Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Candidate who lost NY congressional primary urges supporters to protest Democratic nominee

‘You can still write me in,’ State Rep. Yuh-Line Niou says after being snubbed by the man who beat her, Dan Goldman

A state lawmaker who narrowly lost last month’s Democratic primary for a New York City congressional seat told supporters on Tuesday they could write her name on the November ballot to protest the party’s nominee, Dan Goldman, a former prosecutor and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

“You can still write me in,” State Rep. Yuh-Line Niou wrote in a WhatsApp group of supporters that includes this reporter. “People can literally do that and show him what his millions buys lol.”

Niou stood out during the campaign in the heavily Jewish district spanning parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan for her support of the boycott movement against Israel. Goldman, in contrast, campaigned hard on his pro-Israel credentials and played up his Jewish background.

Yuh-Line Niou in a Whatsapp group conversation with supporters on Sept. 20, 2022. Photo by Jacob Kornbluh/Screenshot

Asked outside the group chat whether she was seriously considering a write-in campaign, Niou said “no,” explaining that her suggestion was a tongue-in-cheek reply to a supporter who had posted to the group that he might write in “Santa Claus” as code for her.

The WhatsApp appeal came hours after HuffPost published an article about Goldman’s efforts to extend an olive branch to leftists in the district, including some of his former rivals — but not to Niou. Asked by the HuffPost reporter whether he would welcome Niou’s endorsement, Goldman said, “I don’t really care.”

Niou, in the chat, said of Goldman, who beat her by about 1,300 votes:  “I’m just literally shocked by how bad he is. I’m miserable for my people.” 

A spokesperson for Goldman did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday evening. 

Niou, who had also been endorsed by the Working Families Party during the 12-person primary, considered running again in November on that party’s line. Many of her supporters suggested that she would be able to consolidate support that had been spread among several leftist candidates in the crowded primary, which Goldman won with 26% of the overall vote.

She decided earlier this month not to pursue that path, concluding that because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic, a third-party campaign would be a longshot, and that the Working Family Party’s resources would be better used for competitive races nationally. 

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.