By Jason Dragseth, Chair, Political Committee
New York City’s 2025 elections were historic. Unofficial results from the Board of Elections show that 2,055,921 New Yorkers voted for mayor. Turnout was the highest it has been since 1969 and jumped 82.7% from 2021 turnout. High voter turnout is healthy for democracy, consistent with the Sierra Club’s principled belief in grassroots activism and something all New Yorkers should be proud of.
The Sierra Club endorsed Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral race, and he won decisively. Mayor-elect Mamdani’s focus on affordability was hugely popular with voters. While environmental policy was not a consistent talking point on the trail, we’re optimistic the Mayor-elect will be a leader on environmental matters, and here are several reasons why. The Mayor-elect’s desire to incentivize the use of public transit will reduce vehicle traffic and related greenhouse gas emissions. The Mayor-elect’s home district of Astoria has been labelled “Asthma Alley” due to the large number of fossil fuel plants located there and the high number of asthma cases caused by toxic emissions from the plants. During his tenure in the Assembly, the Mayor-elect led efforts opposing a new fracked gas plant in Astoria and sponsored legislation to prevent construction of such plants across New York State. Finally, in his response to our questionnaire this cycle, the Mayor-elect emphasized the connection between fossil fuel emissions, global warming, seas rising, and flooding of homes and neighborhoods in New York City. We look forward to working with the Mamdani administration to make progress on transit, clean energy, sea rise and flooding, and other policies that are important to us.
The Sierra Club endorsed Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine for Comptroller, and he won. The Comptroller has the ability to influence the actions of both public and private sector entities on climate through audits, investment decisions, research, policy proposals and more, and therefore we wanted to make an endorsement. The Sierra Club’s endorsement of Comptroller-elect Levine involved close scrutiny of the candidate’s commitment to environmental policy due to early versions of his campaign website omitting climate action as a top priority. Ultimately, the club got comfortable with Comptroller-elect Levine’s positions on the environment through reading his responses to our questionnaire, reviewing his track record and speaking with the candidate directly, and we made the endorsement. We look forward to Comptroller-elect Levine delivering on climate when he is in office.
All 51 City Council seats were up for election in the 2025 cycle. The Sierra Club did outreach to almost all City Council candidates across the city and endorsed 23 candidates who won their elections. One of our endorsed candidates, Council Member Julie Menin, is likely to become the next City Council Speaker. The club’s endorsement decisions were based on analysis of candidates’ positions on our highest priority issues, which included: congestion pricing; Local Law 97; sea rise and flooding; composting; and parks funding and management. To best understand candidates’ positions on the issues, we sent questionnaires to non-incumbents and researched the voting history of incumbents. The results of our outreach and research were highly encouraging. In general, both non-incumbent and incumbent candidates expressed strong support for progressive environmental policies. The Sierra Club will have willing partners in the City Council next session, and hopefully, this will translate into policy wins.
If you are interested in getting involved in the New York City Group’s political activities, please email me at jasondragseth@gmail.com. I chair the group.