Marte Launches Campaign for City Council Speaker

Frustrated by what he sees as an unwieldy abuse of power by city council speakers in the past, Council Member Christopher Marte, a member of the progressive caucus who represents the Lower East Side, is going public with a campaign to land the job himself.

So far, he told Straus News that he has met with more than half of the 51 members on the city council who will vote for a new speaker come January.

”New Yorkers are living in an illusion of a democracy and nobody has the guts to tell them,” Marte said. “I’m running for speaker because I believe in my colleagues. I want them to be the ones making choices for their constituents.”

In so doing, he’ll be going after a job that UES City Council Member Julie Menin has been quietly campaigning for herself and who some regard as the early favorite. Menin used some of the fundraising war chest in the Democratic primary, where she ran against Collin Thompson, a relative unknown with little local profile, to dole out money to about 20 other council members. It takes 25 to get elected speaker (presuming the candidate votes for himself or herself for the clinching 26th vote.) Menin did not comment on Marte’s entrance into the race.

But she’s far from the only rival. Crystal Hudson from Brooklyn, who is co-chair of the Black, Latin, and Asian caucus, is said to be in the race. Carmen De La Rosa, born in the Dominican Republic and a former NYS Assembly member who now represents a district in northern Manhattan, told City & State that she’s also interested. Amanda Farias from the Bronx is the current majority leader on the council and is said to be interested in the job as well.

Farias is no stranger to the political intrigues of the job. She only got the job when East Side Council Member Keith Powers was suddenly stripped of the majority leader role by speaker Adrienne Adams in January after an apparent falling-out with Adams. The exact reason behind the sudden change was never explained, but the change was swift. Reports at the time said Powers had had only a few hours’ notice that the change was afoot before it was made public.

Marte, who had three candidates challenge him in the primary race, won the June 24 battle handily and is the favorite to defeat the Republican standard-bearer Helen Qui, a Chinatown activist who ran and lost to Marte two years ago.

And because the real campaign can’t start until the November election is over, the campaigns were usually compressed and somewhat behind the scenes.

Up until the Bill de Blasio era, the mayor more or less stayed out of the speaker selection process. At one point, Dan Garodnick, currently the Planning Commissioner but then an East Side Council member who held the seat that Powers will soon be vacating due to term limits, was being touted as the likely speaker. But de Blasio, then newly elected by a wide margin in 2013, intervened and pushed Council Member Melissa Mark Viverto. With his backing, the leftist council member beat the more centrist Garodnick in January 2014.

Eric Adams, who ran on a law-and-order platform, had pushed to have more centrist Francisco Moya as speaker, but Moya lost to Adrienne Adams.

It is not clear what role Zohran Mamdani will play in the selection of a speaker if his big early lead in the polls translates into an election victory on Nov. 4. As a self-declared Democratic socialist, he’d clearly want someone who shares his ideology in the speaker’s role. Marte, who grew upon on the Lower East Side is a member of the progressive caucus but with an independent streak. Hudson, Farias, and De La Rosa are all members of the progressive caucus. Menin was one of 15 council members who withdrew from the progressive caucus in February 2023.

Mamdani seemed noncommittal last week when asked at a press conference if he would support Crystal Hudson, who happened to be at the same press conference. “I have deep respect for Council Member Hudson as well as for all council members across the board,” Mamdani said, according to City & State. “My focus is on winning this election in November.”

One of Marte’s crowning achievements recently was helping the fight to save the Elizabeth Street Garden and to instead build about 600 affordable housing units on other sites around his district. In that battle, he forced the Adams administration to change course at the 11th hour in a deal with the new deputy mayor, Randy Mastro. Marte was also in the minority of city council members who voted against the City of Yes zoning overhauls supported by the majority and pushed by Adams.

Marte says he is revealing a platform for speaker while he is running and is pushing to bring more transparency to the job. In the past, he said a speaker could thwart bills from coming to a vote. And individual members who bucked a speaker’s agenda could find that their discretionary funding could be suddenly cut or committee chairmanships pulled.

”Who New Yorkers vote for should be who represents them in the City Council,” Marte said. “Instead, we have the shadowy position of speaker making backroom deals that cut everyday New Yorkers out of the equation and replace them with lobbyists and special interests. Bills with dozens of co-sponsors are denied hearings no matter how many times you email your member, popular programs can get cut from your community if your council member disagrees with the speaker on a completely different topic.”