Primary Result
What happened in the June 23 primary?
Illapa Sairitupac won the Democratic primary for Assembly District 65. This rundown keeps the pre-primary candidate comparison as background on the open-seat race.
PrimaryState AssemblyNY Assembly District 065
NY Assembly District 65 Democratic Primary
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Election Rundown
NY Assembly District 65 2026 Primary: Six-Results and Candidate Comparison for Grace Lee's Open Seat
Illapa Sairitupac won the Democratic primary for Assembly District 65. This rundown keeps the pre-primary candidate comparison as background on the open-seat race.
The comparison below is retained as post-primary reference material: it summarizes the candidates, positions, endorsements, and issues voters were weighing before the race was decided.
Overview
What is the background?
The June 23, 2026, Democratic primary in New York's 65th Assembly District was an open-seat contest. Incumbent Assembly Member Grace Lee is leaving the seat to run for State Senate District 27 12. Six Democrats were on the ballot: Jasmin Sanchez, Illapa Sairitupac, Mariama N. James, Wei-Li Tjong, Lilah Mejia, and Jay Jacky Wong 2.
When was the AD-65 Democratic primary?
What is the background?
Tuesday, June 23, 2026 2.
What neighborhoods make up AD-65?
What is the background?
AD-65 covers Lower Manhattan, including Chinatown, the Financial District, parts of the Lower East Side, Two Bridges, South Battery Park City, and parts of the East Village 34.
Who is on the Democratic primary ballot?
What is the background?
Jasmin Sanchez, Illapa Sairitupac, Mariama N. James, Wei-Li Tjong, Lilah Mejia, and Jay Jacky Wong 2.
How did AD-65 vote in the 2025 mayoral primary?
What is the background?
AD-65 voted 65% for Zohran Mamdani in the final round of the 2025 ranked-choice mayoral primary, the largest Mamdani margin of any Assembly district in Manhattan south of 125th Street 4.
Who is Jasmin Sanchez?
What is the background?
Jasmin Sanchez is a Lower Manhattan community advocate. She previously ran for AD-65 in 2022 and sought the NYC-DSA endorsement that year. After DSA voted to endorse Sairitupac instead, she ultimately backed Grace Lee in the 2022 primary 4.
Who is Illapa Sairitupac?
What is the background?
Illapa Sairitupac is a tenant organizer and social worker who previously ran for AD-65 in 2022, losing to Grace Lee by 14 points after winning DSA and Working Families Party endorsements. He currently works as a housing organizer at the Cooper Square Committee 45.
Who is Mariama N. James?
What is the background?
Mariama N. James is an AD-65 district leader and First Vice Chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party. She is a longtime community organizer and Lower Manhattan resident 24.
Who is Wei-Li Tjong?
What is the background?
Wei-Li Tjong is a Lower East Side attorney and community leader with ties to local good-government and reform clubs 23.
Who is Lilah Mejia?
What is the background?
Lilah Mejia is an outreach manager with New York Disaster Interfaith Services. Her campaign focuses on disaster preparedness, public-school investment, NYCHA protection, and community-resilience programming 26.
Who is Jay Jacky Wong?
What is the background?
Jay Jacky Wong is an AD-65 district leader and longtime Lower Manhattan resident, running on a public-safety and community-growth platform 2.
What is Sairitupac's housing record?
What is the background?
Sairitupac works as a housing organizer at the Cooper Square Committee. His campaign focuses on tenant protections, rent regulation expansion, public-housing investment, and ending source-of-income discrimination. His campaign has been endorsed by Tenants PAC and Met Council Action 5.
What is Mejia's housing platform?
What is the background?
Mejia's platform centers on protecting NYCHA, rent-stabilized, and Mitchell-Lama housing, holding landlords accountable, and strengthening eviction protections for families 6.
Has each candidate addressed NYCHA?
What is the background?
All six candidates have made NYCHA capital investment and tenant protections part of their platforms, given the high concentration of NYCHA housing in Lower Manhattan 26.
What is Sairitupac's record on immigration?
What is the background?
Sairitupac works with a coalition of NYC organizations to protect New Yorkers from ICE and has campaigned on sanctuary-city expansion, state-funded immigration legal services, and ending federal-local enforcement cooperation 5.
Where do other candidates stand on ICE?
What is the background?
Sanchez, James, Tjong, Mejia, and Wong have each supported sanctuary-city policies and immigrant legal-services funding, with varying degrees of emphasis on confrontational versus services-oriented framing 24.
What is Wong's public-safety platform?
What is the background?
Wong has campaigned on community safety and neighborhood growth, with an emphasis on visible policing and small-business protection in Chinatown and the Financial District 2.
What is Mejia's community-safety platform?
What is the background?
Mejia frames safety as coming from resources, not just policing. Her platform includes investment in after-school programs, mental-health services, and community-resilience programming 6.
What is Sairitupac's position on policing?
What is the background?
Sairitupac supports reducing NYPD reliance, ending broken-windows enforcement, and investing in mental-health and social-services responders 5.
What is Mejia's education platform?
What is the background?
Mejia's platform centers free after-school programs for all students, expanded literacy programming, and additional resources for Lower Manhattan public schools 6.
Have other candidates focused on education?
What is the background?
James and Sanchez have campaigned on parent-engagement and public-school funding in Lower Manhattan, including school overcrowding and dual-language programming 24.
What is Mejia's disaster-resilience focus?
What is the background?
Mejia's background as an outreach manager with New York Disaster Interfaith Services informs a campaign centered on disaster preparedness, climate-adaptation funding for low-lying Lower Manhattan, and coastal-resiliency infrastructure 6.
What is Sairitupac's climate platform?
What is the background?
Sairitupac's campaign emphasizes housing, immigration protection, and climate, including support for a state-level Green New Deal framework 5.
Have candidates addressed Israel-Palestine policy at forums?
What is the background?
At candidate forums hosted by Lower Manhattan Democratic clubs, candidates have addressed Israel-Palestine policy primarily in connection with the district's diverse constituencies. Specific positions vary, with Sairitupac most closely aligned with DSA's pro-Palestine framework and other candidates aligned with Assembly Democratic mainstream positions 35.
Has NYC-DSA endorsed in the race?
What is the background?
Yes. NYC-DSA endorsed Sairitupac on March 9, 2026, expanding its 2026 state-legislative slate to 15 candidates 5.
Has the Working Families Party endorsed?
What is the background?
Sairitupac has applied for a WFP endorsement, and the party has been considering an endorsement following its candidate forum 4.
Who has endorsed Sairitupac?
What is the background?
NYC-DSA, Tenants PAC, Met Council Action, and former Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou (who did not endorse him in 2022 but has worked with him since on housing-organizing) 45.
Who has endorsed James?
What is the background?
James has the support of the Manhattan Democratic Party institutional network through her role as First Vice Chair, with backing from local district leaders and Manhattan-machine-aligned officials 24.
Who has endorsed Tjong?
What is the background?
Tjong has been backed by Lower Manhattan good-government clubs and reform-oriented Democratic organizations 23.
Who has endorsed Mejia?
What is the background?
Mejia has consolidated some support among disaster-preparedness, faith-based, and community-services networks tied to her work at New York Disaster Interfaith Services 26.
Who has endorsed Sanchez and Wong?
What is the background?
Sanchez and Wong are running on district-leader and longtime-community-resident pitches and have not consolidated major institutional endorsements as of May 2026 24.
What is the framing of the race in coverage?
What is the background?
City & State frames the race as a crowded hyper-local fight in the most pro-Mamdani Assembly district in Manhattan south of 125th Street. Sairitupac's path is to consolidate the post-Mamdani left and the housing-organizing base. The other candidates compete for institutional, hyperlocal, and community-services constituencies 4.
Was there an earlier round of competition between these candidates?
What is the background?
Sairitupac and Sanchez both ran in the 2022 AD-65 primary, won by Grace Lee, with Sanchez ultimately endorsing Lee after DSA backed Sairitupac. That dynamic colors the 2026 contest 4.
Will the winner serve under Mamdani in Albany?
What is the background?
Yes. The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored in the November 2026 general election in this safely Democratic district and will take office in January 2027 13.
Sources
Source 1
Wikipedia, "New York's 65th State Assembly district."
Source 2
NYC Board of Elections, "2026 Primary Contest List."
Source 3
Ballotpedia, "New York State Assembly District 65."
Source 4
City & State New York, "Illapa Sairitupac preps second run for lower Manhattan Assembly seat," February 23, 2026
Source 5
NYC Democratic Socialists of America, "NYC-DSA Endorses Illapa Sairitupac for State Assembly District 65," March 9, 2026
Source 6
PoliticsNY, "Campaign Insiders: A Q&A with AD-65 Candidate Lilah Mejia," May 13, 2026