Updated: Dec. 05, 2022, 7:35 p.m.| Published: Dec. 05, 2022, 5:14 p.m.
By Paul Liotta | pliotta@siadvance.com
CITY HALL — The power of New York City Council’s minority party grew Monday as a Brooklyn Democrat announced he’d be switching sides.
City Councilman Ari Kagan (R-Brooklyn) joined Republican members of the city’s legislative body — City Council Minority Leader Joseph Borelli (R-South Shore), City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens), City Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) and City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) — on the steps of City Hall to announce he’d be joining their conference.
“Over the last several years, in my personal humble opinion, [the] Democratic Party in New York began moving to the left with such a speed that I could not even keep up,” he said. “It’s not me leaving the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party very quickly started to leave me.”
The shifted councilman, who took office after the 2021 election and represents part of southern Brooklyn, pointed to issues like crime, education and quality of life for his change of heart.
However, the politics of the day likely played a roll as the map of Kagan’s district underwent a drastic shift following this year’s Council redistricting process.
The representation for those new districts will be decided in next year’s elections, and the redistrict combined the Coney Island part of Kagan’s district with the section of Bay Ridge represented by City Councilman Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn).
Brannan, who’s been in office since 2018 and serves as chair of the Council’s Finance Committee, would prove a tough primary opponent fo Kagan, but ran a tight race in his 2021 general election against Republican Brian Fox, winning with just 51% of the vote.
But Kagan doesn’t have a guaranteed road to the general with civil servant Michael Ragusa already having declared his candidacy on the Republican line. Ragusa has been endorsed by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Their new Council district surrounds the sliver of Brooklyn that City Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) picked up following the redistricting process. Carr didn’t attend Monday’s press conference because of an official trip to Israel.
Despite the apparent challenge from Kagan, Brannan didn’t seem worried about a possible general election challenge from Kagan in his comments to the New York Daily News, which first reported the story Thursday night.
“Frankly, I’m embarrassed for him,” he told the tabloid. “This is just desperate and sad. When you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything.”
While Kagan said his decision was made on principle, Brannan wasn’t far from his mind when he took a shot at his Council counterpart saying Brannan had been “joking” about the city’s uptick in crime.
Brannan sent a tweet Sunday criticizing what he said was “a misreported crime” on the Citizen App, and the effect it has on the general public. In that tweet, he said that “we must take crime seriously.”
Democrats still dominate the Council controlling 45 of its 51 seats, but it’s the strongest Republican party in years. Borelli took a bit of a victory lap Monday pointing to Republicans local electoral woes of the past, and the 2012 party change of former Queens City Councilman Peter Koo who shifted from Republican to Democratic.
“Ten years ago our party was somewhat on the decline. We were fractured. We were disjointed, and we were losing voters,” Borelli said. “I think today is a sign that the opposite is happening.”
Despite Borelli’s celebration, Kagan will have to take on a more limited roll in government and will be removed from his former party’s politics losing a district leadership position, the News reported.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams took her former party mate to task for his about face saying it would impact his committee positions, including his chairmanship of the Committee on Resiliency and Waterfronts.
“Voters sent Council Member Kagan to the Council as a member of the majority conference and this drastic about-face seriously calls into question his commitment to the policy priorities of our conference,” she said. “New Yorkers have expectations for their representatives to carry the values that they were elected to prioritize over politics. Our Democratic Conference will continue to consistently place the public interest of our city over politics without Council Member Kagan.”