality-of-life and affordable housing for seniors.
In her candidate questionnaire answers, Zhuang supported most of CU’s reform priorities but differed on the question of open primaries, saying it could allow improper actors to interfere and weaken general election candidates’ appeal. Zhuang supports improving transparency within government and called to establish an independent ethics oversight agency with power to investigate pay-to-play issues and big corporate spending.
CU was impressed with Zhuang’s emphasis on constituent work, her understanding of needs in the district, and her ability to elucidate the interplay between issues like public safety, education challenges, and language barriers. Citizens Union believes she is well suited to navigate city government to leverage resources for her community. We therefore prefer her in this race.
Stanley Ng • Ranked 2nd
Age: 63
Occupation: Retired Computer Programmer
Education: Baruch College (B.A., M.S.)
To read this candidate’s responses to Citizen Union’s questionnaire, click here.
Stanley Ng is a retired computer programmer who has lived in Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights since the 1980s. He became involved in politics through education advocacy around the impact of the Department of Education’s Specialized High School Institute program and served on the Community Education Council of District 20 and the Citywide Council for High Schools.
Ng’s top priorities are addressing rising anti-Asian and anti-Semitic hate crimes, fully funding public schools, and building a food bank to ameliorate food insecurity among immigrants and seniors.
Ng supports all of CU’s reform priorities in his questionnaire answer and identified additional reforms to improve the transparency of local government. For example, he wants to improve the availability of records under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. However, he differed from Citizens Union on the approach to disciplining NYPD officers.
A political outsider, Ng impressed Citizens Union with a refreshing approach and a notable understanding of city politics in the context of reform. We rank him 2nd in this race.
Wai Yee Chan • Ranked 3rd
Age: N/A
Occupation: Executive Director at Homecrest Community Services
Education: Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (B.F.A.), Columbia University (M.A.)
To read this candidate’s responses to Citizen Union’s questionnaire, click here.
Wai Yee Chan is the Director for Homecrest Community Services, a community center and service provider for Asian immigrants and seniors in Southern Brooklyn. Prior to that, she was Council Member Justin Brannan’s Director of Community Engagement. Chan has lived in Queens for the past decade, although she noted that she is now moving to this council district.
If elected, her top priorities include improving language access of city services, fully funding public schools, and addressing the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes by prioritizing public safety.
Chan was largely supportive of all of CU’s reform priorities in the candidate questionnaire on issues like voter participation, ethics, and BOE reform but did not present to CU specific plans or details on how reform issues would more broadly impact the diverse communities within her district. We rank her third in this race.