{"id":78281,"date":"2025-12-22T19:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/78281\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T19:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:24:07","slug":"gay-nyc-council-member-erik-bottcher-drops-u-s-house-bid-will-run-for-state-senate-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/78281\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay NYC Council member Erik Bottcher drops U.S. House bid, will run for state Senate instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City<\/a> Council member Erik Bottcher<\/a>, who is gay, is ending his race for Congress and will run for New York State<\/a> Senate instead.<\/p>\n

Bottcher, a Democrat<\/a>, Monday declared his candidacy for State Senate District 47, where Brad Hoylman-Sigal<\/a>, another gay Democrat, is vacating the seat to become Manhattan borough president.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision is rooted in where I believe I can do the most good immediately,\u201d Bottcher said in a statement. \u201cThe State Senate is where critical decisions are being made on housing affordability, addressing the mental health crisis, safeguarding our environment, and defending New York from the Trump agenda. At a moment when MAGA extremists are attacking our freedoms and undermining democracy, strong state leadership matters more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottcher had filed to run for the U.S. House<\/a> seat in New York\u2019s 12th Congressional District in October and raised $700,000 the first day.<\/a> He officially launched his campaign the following month<\/a>. Jerry Nadler<\/a>, a Democrat and strong LGBTQ+ ally, is retiring after serving in the House since 1991. The state Senate district, the congressional district, and Bottcher\u2019s City Council district are all on the West Side of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Related: Gay NYC councilman running for Congress says America is at a crossroads<\/a><\/p>\n

Hoylman-Sigal won the race for borough president in November and will be sworn in January 1. He will be the first member of the LGBTQ+ community in that position.<\/p>\n

There will be a special election to fill Hoylman-Sigal\u2019s Senate seat early in 2026, probably in February or March, and the winner will be sworn in immediately. Bottcher is \u201clikely to secure the Democratic nomination in that race, which would all but guarantee victory,\u201d City & State New York<\/a> reports. \u201cIf Bottcher were to win, that would set up another special election for his City Council seat sometime in the spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York Assembly Members Linda Rosenthal and Tony Simone had been \u201ceyeing Hoylman-Sigal\u2019s seat,\u201d according to City & State, but Rosenthal is likely to stay in the Assembly now that Bottcher has declared.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the City Council, my team and I have delivered concrete results on affordable housing creation, environmental sustainability, transit infrastructure improvements, mental health, and much more,\u201d Bottcher\u2019s statement continued. \u201cAs I enter my final term due to term limits, I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished, and that same commitment to service will guide this next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Advocate last May, Bottcher recalled suicide attempts and time spent in a mental hospital as a gay teen from a small town in upstate New York. \u201cI spent a month in a mental health hospital called Four Winds in Saratoga, New York,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThat was a transformative and formative moment for me. I was this kid from the middle of nowhere in a hospital with young people who were dealing with gang involvement, substance use disorder, depression. It opened my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really do credit the experience of being a gay person born in that kind of place, and going through that, with why I ended up in public service,\u201d he added. \u201cSo few people in our country have access to the kind of care I got, especially if they\u2019re poor or Black. Everyone should.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related: From trauma to triumph, will NYC Councilman Erik Bottcher become the city’s first out gay mayor one day?<\/a><\/p>\n

The 12th Congressional District race remains crowded. Democratic candidates include Assembly Member Micah Lasher \u2014 widely viewed as Nadler\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 \u2014Assembly Member Alex Bores, nonprofit founder Liam Elkind, journalist and attorney Jami Floyd, and Jack Schlossberg, son of Caroline Kennedy and grandson of President John F. Kennedy. On Monday, George Conway, a former Republican who has been sharply critical of Donald Trump, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for the seat as a Democrat, but he hasn\u2019t officially launched a campaign. Conway is a lawyer and the ex-husband of onetime Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Advocate: Gay NYC Council member Erik Bottcher drops U.S. House bid, will run for state Senate instead<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Council member Erik Bottcher, who is gay, is ending his race for Congress and will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[38956,18372,301,38957,22775,4097,38955,18081,9,24,56,63,65,64,38958],"class_list":["post-78281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-the-state-senate","tag-brad-hoylman-sigal","tag-city-council","tag-city-council-seat","tag-erik-bottcher","tag-jerry-nadler","tag-linda-rosenthal","tag-manhattan-borough-president","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-state-senate-district"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}