New York City Republican leaders are blasting a campaign to persuade party members to re-enroll as Democrats to vote in the primary election for mayor on June 24.
Voters have until Feb. 14 to change their party status.
“This year, NYC will hold a critical election to decide who will lead our city forward, but many New Yorkers do not realize that the election that is almost certain to choose the next mayor is not the general election but the Democratic primary on June 24, 2025,” said a letter recently sent to Republican and independent voters by the group Be Counted NYC, headed by Lisa Blau.
One of the recipients of the letter was state Assemblyman Michael Tannousis, who also happens to be chairman of the Staten Island Republican Party.
“Democratic leaders in New York City are resorting to sleight-of-hand tricks to deceive New Yorkers into switching their party registration back to the Democratic Party,” Tannousis told The Post. “But the truth is clear: lifelong Democrats are fleeing because the party no longer stands for public safety, economic prosperity, and the hardworking people of this city.”
He said it’s the Democratic brand that is tarnished, not the GOP.
President Trump won the White House and Republicans control the House of Representatives.
The GOP, though still heavily outnumbered by registration numbers in New York, have made deep inroads in the suburbs and even parts of the city in recent election cycles.
Critics contend it wasn’t that long ago that Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg combined won the mayoralty for five consecutive terms combined as Republicans, from 1994 to 2013.
Council Republican Minority Leader David Carr also urged fellow Republicans to hold firm.
“When I opined about this campaign as a candidate in 2021 in the pages of [the New York Post], I urged fellow Republicans to stay the course because this city was poised for a red wave. And that’s certainly come to fruition,” Carr, who represents parts of Staten Island, said.
“The unprecedented surge of GOP votes in November’s election has proven that Republicans are not only viable in New York City, they are ascendant. Rather than wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to convert more voters to the party that just lost the confidence of the American public, Be Counted NYC should be trying to register more Republicans to join this movement.”
According to state Board of Elections records, Blau, the wife of Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau, has personally contributed more than $573,000 to encourage Republicans and voters not registered with a party to re-enroll as a Democrat.
It’s the second time Blau’s Be Counted group has mounted a party-switching campaign to broaden the voting pool in the Democratic Party. The group sent letters and text messages ahead of the 2020 mayoral campaign as well.
Blau declined a request for comment.
But Be Counted isn’t the only group pushing more moderate to conservative Republicans and independent voters to re-register as Democrats before the June 24 municipal primary elections that include council races as well as the mayoralty.
The Jewish Voters Action Network also is trying to get independent and Republican Jewish voters and others to officially switch to the Democratic Party, so they can participate in the heavily Democratic primary races amid a local rise in antisemitism.
While his group is non-partisan, Litwack, during a recent interview, said he wants to counter politicians who don’t take antisemitism seriously or who toe the line of the lefty anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA sponsored an anti-Israel rally in Times Square a day after Hamas attacked Israel and slaughtered 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023.
One of the candidates for mayor, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani of Queens, is a DSA member whose candidacy was endorsed by the DSA.
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