Democratic attorney Landon Dais cruised to victory in a special election Tuesday for a state Assembly seat in the Bronx, easily defeating Republican opponent and NYCHA’s Highbridge Houses tenant leader Norman McGill in a heavily Democratic district.
Voter turnout for the Assembly race was decidedly low. Only 1,072 of the roughly 69,000 registered voters in the district had cast a ballot as of 6 p.m., according to the New York City Board of Elections.
With 90% of scanners reporting, Dais, a political consultant who previously ran for office in Harlem, took home 74% of the vote in an under-the-radar election that drew few voters to the polls in a district that includes parts of the Highbridge, Morris Heights and Claremont neighborhoods.
The Associated Press called the race shortly after polls closed at 9 p.m.
With his victory, Dais won the right to serve until the end of the year, fulfilling the remainder of the term of now-former Assemblymember Latoya Joyner, who abruptly resigned in January. He’ll have to run and win again in November in order to serve a full, two-year term.
The Assembly election ran concurrently with the race between Democrat Tom Suozzi and Republican candidate Mazi Pilip to fill the congressional seat left vacant by George Santos, who was expelled from the chamber. But the two districts do not overlap – the congressional seat is in Nassau County and eastern Queens.
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