Republican wins Brooklyn judge seat

Etan Harris won the election for Brooklyn’s eighth municipal judicial district on Tuesday.

Harris received 38,915 votes, which accounted for 50.96 percent of the total. His opponent, Susan Liebman, collected 48.82 percent of the vote. The city Board of Elections reported these figures with 97.45 percent of scanners counted. Harris is a private attorney with a 16 year practice focused on real estate and personal injury litigation. He campaigned as a law and order candidate.

The district covers areas from Gravesend through Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay to Canarsie. Harris gained support from local Republican officials. City Councilmember Inna Vernikov endorsed him. State Senator Steven Chan and Assemblyman Lester Chang also backed his campaign. Both state legislators lost their reelection bids to Democrats in the same election. Harris’s background includes a father who was an architect and a mother who taught public school. He was raised in Southern Brooklyn. Community Magazine described him as the grandson of a union judge who practiced in Israel.

Harris’s campaign materials highlighted his outreach to Orthodox Jewish and Chinese American leaders in the district. The campaign presented his candidacy as a choice for voters who had previously faced a one party rule dynamic. The group stated that Brooklyn voters did not have a real choice when voting for judges in the general election. Republican leaders noted that a GOP win in this specific judicial race has not occurred in decades.

Other results in Brooklyn showed a different pattern. Four other municipal court judgeships in the borough were uncontested. In the fourth district, Democrats Anthony Vaughn Jr. and Xavier Carr defeated Republican Aaron Franklin by more than 40 points. Democrats won the remaining contested seats in the second, third, and seventh districts.

In Staten Island, Democrat John Vitucci Jr. won the first district civil court judgeship. He defeated Republican Carrie Ann Low by 11 percentage points. Vitucci’s father, a former court officer, died days before the election. In Manhattan, seven judgeship seats were filled. Three candidates won uncontested races. In the seventh district, three Democrats and one Fair Court party candidate won their seats. Democrats also won both open seats in the ninth district.

The Bronx and Queens also held municipal court elections. Democrats won both open seats in the Bronx without opposition. In Queens, Democrats won three contested races and one uncontested race. Janet Ellen Keller defeated Republican Stephen Dachtera by 50 points in the second district.