Yusef Salaam, who as a child was part of a group of teenagers wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned for the rape of a woman jogging in New York’s Central Park, has declared victory in a Democratic primary for a city council seat in New York – giving him a very good chance of representing a Harlem district as an elected official.
Salaam faced two veteran politicians, New York state assembly members Al Taylor, 65, and Inez Dickens, 73, in the race for a seat representing part of the majority-Black uptown Manhattan neighborhood. The incumbent, democratic socialist Kristin Richard Jordan, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.
The contest was taking place more than two decades after Salaam and four other men – then known as the Central Park Five, now often called the Exonerated Five – were cleared of the crime using DNA evidence.
It was one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes, inflamed when Donald Trump, then best known as a flamboyant real estate mogul in the city and later to become US president, took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the five.
The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the primary race and the election’s outcome might not be certain for days because of New York’s ranked-choice voting rules. That system kicks in if no candidate claims more than 50% of the total vote.
It was unclear early on Wednesday whether Salaam would stay above that threshold. With about 95% of votes counted, Salaam had a little less than 51% of the vote, with Dickens trailing substantially in second place.
Salaam nonetheless declared victory in a speech to supporters late on Tuesday.
Thirty-four years after Donald Trump led a lynch mob to execute him and four other wrongly accused young Black and brown men, Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five has declared victory in the New York City Council race to represent Harlem. pic.twitter.com/pJmTTt84NB
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 28, 2023
“What has happened in this campaign has restored my faith in knowing that I was born for this,” he said.
Salaam likened his youthful imprisonment to being “kidnapped”, but he also called his nearly seven years in prison a gift that allowed him to see a racially unjust criminal justice system from the “belly of the beast”.
“I am here because, Harlem, you believed in me,” he said.
Dickens conceded late on Tuesday, but promised to “continue to fight for what my community needs”.
If Salaam were to prevail in the primary it would virtually assure him a general election victory in a district unlikely to elect a Republican. It is his first time seeking public office.
Salaam was 15 when he was arrested in 1989 and accused, along with four other Black and brown teenagers – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise – of beating and raping a white woman in Central Park, Trisha Meile.
Members of the group served between five and 12 years in prison before prosecutors agreed to re-examine the case. DNA evidence and a confession ultimately linked a serial rapist and murderer to the Central Park attack. The convictions were vacated in 2002 and the city ultimately agreed in a legal settlement to pay the exonerated men $41m.
