When a conservative state judge decided in June to toss out New York’s new Congressional map and hand redistricting power to an outside academic, it threw the state’s sensitive political ecosystem into disarray. Shifting lines presented a number of difficult dilemmas to both politicians and voters, and nowhere has that been more apparent in New York’s newly redrawn 10th Congressional district.
Niou had been all set to run a primary challenge against moderate State Sen. Brian Kavanagh when word broke that the entirety of her Assembly district would be part of the new Congressional district, which was reconfigured enough to not have an incumbent. The 10th also includes stretches of north Brooklyn, with another prominent Asian community within its borders along with many other vibrant blocs.
“I just knew that if I didn't run… this opportunity is a once in a lifetime opportunity for our district, to have the representation that it needs in Congress,” Niou says, explaining her decision to switch gears and jump into the race. “I couldn't just pass it up and not do it.”
Complicating matters was the fact that many other New York politicians also sought to seize on the rare open Congressional race, while still others were forced into it by party powerbrokers.
DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney’s decision to ignore his job description and run in the 17th district essentially forced incumbent Rep. Mondaire Jones into a no-win decision: The impressive first-term representative could fight Maloney in a bloody primary that would make him the target of untold sums of corporate PAC money; incur the wrath of progressives by challenging the popular Rep. Jamal Bowman in the neighboring 16th district; or find some other district in which to run.
Jones went with the third option and threw his hat into the race to represent NY-10, which sits a good 30+ miles from his base in Rockland County. In doing so, he joined an already crowded field that included Niou, City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, former federal prosecutor and Levi Strauss heir Dan Goldman, and former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Jones running in a Manhattan/Brooklyn district makes for an awkward fit, geographically if not politically. Still, he’s had a very impressive first term, displaying a brave willingness to lead on important issues like Supreme Court expansion, a topic that many veteran Democrats began the cycle desperately trying to avoid. We here at Progress Report endorsed Jones’ first campaign early in the 2020 cycle because it was very obvious that he should be in Congress. We still believe that Mondaire Jones should be in Congress — just not as a representative of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, not when there’s a local progressive option.
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A member of Congress’s first responsibility is to take care of their district, and Niou has the experience and deep connections that make her the best bet to represent its complicated needs. She has worked to score funding for local small businesses, deliver relief for struggling working class residents, navigate the district’s troubled NYCHA housing, and anticipate future problems.
The Working Families Party agreed, backing Niou’s campaign with what could be a game-changing endorsement for the August 23rd primary. The race is currently neck and neck; the most recent public poll, released two weeks ago, showed Niou just behind Rivera, who sits in first place thanks to plenty of donations from Wall Street interests.
Niou has been a long-time advocate for Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which aids local businesses, many of which she discovered could not even sniff a PPP loan during the height of the pandemic. This year, she scored $500k in revolving funds for the CDFI fund in the most recent session, which will be a lifeline for many locals. Knowing how to navigate this sort of funding on a national scale could benefit businesses across the country.
We spent much of our conversation discussing the complications of soaring rents and corporate landlords in her district, where her office has worked to deliver rent relief funding to residents while advocating for better public housing. Niou has an ambitious vision for social housing that builds on elements of what Rep. Maxine Waters proposed and what has been done in countries all around the world. Closer to home, Niou helped to author what would become the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, but knows that the situation is still dire.
“I recently went into one of our units like LaGuardia Houses, and the boiler itself was trashed that you could walk into it — there was a hole so big you literally just walk inside of it,” she recalls. “And they had a garden hose feeding the thing — a garden hose from Home Depot.”
The funding that Niou brought home to her district is particularly notable because she did not hesitate to vote against several of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s big priorities, including the $850 million giveaway for a new Buffalo Bills stadium. There has rarely been a righteous fight that Niou has not been willing to take up since entering politics as a staffer for State Assemblyman Ron Kim, another progressive thorn in the corporate establishment’s side.
After falling just short in a special election to replace the disgraced former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Niou came back to defeat his hand-picked successor in the 2016 election, striking a major blow to the powerful conservative power structure that dominated the New York Democratic Party and kept Republicans in power in the State Senate.
Her Assembly career has been one of challenging entrenched power. Niou gave a stirring testimony in 2019 about experiencing sexual abuse as a child as part of a successful push to pass protections for survivors that languished in the Republican-held state Senate for years. She was one of the most vocal critics of Gov. Andrew Cuomo throughout his own harassment scandal, demanding that he resign for months and months before he was forced out of office. Once he left, Niou tried to pressure House Speaker Carl Heastie to pursue impeachment hearings so that the full breadth of Cuomo’s harassment and corruption would be exposed.
Even during the height of Cuomo’s early Covid-era stardom, Niou was defiant against the governor’s indulgences, voting against a budget that provided zero relief for renters while granting the governor the broad emergency powers that he would soon abuse.
The vicious and frequently bigoted online abuse Niou receives is still relentless — for being Asian, for being autistic, for daring to take on corrosive figures with high public approval ratings. That won’t stop in Congress, not when she’s very vocal about her support for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, LGBTQ+ rights, and broad investments in public housing that piss off developers and private equity funds everywhere.
“People will send me all kinds of stuff, but I think as long as I'm always looking through a racial justice lens, a social justice lens, an environmental justice lens, an economic justice lens, and a disability lens, as long as we're doing that, then we're doing the right thing,” Niou says. “If we're not fighting for human rights, if there's ever a time when I blink, then I don't deserve to be here.”
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P.S. This is adapted from a piece in my newsletter, Progress Report. The newsletter focuses in depth on progressive politics and policy, including lots of coverage of state and local governments you won’t get elsewhere, and holds bad Republicans accountable.
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