A few feet separated Assemblymember Jordan J.G. Wright from challenger Conrad Blackburn as they staffed tables outside an early voting site on 134th Street this week. Those sun-baked battlelines mark a key showdown for a near-guaranteed seat in Harlem’s deep-blue Assembly District 70 on Tuesday, June 23.
Wright comes from his freshman term as Manhattan’s youngest elected official, with ambitions in progress to build a political legacy independent from his father’s — ironically, just as his dad Keith Wright did. Blackburn, a union organizer and career public defender, remains hard to overlook as part of the official Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) effort to ride the momentum built by member Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s landmark victory last year.
This aspirant new blue wave faces a red scare in Harlem, however. During an April rally against Blackburn (and, to an extent, Mamdani), former Assemblymember Inez Dickens, who held the seat before Wright, raised concerns about a DSA takeover. “[A] Democratic Socialist is not a Democrat,” she told the AmNews. “We stand here as Democrats.”
On paper, both candidates are young Black men in their 30s running on a policy platform prioritizing housing, childcare, and LGBTQ+ rights who openly profess their love for all things Harlem and for Black people. They also speak for themselves, despite political fixation on Mamdani and Keith Wright’s influence. The younger Wright points to his existing experience and longstanding neighborhood ties, while Blackburn stands on his refusal to take outside interest money and willingness to take on the wealthy 1%. They both feel good heading into the polls.
“It’s been the honor of my life to serve in the NYS Assembly in my first term,” said Wright. “I was able to get a number of cool bills passed; things that I think would be impactful for the community — for the youth all the way up to our seniors. It’s really been a pleasure.”
“[My] campaign has been going [well],” said Blackburn. “I’ve been knocking doors six days a week myself. We’ve had hundreds of volunteers out knocking doors with us, talking to people on the ground … we’re raising our name profile.”
The outcome of the race will certainly offer another bellwether for the future of the DSA in Harlem, which went strongly for Mamdani despite initial doubts about how the Democratic Socialist would perform in historically Black neighborhoods. However, the facts remain more complicated than a “left vs. center” narrative routinely put forth in primaries between DSA members and incumbent Democrats.
For his part, Blackburn argues that socialists always played a role in Harlem’s history. His campaign’s social media videos highlighted historical Black leftist figures like AmNews journalist Marvel Cooke. While Blackburn is a respected legal advocate who shaped the city’s solitary confinement ban, his campaign leads with his perspective as a renter and local resident struggling with Harlem’s growing cost of living to meet neighborhood needs (although he does draw from his criminal justice expertise).
“I try to show people that I’m just a normal working-class person who is fed up with how politics has been done for the past few generations,” said Blackburn, “and I want to make real change and deliver power back.”
Blackburn remains the only candidate on the DSA’s official slate without an official endorsement from either Mamdani or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The mayor only weighed in on state legislature races for open seats, which the DSA openly met with disappointment. Unlike others on the slate, Blackburn does not boast an extensive relationship with him despite their shared Arsenal fandom.
Mamdani appeared on Blackburn’s “Brothers-In-Law” podcast during his mayoral campaign. Otherwise, they largely only crossed paths in passing, through the DSA and policy work. However, New Yorkers for Lower Costs, the official grassroots support PAC behind Mamdani, recently sent out mailers saying the mayor “is counting on you to vote for a city we can afford” in support of Blackburn.
Conversely, Wright endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary last year before backing Mamdani against the former governor in the general election rematch. The two served in the assembly together and championed legislation for an official Juneteenth flag. They are frequently seen together whenever the mayor comes up to Harlem and Wright served on his transition committee. Plus, Mamdani is also a young Democrat living in Manhattan, aAnd Wright heads the Manhattan Young Democrats.
“We’ve done a number of things together,” said Wright. “I was happy to develop a great relationship with him, and I was happy to serve on a transition committee when it came after him to win and figure out how he’s going to run the city. Happy to, again, be a partner of his in government.”
Most of Central Harlem’s elected leadership has endorsed Wright, including State Senator Cordell Cleare and Councilmember Yusef Salaam, for whom he previously served as chief of staff. Last week, he swapped endorsements with the senior Wright’s former opponent, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who is facing his own DSA-endorsed challenger in Darializa Avila Chevalier. Gov. Kathy Hochul, NYC Comptroller Mark Levine, and Manhattan Borough President Brad Holman-Sigal have also backed Wright.
“We work together,” said Cleare. “We passed some significant bills together. We’re happy with this work … and we already have a rhythm. That’s important when you have people who are working with you, when you’re able to have a meeting of the minds [toward] the issues in our communities. He grew up here. He’s been here all his life, he understands the history … What we’re doing today is a reflection on what has been going on for decades.”
Wright told the AmNews he intends to continue his work in raising money for Mitchell-Lama housing, and — as the Black Legislative Taskforce treasurer — to build on the $30 million raised for nonprofits in underserved communities, many of which are based in Harlem. He also pointed to childcare funding, which he and his colleagues pushed for in the state budget.
Meanwhile, Blackburn gained overwhelming support from the leftist and progressive political world even without endorsements from the city’s two most prominent DSA members. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the nation’s most hallowed living Democratic Socialist, has backed him. So did local DSA “socialists in office” such as Julia Salazar, Jabari Brisport, and Tiffany Cabán. Progressive organizations like the Working Families Party, Community Voices Heard, and New York Communities for Change also support Blackburn.
Socialist candidates have won more with less in Harlem. Former Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan, a major Blackburn proponent, said his campaign rallied institutional support she lacked when she unseated the late Bill Perkins in 2021. She was also drawn to his focus on housing and believes the conversation expands past the controversial One45 project.
“We’ve seen this extreme displacement of the Black community, and I have a long and storied history [of] fighting around housing and fighting displacement and wanting to keep longtime Black residents in the district,” said Richardson Jordan by phone. “What attracted me to Conrad was his stance on funding [a] community land trust, his position on making housing affordable and making new housing in a way that community members can actually afford to live in that housing.”
She also criticized recent attacks against Blackburn. Mailers brought up his past internship with the Florida Attorney General’s Office under Pam Bondi as AG when the Trump appointee sought to strip voting rights from people with conviction records. In response, Blackburn has recounted his short gig as a working-class law student, getting his foot in the door at ostensibly his home state’s biggest law firm. He worked on appeals and only saw Bondi once when she briefly dropped in to greet interns.
Some Wright supporters, like district leader William Allen, also questioned the Florida-born challenger’s limited time in Harlem. Blackburn went to law school in Washington, D.C., before moving to East Flatbush while studying for the New York Bar. “It’s not just because he’s from Florida … you just don’t come out of left field,” said Allen.
“I came to Harlem because of what it meant to Black America and Black radical leftists,” responded Blackburn. “I share [this] history of Harlem that I know and understand deeply, and then people are able to get over the fact that I wasn’t born here, [but] so many of our heroes, like Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, were not born here.”
Attacks on Wright center around super-PAC backing tied to DraftKings, DoorDash, and Cuomo, as well as unions like 32BJ-SEIU. These independent interest groups cannot donate directly to campaigns, but can raise unlimited money for candidates, and are frequently the source of attack mailers against Blackburn. Wright denied these fundraisers would influence his policy platform.
“I don’t know anything about what any outside entities in this race are doing,” Wright said. “[The] only thing I know is [that] I’m running my race on a platform that is for Harlem, of Harlem, and by Harlem, and I get my policy positions from the people on 135th Street and Lenox. I’m worried about the race that I’m running and I can’t control anything outside of it.”
As in many other races, Israel also came up as its favorability plummets with Democratic voters. Blackburn’s pro-Palestinian organizing dates back to his undergrad days. He attacked past election fundraising for Wright from Solidarity PAC, which he equates to a “state-level AIPAC.” However, Wright’s policy platform does not refer to Israel. Wright rebuffed the criticism, arguing that he serves as a state lawmaker. “I’ve never had a vote on anything that has to do with that,” he said. Blackburn argued that state lawmakers can tackle the issue in Albany through the Not on Our Dime! Act, which Mamdani introduced in the assembly to pressure local nonprofit divestment from Israel.
In a low information race, the next few days can shape the primary. One voter, who identified as Renee S., told the AmNews she delayed filling out her early voting ballot to learn more about the candidates. The longtime Harlemite extolled the Wrights’ legacy, but expressed concerns with “silent forces” like super-PACS. She also felt the attacks against Blackburn paint an incomplete picture compared to the word-of-mouth supporting him.
“We need advocates,”she said. “We need people to say good people live here: people at work, people that have families, people that are advocating, [and] people that are struggling … we need advocacy, we need people that are here for us and will continue to be here for us.”
