A Republican candidate appeared to pull off a rare win for a south Brooklyn judicial seat this week, edging his Democratic rival by roughly 2 percentage points in unofficial tallies. Etan C. Harris received 50.91% of the vote in the race for the 8th District Municipal Court Civil Court judgeship, a contest that political insiders say has not gone the GOP's way in generations.
According to the New York Post, Harris appeared to defeat Democrat Susan Lieberman in the race, which would send him to a south Brooklyn judicial seat. The New York City Board of Elections’ tentative contest list, however, names the Democratic candidate as Susan A. Liebman, a discrepancy that has not been resolved between the two accounts. That same tentative list, marked “subject to change” by the Board of Elections, identifies Harris as both the Republican and Conservative Party nominee for the Kings County seat.
Party leaders told the Post that Harris’s win makes him the first Republican in 105 years to defeat a Democrat in the district. Liam McCabe, a political figure quoted in that report, said Harris “made history” and likened the victory to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer flying through a Democratic blizzard.”
A Rare GOP Opening in a Heavily Democratic Borough
Harris had the backing of Republican City Councilmember Inna Vernikov, whose office said he was the only candidate in any Brooklyn race that she backed, supported and endorsed this cycle. Vernikov said she identified a rare opportunity to flip a judicial seat from blue to red a little over a year ago, and credited the Brooklyn GOP and Conservative Party with supporting Harris’s run, per her office’s account relayed in the Post's report.
“Non-biased, apolitical approach, integrity and competence” is what Vernikov said Harris would bring to the bench, according to her office. She added that she was proud to support him and help him “reach the finish line.” The win stands out against a broader trend: nearly every other GOP incumbent in the borough lost their Assembly and state Senate seats this cycle, the Post reported.
Democratic Dominance Elsewhere in Southern Brooklyn
Harris’s apparent win ran counter to the overall direction of the night in the surrounding region. City & State New York reported that Democrats swept four state legislative races in southern Brooklyn, even in an area where Republicans have found increasing success in recent years as large demographic groups — Orthodox Jews and Chinese and post-Soviet immigrant families — have shifted to the right.
In Assembly District 46, Chris McCreight ousted Republican incumbent Alec Brook-Krasny, 56% to 44%, per unofficial results cited by the outlet. In Assembly District 45, Joey Cohen-Saban defeated Republican incumbent Michael Novakhov with 62% of the vote, while in Assembly District 49, Joyce Xiaoqiong Xie was set to beat Republican incumbent Lester Chang with 53%. In the 17th state Senate District, Larry He declared victory over Republican incumbent Steve Chan with 57% of the vote, the same report noted.
How Brooklyn Judicial Nominations Typically Work
Judicial races like the one Harris appeared to win operate differently than most Brooklyn contests. New York Focus reported that in Brooklyn, the Democratic nomination all but assures a candidate’s election — making Harris’s apparent win against a Democratic nominee especially unusual for the borough. The outlet also reported that all six civil court nominees selected by members of the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s county committee over the prior two years had employed political consultant Gregorio Mayers, and that campaigns had publicly disclosed paying Mayers or his firm at least $203,000 since Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn became party chair in 2020, compared with at least $53,000 in the six years before that.
Separately, the Board of Elections’ records show a Democratic primary was held for the same 8th Municipal Court District Civil Court seat in Kings County as part of the June 23 primary election.
The vote tallies behind Harris’s apparent victory remain unofficial, and the Board of Elections’ own contest list carries a tentative designation subject to change. Final certified results for the 8th District seat have not yet been made public.
