New York state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (D) is mulling a run for the U.S. House as a member of the Working Families Party after she lost the Democratic primary for the Empire State’s 10th Congressional District this week.
Niou fell short in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the district to Dan Goldman, an attorney who served as the lead counsel during former President Trump’s first impeachment trial. Goldman secured 25.8 percent of the vote, while Niou raked in 23.7 percent.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), who decided to run in the 10th District after redistricting, won 18.2 percent of the vote.
But days after narrowly losing the contest in the Big Apple, Niou is thinking about jumping back into the race — this time as a candidate from the Working Families Party.
“I’m currently speaking with WFP and my community about how we can best represent the needs of this district. Because what we can do together is too important to give up this fight, we must count every vote,” Niou told The Hill in a statement on Friday.
“I’m so grateful for the outpouring of support and all of the people who showed up and turned out. Our people need and deserve a voice,” she added.
The progressive Working Families Party endorsed Niou in the Democratic primary in June. The party’s New York state director, Sochie Nnaemeka, in a statement on Twitter said the assemblywoman would “put the needs of everyday New Yorkers before the whims of billionaires and special interests.”
Major outlets have called the race for Goldman — with more than 95 percent of the vote in, he is leading Niou by upwards of 1,300 votes — but the assemblywoman has not yet conceded. As of Thursday, roughly 600 absentee ballots remained to be tallied, according to The Washington Post.
On Wednesday, Niou wrote on Twitter, “We’re going to keep working until every vote is counted,” teasing at the end “More to come soon!”
Niou and Jones campaigned together towards the end of the Democratic primary campaign in an attempt to counter Goldman, an heir to Levi Strauss & Co. who invested millions of dollars of his personal wealth into his campaign. He secured the coveted New York Times endorsement.
“We can’t let a candidate so out of step with this district’s values buy themselves a congressional seat,” Niou said, according to Spectrum News NY1.
Goldman shot back, asserting, “I think what the voters recognize is that my progressive ideals are aligned very much with theirs,” according to the outlet.
The seat for New York’s 10th Congressional District was left open after redistricting. Jones decided to run in the area — which includes parts of Lower Manhattan — after Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, decided to run in a newly drawn district that included much of Jones’s old area.
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 10th Congressional District, but eventually dropped out in July.