Grand Old Primary- June 23rd, 2025
Covering all the major Republican primaries in New York City tomorrow!
GRAND OLD PRIMARY- June 23rd, 2025
INTRO:
Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting edition of Grand Old Primary! If you’re new here, Grand Old Primary is a series where I cover all the most important Republican primaries going on throughout the country. From Congress to the State Legislature to even a few county races, they’re all here folks. Last week, we covered all the Republican primaries going down in Virginia. I’ll go over how I did later, but first we’re on to a first in Grand Old Primary, a city! New York City to be specific. While most of the attention will be focused on all the huge Democratic primaries for Mayor/City Council, there’s a few Republican City Council primaries in competitive/Trump-won areas, so without further ado, let’s get into it!
District 47 (Southwestern Brooklyn):
With Democratic incumbent Justin Brannan term-limited/running for City Comptroller, his Democratic-leaning City Council district in southwestern Brooklyn is up for grabs this year. While the Democrats have their own competitive primary, the Republicans have a two-way race between Brooklyn Republican Party Chairman Richie Barsamian and businessman George Sarantopoulos.
Barsamian is running as a standard New York City Republican, aka mostly focused on public safety. He wants to hire thousands of police officers and use them to police the transit system & go on high-visibility patrols in crime-ridden areas. He also wants to secure more funding for senior citizens and fight to remove illegal scooters in the streets. He’s backed by a bevy of New York City Republican heavy-hitters, from NY-11 Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis to Republican Mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa to all the Republican state legislators in the area. He’s even backed by Brannan’s opponent from 2023, former City Councilman Ari Kagan (more on him in a minute).
That hasn’t stopped Sarantopoulos from running a serious campaign though. He’s running to Barsamian’s right, promising not to spend tax dollars on “noncitizens,” stand up to the “radical green movement,” and hire thousands of police officers (while also bringing back qualified immunity for them). He doesn’t really have any major institutional support, but has managed to outpace Barsamian in the fundraising department (which really doesn’t mean much here considering New York City uses a public financing campaign finance system, so they’re pretty much even). Barsamian should be the favorite here, setting him up for an interesting November election in a district that’s shot to the right in the Trump Era.
District 48 (Southern Brooklyn):
Republicans holding seats in southern Brooklyn is a very recent phenomenon. Before 2021, most Republicans on the City Council were confined to parts of Queens/most of Staten Island. That all changed in 2021 and Republican incumbent Inna Vernikov was one of those “new frontier” Republican winners that year. She flipped a Democratic-held (albeit way more Republican up-ballot) seat in the heavily Russian/eastern European part of southern Brooklyn. Since then, she’s had a weird career. She’s organized rallies against COVID-19 mandates and crashed pro-Palestinian rallies while carrying a gun on herself. She’s also tried to reduce the number of traffic cameras in the city, definitely not because she’s received over 50 traffic camera tickets/violations since 2020.
All of this controversy/bleeding heart conservatism has led to some Republicans just looking for a break from Vernikov. That’s where former City Councilman Ari Kagan enters the picture. Kagan was first elected to the City Council in 2021 as a Democrat, but switched parties following the 2022 midterm elections that saw state Republicans gain a bunch of ground in southern Brooklyn. He was redistricted into District 47 in 2023 and ran for reelection, but lost to fellow incumbent/Democrat Justin Brannan by 16 points. In that year, both Kagan & Vernikov endorsed each other’s primary opponents after Vernikov questioned Kagan’s Republican credentials. Both Vernikov & Kagan won their respective primaries by 60 points, but it all left a sour taste in everyone’s mouths. All of that set up for a huge coming of blows when Kagan announced he was going to try his hand at primarying Vernikov back in February of this year.
Vernikov has continued her right-wing firebrand time in office on the campaign trail, touting her efforts on the City Council to fight antisemitism, fighting sanctuary city laws, and increasing oversight on migrants. She’s also attacked Kagan for only recently becoming a Republican and says that Kagan for supporting US Senator Chuck Schumer and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. She’s backed by a few potential 2026 gubernatorial candidates in Congresspeople Mike Lawler & Elise Stefanik and several local unions, most notably the Police Benevolent Association. As for Kagan, he’s running as a more low-key conservative. He’s very pro-Israel and pro-police, but he’s mostly focused on attacking Vernikov for being an “absentee City Councillor.” He’s backed by State Assemblymen Michael Novakhov (who used to be a Russian-language radio host like Kagan) & Alec Brook-Krasny (who also used to be a Democrat like Kagan and actually ran against him in the neighboring 47th District back in the 2021 primary). Birds of a feather flock together I guess! Anyway, I think Vernikov should be fine here. This type of district loves the type of diehard Trump fanatics/conservative firebrands like Vernikov is, so I think she’ll win relatively easily.
District 51 (Southern Staten Island):
Republican incumbent Frank Morano has only had this seat for about a month now. He won it in a special election last month, besting the Democratic nominee for this district in November (Cliff Hagen) and one of his opponents tomorrow: Finance Worker Griffin Fossella. There’s an asterisk there, as Fossella, the son of Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, actually withdrew from the race after the ballot was finalized. He’s still on the ballot and votes will still count for him though.
That leaves Morano with only one opponent, former police officer John Buthorn. Buthorn has attacked Morano for being a “celebrity” (having mostly been a radio show host before winning this seat) and for making “empty promises.” Buthorn himself is mostly focused on improving public safety (by hiring more police officers), wanting to introduce a property tax break for first responders, and funding mental health resources. He’s up against a tough opponent in Morano though, who’s backed by pretty much every single Staten Island Republican politician not named Vito Fossella. He’s also running a bit to the left of Buthorn, but still really conservative on public safety (it’s southern Staten Island, what do you expect?). Outside of the usual anti-migrant, pro-police message, Morano also wants to introduce ranked choice voting to general elections, make city elections nonpartisan, and introduce STEM academies/maternal wards to southern Staten Island. Morano should win this one easily on the back of his new-found incumbency and widespread institutional support.
And that’s all for this edition of Grand Old Primary! Before I go, I’d like to go over how I did in predicting last week’s primaries in Virginia, just for the sake of fairness:
VIRGINIA- 7 RACES PREDICTED, 5 CORRECT (Missed HD-21 & HD-46; 21 saw the Republicans nominate a guy with $100 on hand for November, while the Republican in HD-46 backed by pretty much every major Republican in Virginia lost to a guy who focused his campaign on standing up to the local utilities company!)
(71% CORRECT)
That’s all for this edition of Grand Old Primary! We’re actually done with Republican primaries this year sadly enough. I’ll still be covering the general elections over on the State Legislative Election Watch, but we’re done with the primary portion of this year’s calendar. I’ll be back later this year though for a special Grand Old Primary deep dive on an old Republican primary that hit pretty close to home. Until then, I’ve been Uncrewed/Chris, you can follow me on Twitter @Uncrewed (same on Bluesky!), and don’t forget to stay awesome!