Chin holds off Council challengers

Margaret Chin will represent District 1 in the City Council for a third term. The Democrat won re-election to her Lower Manhattan seat with just under 50 percent of the vote in the Nov. 7 general election.

Chin won 11,468 of the 23,027 votes cast, according to unofficial results from the city’s Board of Elections. The incumbent Council Member appeared potentially vulnerable in the general election after she was nearly defeated in September’s Democratic Primary by challenger Christopher Marte.

Marte, who finished just 222 votes shy of Chin in the primary, ran against Chin for a second time in the general election on the Independence Party line. But he fell short again in his second bid to unseat Chin, this time by a wider margin. Marte won 8,502 votes, roughly 13 percentage points less than Chin’s total.

Republican Bryan Jung finished with 2,014 votes. Aaron Foldenauer, a lawyer who finished third to Chin in the Democratic primary and appeared on the general election ballot on the Liberal Party line, earned 1,013 votes.

In the citywide races, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Public Advocate Letitia James and Comptroller Scott Stringer each won re-election by wide margins. Winning 66 percent of the vote, de Blasio becomes the first Democrat to win consecutive terms as mayor since Ed Koch, who held the office from 1978 to 1989. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer won a second term with 83 percent of the vote. A New York state ballot measure to hold a constitutional convention was soundly defeated, with 83 percent voting against the proposal.