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Farah Louis wins special election for 45th District Council seat
WINNER: Right, Farah Louis celebrated her victory with Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, who supported her victorious run for the 45th Council
District seat at the Flatlands bar The Juicy Box on Nostrand Avenue and Avenue I on May 14. Photo by Steve Solomonson
to Bklyner.com .
“We do not have the resources
anymore to ensure
we can thrive and move forward,”
she said during the
interview. “Why is that? Because
whoever was there before
wasn’t focused on that,
and I was.”
Williams snubbed Louis
by endorsing Chandler-Waterman,
despite the latter having
worked for him at a more junior
position as community
outreach coordinator for twoand
a-half years.
But the incoming legislator
had the backing of multiple
local political heavyweights
and organizations
that have clashed with the
public advocate in the past.
They include Assemblywoman
Rodneyse Bichotte
(D–Flatbush), who reportedly
slammed his treatment
of his former staffers; the police
union the Patrolmen’s Benevolent
Association, which
clashed with the former councilman’s
criticism of stopand
frisk; as well as the Jewish
group the Flatbush Jewish
Community Coalition, Assemblywoman
Helene Weinstein
(D–Flatlands), and the
late former Councilman Lew
Fidler, possibly due to Williams’s
abstention on a vote
to condemn the Israel-critical
Boycott Divest and Sanction
movement.
Louis also received the
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Farah Louis will be the city’s
newest councilwoman and
will fi ll the seat vacated by
now-Public Advocate Jumaane
Williams, after winning
the special election on
May 14.
Louis came out on top after
earning approximately 42 percent
of the votes, according to
the city Board of Elections,
which reported she earned
3,861 votes out of a total 9,235
ballots cast with more than 99
percent of scanners counted
by Wednesday morning.
The councilwoman-elect
will take up the seat in City
Hall to represent the 45th district,
which includes parts or
all of Flatbush, East Flatbush,
Flatlands, Midwood, and Canarsie.
She worked as Williams’s
deputy chief of staff for six
years when he was a councilman
and bested her fellow
former staffer Monique Chandler
Waterman, who came in
second with 2,790 votes, just
north of 30 percent.
The two frontrunners
soared ahead of the other
candidates, with Jovia Radix
— daughter of New York
Supreme Court judge Sylvia
Hinds-Radix — coming in
third at a mere nine percent
of the vote and 849 ballots
cast.
Louis previously drew heat
in the race when she scolded
her former boss, saying during
a radio interview that
Williams was responsible for
the area’s over-development
and dearth of employment in
a radio interview, according Continued on page 12
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