After some consideration, Yuh-Line Niou ruled out a potential general-election challenge to Dan Goldman after narrowly losing to him in the Democratic primary for the Tenth Congressional District last month.
“Since primary day, I’ve heard from so many of you asking me to run in November on the Working Families Party line. I am so incredibly humbled to be asked and honored by your confidence,” Niou said in an emotional video posted to Twitter on Tuesday. “Enough of the absentee ballots have been counted and we are conceding the primary, and I will not be on the WFP line for the general. We simply do not have the resources to fight all fights at the same time and we must protect our democracy now.”
On Election Night, the state assemblymember finished with 23.7 percent to the former federal prosecutor’s 25.7 percent, a difference of 1,306 votes. Many of her supporters had been pushing for her to run on the Working Families Party’s ballot line in November, reasoning that she could beat him in a rematch by consolidating the votes cast for other progressive candidates in the primary. As Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, put it a statement: Niou “came within inches of victory” despite being significantly outspent by her opponent.
After Niou’s announcement, Goldman released a statement acknowledging his opponents in the race without naming them. “Each of the candidates in this race raised critical issues that must be addressed in City Hall, Albany and Washington, and I learned so much from them during the primary,” he said.
