Fox has slim lead over Brannan in 43rd District City Council race

November 3, 2021 Jaime DeJesus

Republican challenger Brian Fox led Councilmember Justin Brannan by about 250 votes on election night.

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It’s a nail-biter.

Republican challenger Brian Fox holds a thin lead over Democratic incumbent Justin Brannan in the 43rd District’s City Council race.

The district includes Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights.

As of 1:10 a.m., with more than 98 percent of the votes counted, Fox had 12,145 votes (50.44 percent) and Brannan had 11,890 (49.39 percent), according to unofficial results from the Board of Elections.

“With 95% of the vote in, we can say we won the night,” Fox wrote on Facebook. “However, there are still absentee and military ballots coming in and we must wait for them to be counted for a final result. We do expect to win them as well.”

“We’ll need to wait for every vote to be counted,” Brannan said on social media, “but just like 2020, we’re confident there are enough absentee ballots to prevail once the count is complete.”

Brannan was referring to last November, when a few local Republicans saw large election night leads vanish once the absentee ballots were tallied.

Brannan declared victory during a speech to supporters last night and state Sen. Andrew Gounardes tweeted that Brannan had won the race.

“The newly re-elected $100M man of Southern Brooklyn – Council Member @JustinBrannan,” Gounardes wrote.

At the time, Brannan had a big lead, but by 11:30 p.m. Fox was ahead by 21 votes with 94.74 percent of the votes counted. The lead grew into the late hours of the night.