On a one-block sliver of sunbathed asphalt and greenery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Stephanie Ruskay worked a crowd of her supporters. There were community leaders, elected officials and her longtime neighbors, all gathered to support a first-time candidate whose election could make history.
Ms. Ruskay, 51, is seeking to become the first female rabbi to be elected to state office. Her candidacy for a State Assembly seat has been backed by unions, veteran political leaders in the district and establishment Democratic groups.
But her path to victory is far from assured, even in a progressive district where nearly one-third of households are Jewish.
Her Democratic primary opponent, Eli Northrup, 41, is a public defender who is the Bronx Defenders’ policy director for criminal defense, and the grandson of a civil rights lawyer who served as counsel to the American Jewish Congress.
This is his second run for the seat and he has garnered support from most of the district’s top Democratic clubs, many of the Assembly’s left-leaning members and a slew of national progressive groups, including the Working Families Party, Run for Something and the Sunrise Movement. On Friday, Senator Bernie Sanders included him in a nationwide slate of endorsements of progressive candidates.
Ms. Ruskay and Mr. Northrup have both cited their faith as drivers of their political ambitions, pointing to Judaism’s teachings and their own unique backgrounds — stress-testing the endurance of identity politics at a time when the nature of Jewish political power seems to be shifting.
In the 2025 mayoral race, the district overwhelmingly supported Zohran Mamdani, whose staunch pro-Palestinian views broke with traditional city politics. Both candidates supported the mayor last year.
But the differences in each candidate’s support networks — Ms. Ruskay’s from center-left establishment Democrats and veteran organizers largely concentrated in the district, and Mr. Northrup’s from national groups, state lawmakers and young Democrats further to the left — may well decide the race.
“The relationships are deep and they’re trusted,” said Audrey Sasson, the executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which is supporting Mr. Northrup in the primary. “Stephanie has deep and trusted relationships as well. And the ones, I think, backing Eli really have seen also that he has the experience to go with those relationships.”
Mr. Northrup has worked as a public defender in criminal court for more than a decade and lived in the district since 2015. He pointed to the policy work that has regularly brought him to Albany and helped him foster relationships with several state senators and Assembly members as evidence of his readiness for the job. More than a dozen state legislators have endorsed his campaign.
During his first run for the seat, when campus protests after the Oct. 7 attacks erupted at Columbia University, Mr. Northrup criticized the university’s decision to close its campus. He also argued it did not adequately protect student protesters who were later targeted by the Trump administration. He lost to Micah Lasher by about 2,500 votes. When Mr. Lasher decided to vacate his Assembly seat to run for Congress, he called Mr. Northrup to let him know.
Mr. Northrup, whose campaign has employed many of the same eye-catching social media video techniques that propelled Mr. Mamdani’s success last year, said he felt he could be a “bridge” to the city’s Jewish residents who remain skeptical of the mayor. If elected, he said he hopes to be an ally in advancing parts of the mayor’s policy agenda in Albany.
“Sometimes it’s coming from a place of fear — and it’s genuine fear — but it’s also unfamiliarity,” he said. “It feels like, this person now in charge of our city has been critical of Israel in ways that make people really fearful but I think we can have those conversations. And that’s what I plan to do.”
The 69th District covers roughly 40 blocks of the Upper West Side and includes Columbia University and Morningside Heights. It overlaps with the country’s most influential Democratic territory, the 12th Congressional District, which has attracted a crowded primary field of candidates seeking to succeed Representative Jerrold Nadler, who is retiring. Mr. Lasher, a Nadler protégé, is running for the House seat and is not seeking re-election.
Ms. Ruskay said her position as a rabbi has allowed her to bring her campaign’s message to a range of Jewish communities in the district, from its most left-leaning circles to its Orthodox members who may otherwise bristle at a female rabbi. During Purim, she met an Orthodox woman on the campaign trail dressed up like her — evidence, she said, of the openness that more Jewish communities in the district are showing one another at a fraught moment in their politics.
“Parts of the Jewish community — parts that sometimes are critical and embarrassed of each other — are finding each other in this campaign and finding some shared common ground,” she said, adding that she has seen more “realizing that even though they dress differently and pray in different places and emphasize different parts of religious observance, that they have more in common than one might think.”
She said her faith leadership inspired her to run for office on moral grounds, citing the separation of families under President Trump and affordability challenges that have pushed more people out of the city.
Ms. Ruskay was mentored by Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president and longtime political organizer, who at Ms. Ruskay’s rally pushed her supporters to rely on their one-on-one relationships to get out the vote for her. Though Ms. Ruskay is a first-time candidate, Ms. Messinger said her organizing experience and religious education will guide her lawmaking if she’s elected.
“Not to insult any of my colleagues, but we need organizers in the legislature to say to fellow organizers, ‘we can do this if we work together,’ and she’s that kind of person,” she said. “She fits my definition of a leader with moral courage.”
Their campaigns come as most Jewish New Yorkers have expressed concerns about rising antisemitism in the city. Many have coalesced behind City Council legislation that would require law enforcement to present plans to the mayor and City Council speaker to establish a security perimeter at houses of worship amid increased protests at synagogues. The measure will go into effect in June.
But in the final weeks before early voting in the district begins, each candidate is campaigning less on their personal identity than their personal relationships.
“In politics, people move people,” said Mark Levine, the city comptroller who has endorsed Ms. Ruskay in the race. “All the mail in the world, all the TV ads in the world, can’t compete with the power of a friend of yours or a neighbor or a co-congregant saying to you, in their own words, why they’re moved to support a candidate.”
Maya King is a Times reporter who writes about the intersection of politics, religion and ritual in New York City.
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