Mott Haven-Port Morris, Melrose, Concourse-Concourse Village, Upper East Side-Carnegie Hill, Upper East Side-Yorkville, East Harlem, Randall’s Island

 Candidates

At East Harlem/South Bronx District Forum, City Council Candidates Clash Over Local Credentials and Housing Policy

Candidates hoping to represent the East Harlem/South Bronx district awaiting the start of the candidate forum. (Hayden Betts/New York City News Service)

By Hayden Betts

What began as a mild-mannered policy discussion at the East Harlem/South Bronx District 8 City Council candidate forum quickly turned personal as contenders challenged each other’s community connections.

The forum, held at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College in East Harlem on March 26, exposed tensions about authenticity among the five candidates running to replace term-limited Councilmember Diana Ayala, who has represented the district since 2018.

Clarisa Alayeto, Elsie Encarnacion, Nicholas Reyes, Raymond Santana, and Wil Lopez are were invited to appear at the forum. Encarnacion, who leads the candidates in total fundraising with nearly $50,000 on hand, is chief of staff to Ayala, while Santana brings celebrity status and personal experience with the justice system as a member of the Exonerated Five. Alayeto is the chair of the South Bronx’s Community Board 1, and Lopez is a former prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office and current director of government affairs at the Urban Resource Institute. Alayeto and Lopez are just about tied for second behind Encarnacion in fundraising, each having raised slightly more than $30,000. Reyes is a former East Harlem community board member and state committee member for the 68th Assembly District.

None of the candidates has run for City Council before.

In one of the most striking moments of the evening, Reyes, who was born and raised in public housing in East Harlem, directly questioned Lopez’s local credentials, pointing at him and asking, “Where you from?” When the question went unanswered, Reyes added, “Yeah, you got no answer?”

In a race in which the candidates differ only marginally on policy, they attempted to differentiate themselves with their personalities and their stories. According to their websites and statements at the forum, all candidates support affordable housing expansion, educational improvements, economic empowerment for residents, community safety initiatives, youth development programs and increased investment in NYCHA properties.

The confrontation highlighted candidates’ emphasis on their district ties. District 8 spans two boroughs and includes about 160,000 residents, predominantly Latino and Black, who are facing gentrification pressures. The district stretches from the South Bronx neighborhoods of Mott Haven, Melrose, and Concourse Village, as well as across the Harlem River to East Harlem.Voter turnout is usually low. Fewer than 7,000 residents cast ballots in the 2023 Democratic primary.

Reyes repeatedly assured the audience that he had never lived outside the district. Lopez, whom Reyes questioned, was raised in Puerto Rico, according to his website. Santana, who returned to East Harlem just several months ago after living in Georgia since 2015, faced subtle challenges about the recency of his ties to the district.

“I am a product of this community — born, raised, live, work and serve this district,” Encarnacion emphasized during her closing statement. 

As current chief of staff to Ayala, Encarnacion represents the potential continuation of a succession pattern where the last three District 8 council members were chiefs of staff to their predecessors. Alayeto, for her part, was born in East Harlem and raised in the South Bronx.

Language choices became another flashpoint when Alayeto described NYCHA residents as “desperate” because of “deplorable conditions.”

“I don’t think NYCHA residents are desperate,” Reyes countered. “My grandma is still living (in NYCHA), but she’s not desperate.” The audience enthusiastically applauded.

Alayeto held firm: “My 94-year-old grandmother was living in deplorable conditions. My mother continues to live in conditions where she has no heat, sometimes no water.”

A similar clash occurred when Santana referred to the area around Lexington and 125th as “zombie land,” prompting Reyes to call the term disrespectful. The intersection has been known for visible substance use and is near several addiction treatment centers and harm reduction programs. 

In the forum, the candidates did reveal a few substantive policy differences, particularly on congestion pricing, the vehicle-tolling program that charges drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street, and NYCHA privatization.

Lopez supported congestion pricing’s concept while criticizing its implementation, suggesting neighborhood parking permits as a solution to outsiders using the district as “a free parking lot.”

In contrast, Alayeto expressed strong opposition: “The Bronx has the highest rate of asthma in the nation, and what congestion pricing will do is just fuel that,” arguing vehicles avoiding Manhattan’s congestion relief zone would redirect through their neighborhoods.

Lopez and Reyes were decisively opposed to the conversion of publicly owned New York City Housing Authority units into privately owned Section 8 units.

“The only thing that NYCHA privatization has shown us is that it’s the easiest way to evict long-term NYCHA residents,” Lopez  said. “I oppose any further privatization.”

Alayeto, Encarnacion and Santana took more nuanced stances, with Alayeto noting that while privatization efforts are not perfect, the current conditions demand action. “We need to fully fund NYCHA,” she emphasized.

The primary election for District 8 will be held on June 24, 2025.

Candidates hoping to represent the East Harlem/South Bronx district awaiting the start of the candidate forum. (Hayden Betts/New York City News Service)

Clarisa M. Alayeto’s bid for City Council is Officially On the Ballot, Judges Rule

Clarisa M. Alayeto is still taking legal actions to overturn the Board of Elections’ decision to not add her name on the ballot for the June primaries. (@ClarisaForCouncil via Instagram)

By Gabriela Flores

Clarisa M. Alayeto, the only Bronx-based candidate who aims to secure the City Council seat representing East Harlem and the South Bronx, is officially on the ballot for the Democratic primaries, judges ruled on Wednesday, May 7. 

The Mott Haven Herald previously reported Alayeto’s legal challenges in securing her ballot spot after an April 28 decision from the Supreme Court upheld her removal from the primaries. Now Alayeto, who chairs the Bronx’s Community Board 1 and co-chairs the NYC Public Health Advisory Council, has won a complicated legal battle to defend her candidacy. So far, she has secured the most campaign donations from Bronxites in the highly-competitive race.

She previously did not respond to multiple requests for comment.  

Since filing her petition with the New York City Board of Elections on April 2 to be in the June primaries, Alayeto encountered troubles. Her lawyer, Jorge Luis Vasquez, first submitted a cover letter with the incorrect zip code of her residence. Vasquez rectified the error by submitting a new cover letter after the Board of Elections prompted him to do so, but there was yet another mistake: her name was misspelled as “Claris” instead of “Clarisa.” The BOE disqualified Alayeto from the race on April 11 given that “the amended cover sheet had errors not present in the original filing.” Soon after, several legal challenges ensued. 

The Appellate Division ruled against an April 28 decision by Judge Jeffrey H. Pearlman, who rejected Alayeto’s attempts to overturn the BOE’s decision and her claims that the objections from members of the Ending Homelessness and Building a Better NYC PAC (EHBB) “lack standing.” 

Notably, given the central role typographical errors appeared to play in Alayeto’s disqualification, Pearlman’s written decision to keep her off the ballot was riddled with misspellings of her last name as “Aleyto” instead of “Alayeto.” 

The Appellate Division judges sided with Alayteo on Wednesday and rejected the BOE’s grounds for removing her off the ballot in the first place. They noted the cover letter’s errors were not “fatal defects” but rather a “scrivener’s error” – the sheet itself “substantially complied with the Election Law.” 

Alayeto’s back-and-forth with the BOE and Commissioners of Elections of the City of New York only grew more complicated when the Wall Street-backed political action committee Ending Homelessness and Building a Better NYC entered the fray.  

Tomás Ramos, the PAC’s founder and CEO, first filed objections on April 7 against Alayeto and four other candidates in the District 8 race: Elsie Encarnacion, Nicholas Reyes, Raymond Santana and Federico Colon. 

The PAC endorses Wilfredo López, one of Alayeto’s competitors, and has spent $145,143 in digital ads and mailers for his campaign. It also endorses four other City Council candidates across the city.  It has not yet filed any objections outside of District 8, the BOE’s objection ledger shows. 

 “In the course of Ending Homelessness and Building a Better NYC’s standard review of petition submissions to the Board of Elections, we found various instances of filing irregularities that do not abide by election law and in some cases align with serious allegations of election fraud,” wrote Michael Brady, spokesperson for Ending Homelessness and Building a Better NYC, in an emailed statement. “This is about protecting the integrity of our elections — not just for this race, but for every race moving forward.”

The latest ruling from the Appellate Division noted that EHBB members “did not comply with Election Law” while filing the specifications of their objections and that the Supreme Court “erred in dismissing” Alayeto’s petition after she did not mention the PAC as respondents in her previous appeal to reinstate her name on the primary ballot.

The PAC’s allegations against Alayeto include that her campaign collected invalid signatures for her petition to be on the ballot. The PAC made similar allegations against other District 8 candidates, including Nicholas Reyes and Federico Colon. No objections have been filed against López, according to a BOE objection ledger. 

Reyes, an East-Harlem native vying for the City Council seat, said the legal challenges set by the PAC have been troubling. 

“I want to say to all the candidates who are going through this – listen, hold your head up and we’re going to do this together,” said Reyes. “Some of the actions that have transpired towards my campaign through legal actions have been downright evil, in my opinion, and that’s something we cannot have – we cannot have an elected official that’s willing to go that far.” 

EHBB’s challenges against Alayeto and the four other District 8 candidates have not been successful, THE CITY reported.

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