NYC NOW - June 28, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

A grand jury has indicted Daniel Penny, the ex-Marine accused of fatally choking Jordan Neely on the F train last month. His plea of not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide was sealed until this morning’s arraignment. In other news, NYC public schools will soon have to offer daily mindful breathing exercises to students, lasting between 2 to 5 minutes. Travelers across the region have been stuck in airports due to unpredictable weather. One such group, the New Jersey Youth Symphony, kept spirits high by performing for fellow flyers during a delay at Newark Liberty airport. Much of New York is currently under an air quality advisory, with the air considered unhealthy for sensitive groups and children. Finally, the polls have closed for yesterday’s primary, which saw low turnout. Despite this, some high-profile contests yielded interesting results. WNYC’s Michael Hill discusses these results with senior reporter Brigid Bergin.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, June 28. Here's the midday news for Michael Hill. The 24-year-old former Marine accused of choking and killing Jordan Neely on the F train last month has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. A grand jury had indicted Daniel Penny but kept the charges sealed until his arraignment this morning. if convicted, Penny faces years in prison for the alleged crimes. On New York City Public Schools soon must offer two to five minutes of mindful daily breathing exercises to students. W&MIC's Jessica Gould reports. At PS5 in Bedstuy, some students model what they call ocean-sounding breathing.

The ocean-sounding breath is when you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth with a whisper. Mayor Eric Adams announced the new requirement to, Tuesday on the last day of classes. He says schools will have flexibility about how to implement it. Some may do it as part of morning meeting, physical education, or academic lessons. One, think of positive things. Officials say there's no definitive date for when schools must begin offering the breathwork, but hundreds of schools have already started. The unpredictable weather of the last few days has left many travelers in our area stranded at airports for longer than

expected. That includes WNYC host David First. He was at Newark Liberty Airport last night, where his 8 o'clock flight was pushed past midnight. Passenger's schedule for their flight included the New Jersey Youth Symphony on a tour, at least they expected to be, on a tour heading for Italy. As the scene became ever more crowded and chaotic and stressed out to say the least, the musicians knew exactly what to do to lift those spirits. The website, flydeware.com, had listed 90 cancellations and 53 delays from local airports. More Canada Wildfire Smoke is heading this way and challenging our breathing. A big chunk of New York is under an air quality advisory because the air is considered unhealthy

for sensitive groups and children, and it means they should limit strenuous outdoor activity. New Jersey's air advisory starts at midnight and runs to midnight. Thursday. 78 with clouds out there this morning, actually this afternoon. Today, partly sunny with showers and thunderstorms likely this afternoon highs in the low 80s. Polls are closed or the votes from yesterday's primary are in, mostly. Their turnout in early voting was low and that did not improve much on primary day, but there were still some high profile contests with some interesting results. Joining us now with what we know so far is WNYC's Bridget Bergen. Let's start with that race in Harlem's 9th Council District.

That's where turnout was highest for early voting. Where did the results stand this morning? So that was the very competitive three-way primary and criminal justice advocate, Yusuf Salam, one of the exonerated five was leading last night with more than 50% of the vote. Now, just a reminder, this is a ranked choice voting race. candidate wins more than 50% of the vote on that first ballot, then the rank choice process may not

come into play. And because of that number that he was able to achieve last night, we heard Salam deliver a victory speech from Harlem, where he talked about his experience, being falsely accused in that Central Park case, prepared him for this moment. I was gifted because I was able to see it for what it really was. a system that was trying to make me believe that I was my ancestors wildest nightmare but I am my ancestors' wildest dream now Michael will remind you that he was running

against assembly members Inaz Dickens and Al Taylor and Dickens was really running with the full backing of the Harlem establishment and Salam and Taylor actually cross-endorsed each other a little bit of the dynamics of a ranch choice voting race. But as you already mentioned, turnout was incredibly low. Even in a race like this one, which had higher turnout compared with others, while we don't have overall turnout numbers for the

citywide primary, in just this race, approximately 11,000 voters cast ballots, and that's out of about 97,000 eligible voters in the district. So we're talking 11% turnout. And again, that's on the high end of things. Overall turnout is going to be below that. Bridget, I'm always curious about the morning after and whether there were any upset. Several incumbents faced challengers in this off-cycle primary. Yeah, so it was generally a really good night for incumbents except in Brooklyn's 42nd Council District, incumbent Charles Barron is currently trailing challenger Chris Banks by more than seven percentage points. Now, that's the district that includes East New York, New Lottes, Remsen Village, Spring Lake,

and Starrett City. Keep in mind, you know, again, we're talking very low turnout. As I said, there were just under 6,000 votes in that particular race and by raw votes. Banks only holds 437 votes over Barron as of the numbers we saw last night. There are about 600 absentee ballots that are still out there. So these numbers might change. Banks had just over that 50% mark, but as absentee ballots come in, we might see a ranked choice tally need to come into play there. I know that's a lot of numbers to throw out early in the morning, but the bottom line is, if Barron does lose this seat, it would be a big deal. He and his wife have been sort of swapping back and forth between the assembly and the city council for two decades.

So this would mark a huge change for voters in that part of Brooklyn. Bridget, is that the only race that will need a ranked choice tower? It is not. There are a couple others. Interestingly, in Queens in the council district 19 in the Democratic primary. We saw former city council member Tony Avella with just a two-point lead over his closest challenger Christopher Bay. Now, they are running to be the Democratic nominee to take on the Republican council member, Vicki Palladino, who actually defeated Avella by a pretty narrow margin back in 2021. So we'll definitely see a ranked choice voting contest in that race. Up in the Bronx, there's actually a Republican primary in the 13th council district where we will likely see a ranked choice tally come into play to determine the winner. And in that case, the winner of

that primary will run against Marjorie Velasquez, the Democrat who really won a decisive victory with 65% of the vote against her three challengers. So still some results that we're going to be waiting on. Remind us, what happens next with those council races where another ranked tally is needed? So votes are still going to come in from those absentee ballots, and then next week on July 5th, the Board of Elections will do the first ranked tally. And then if they need to do additional tallies, they will do them weekly every Tuesday until a candidate has more than 50% of the vote. We had some district attorneys up for re-election. How do they fare? Yeah, we had those two Democratic primaries in the Bronx and Queens, Democrats, Melinda Katz, and Darsel Clark, in the Bronx, cruise to victory.

Not a big surprise there. Those weren't necessarily races that were getting a ton of attention, and the incumbents really won the day. Democrat Melinda Katz and Queens actually celebrated last night with Governor Hokel and with Congressman Gregory Meeks, who is head of the Queens County Organization. More to come on this. Thank you, Bridget. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

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