NEW YORK—A district attorney connected to the case of an unarmed black man who died after a white police officer put him in a chokehold was elected on Tuesday to fill a congressional seat left vacant when the incumbent pleaded guilty to tax fraud.
Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who empaneled the grand jury that declined to indict the officer who placed Eric Garner in the fatal chokehold, will keep the seat in Republican hands. He defeated Democratic City Councilman Vincent Gentile in a low-turnout special election to succeed Michael Grimm.
The race occurred in the shadow of the Garner decision, which helped fuel the national debate on the relationship between police and minority communities.
With more than 98 percent of the vote counted in unofficial results, Donovan led Gentile 59 percent to 39 percent. Nearly 39,000 votes had been counted. Donovan becomes the lone Republican to represent New York City in Congress.
At a victory rally, Donovan said “hardworking men and women of the middle class spoke loud and clear” and sent a message to President Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio that their policies are “wrong for our nation, they’re wrong for our city and they’re wrong for the community of the 11th Congressional District.”
Donovan came to national attention last year after a cell-phone video showed Garner being placed in a chokehold during a street confrontation. The December grand jury decision led to protests, and Garner’s name was cited on social media by a gunman who killed two New York police officers weeks later.
It also was a perpetual presence as Donovan campaigned, even as he took pains to avoid it. At a debate between Donovan and Gentile, someone in the audience yelled, “I can’t breathe!” a reference to Garner’s last words.
In an interview, Donovan said he had people ask him how the grand jury’s decision could have happened. He said it was a misconception that he could have determined the outcome.
“I always try to correct people when they say, ‘You failed to get an indictment,’” he said. “That means that our goal should have been to get one. And our goal is to present fair and impartial evidence to 23 members of our community.”
Donovan didn’t mention Garner in his victory remarks on Tuesday. But the specter of the grand jury decision didn’t hurt Donovan on Staten Island, home to a significant number of police officers, firefighters and working-class whites, and the outcome of the race was never truly in doubt.
The 11th Congressional District is considerably more conservative than other districts in the city as it includes Republican-heavy Staten Island and a small part of southern Brooklyn. Grimm had won reelection last November even though he was under federal indictment. He will be sentenced next month and could face more than two years in prison.
AP
Image credits: AP