After losing three previous bids for a City Council seat, the fourth campaign was the charm for Margaret Chin, who emerged victorious Tuesday night in the Democratic primary. Chin beat two-term incumbent Alan Gerson by about 1,000 votes (39 percent to Gerson's 30 percent) in a meager voter turnout.

 

Only about 10,500 ballots were cast for all five candidates in the sprawling and diverse 1^st Council District, which encompasses Lower Manhattan from the Battery to Greenwich Village, and from river to river.

 

The final tally:  Margaret Chin 4,541; Alan Gerson 3,520; PJ Kim 1,927; Pete Gleason 1,293; Arthur Gregory 235.

 

Chin, who emigrated as a child from Hong Kong and grew up in Chinatown, insisted throughout the campaign that she did not just represent Chinatown. Nevertheless she called her victory a “big moment” for the Chinese community. She is the first Chinese-American to represent the district, which includes Chinatown, and the first female Chinese-American to be elected to the City Council.

 

“It is very significant, especially for a lot of the old-timers who have been here and feel that they need a voice,” she said. “And a lot of times, because of the language and culture, they feel that they are not being heard.”

Dressed in a grey pants suit, pink blouse and white sneakers, Chin celebrated her victory at the Golden Unicorn restaurant on East Broadway where she was joined by about 100 supporters seated around tables of unfinished tea and dishes of noodles, listening to speeches—most in Chinese. When one speaker praised Chin as someone who will fight for them, the candidate followed with a clarification.

 

“My background is in organizing,” she said. “I don’t do things by myself!”

 

 

While Chin and her party gathered in the restaurant’s festive banquet room, many of Gerson’s supporters stood along a dark sidewalk outside the candidate’s campaign headquarters, located in the back room of the Silver Spurs Restaurant at LaGuardia Place and Houston Street. Apparently shaken by returns, still inconclusive at the time, that showed him trailing Chin, Gerson turned uncharacteristically hostile towards the press, telling photographers for two local papers not to take his picture.

 

In contrast to what even Gerson’s supporters called a disorganized campaign, Chin seemed to gather steam to the very end with a hefty retinue of Chinese-speaking volunteers and a massive push to get out the vote in Chinatown. They called 6,000 Democrats on the phone, more than 4,000 of them in Chinatown, according to Donnie Johnson, 24, who was Chin’s “get-out-the-vote” director.

 

“We turned out 4,300 people [at the polls],” said Johnson. “That’s unbelievable.”

Chin also bested Gerson—and the rest of her opponents Downtown—with fundraising. She collected more than $116,000 through the end of August. Gerson collected almost $80,000, and supplemented it with $52,575 in loans. Chin qualified for $88,550 in public funding, money Gerson was denied because of procedural challenges levied by Gleason during the campaign.

 

(PJ Kim also topped Gerson’s donation total, having raised $104,562. Pete Gleason, Gerson’s closest rival during the campaign, amassed $41,153 in contributions, while first-time candidate Arthur Gregory collected $7,148.)

 

Chin began actively raising money for her run in May 2007, a full year and seven months before Gerson, in part to ensure her eligibility for matching funds from the city.

 

“[Chin] wanted to emerge early as the strongest Asian candidate, to discourage other candidates who might split the vote from the community and make it impossible once again for District 1 to have Asian-American representation,” said Jake Itzkowitz, Chin’s campaign manager.

 

One particularly contentious issue among the candidates during the run-up to the primary elections was that of how much of the money they collected actually came from within the 1^st Council District. Of their top 25 donors, only nine of Chin’s and eight of Kim’s live in the district, although Itzkowitz insisted that Chin had a higher percentage of in-district donations than any of her opponents. Itzkowitz also pointed out the relatively high number—13—of out-of-state donors among Kim’s top 25.

 

Chin called this the hardest fought of all her campaigns.

 

“What we focused on was the voter contact," she said. "Knocking on doors, calling voters, early morning subway stops, even though I’m not a morning person. But Jake [Itzkowitz] said, ‘You gotta do it.’”

 

As her victory party drew to a close, Chin was asked what she expected to do next.

 

“I would like to get a good night’s sleep,” she said, “and start planning.”

 

—With additional reporting by Matt Dunning