Central Park Five member Yusef Salaam wins NYC council Democratic primary

Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated “Central Park Five,” has officially won the Democratic primary for a seat on the New York city council, almost ensuring his eventual election to the seat.

Salaam had a significant lead over his opponents, New York Assembly members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor, for the nomination to represent Council District 9 in Central Harlem, but he needed additional votes released Wednesday to clinch victory.

Initial unofficial results put Salaam as the clear leader with 50.14 percent of the vote, while Dickens and Taylor had about 25 and 14 percent, respectively. Incumbent Kristin Jordan, who dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot, won about 9 percent of the vote.

The city’s ranked choice voting system requires the winner of the race to have a majority of the votes in the first round to win outright, or the process will go to additional rounds in which the candidate with the lowest number of votes will have their votes redistributed according to their voters’ second preference.

Salaam declared victory last week after the unofficial results showed him with the large lead, and Dickens and Taylor conceded.

Salaam’s win in the Democratic primary should assure him of a win for the seat in the general election in a heavily Democratic district.

Salaam gained national attention after he and four other Black and brown teenagers were wrongly accused of raping and beating a white female jogger in 1989. They were tried, convicted and sentenced to multi-year terms in prison.

They served between 5 and 12 years in prison before a confession from the real culprit caused prosecutors to look into the case again. DNA evidence proved that they were not guilty, and their convictions were vacated in 2002.

The city of New York eventually agreed to a settlement of $41 million in total with the five.

All three candidates focused their campaigns on promoting affordable housing, controlling gentrification and reducing poverty in Harlem, but Salaam had an advantage based on his fame in the neighborhood and as a symbol of fighting injustice for Black and Latino residents, who make up three-quarters of the district’s population.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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