Councilmember Erik Bottcher speaks at a Sept. 30 rally towards the Trump administration’s anti-trans funding cuts.
Matt Tracy
Out homosexual Councilmember Erik Bottcher of Manhattan is contemplating a marketing campaign for Congress within the race to interchange retiring Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, a 17-term lawmaker who represents District 12.
“At this moment of great danger for our country, I’m seriously considering running for Congress in New York’s 12th District as Congressman Jerrold Nadler prepares to retire,” Bottcher wrote within the assertion, which additionally inspired supporters to donate to his 2026 fundraising account.
The much-anticipated Democratic main race to interchange Nadler is predicted to be aggressive. Manhattan Assemblymember Micah Lasher has already introduced his candidacy for the seat, which can be being eyed by one other state lawmaker, Alex Bores, and former President John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, in accordance with the New York Instances.
If Bottcher, 46, decides to run, he would goal to grow to be the primary out homosexual member of Congress from Manhattan and the third from New York Metropolis, following Ritchie Torres of the Bronx and the disgraced former lawmaker George Santos, a Republican who represented Queens and Lengthy Island within the Home of Representatives for lower than a 12 months in 2023. Two different out homosexual people have additionally served in Congress from New York State: Mondaire Jones, who represented Westchester’s seventeenth District from 2021 to 2023, and Sean Patrick Maloney, who served within the 18th District for a decade starting in 2013.
The announcement comes weeks after the 78-year-old Nadler mentioned he wouldn’t be in search of re-election in 2027, citing the significance of generational change within the wake of former President Joe Biden’s failed 2024 marketing campaign.
Nadler’s district stretches throughout Manhattan from Central Park North all the way down to Union Sq.. Bottcher’s present Metropolis Council district, District 3, encompasses SoHo-Little Italy-Hudson Sq., West Village, Chelsea-Hudson Yards, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown South-Flatiron-Union Sq., and Midtown-Instances Sq..
“As I continue to weigh this critical decision, I look forward to staying in touch and sharing more in the weeks ahead,” Bottcher added. “I love my country, and I won’t stand by while it’s torn apart by Donald Trump and his neo-fascist forces. It’s time for a new generation of leaders to take charge and take our country back.”
First elected in 2021, Bottcher gained re-election in 2023 and is at present within the midst of one other re-election bid for Metropolis Council this 12 months. He overwhelmingly gained the Democratic main race earlier this 12 months and is predicted to cruise by means of the final election.
Bottcher, who grew to become the co-chair of the LGBTQIA+ Caucus early final 12 months, has been a powerful defender of transgender rights whereas within the Metropolis Council and often stresses the significance of homosexual and lesbian people standing up in assist as allies for trans people. Earlier this 12 months, working alongside LGBTQIA+ Caucus Co-Chair Tiffany Cabán, he helped introduce a package deal of payments to beef up assist for transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and intersex people within the face of aggressive assaults from the Trump administration.
Bottcher has used his management position within the Metropolis Council to talk up for the LGBTQ group in New York Metropolis all through his time in workplace. Early in his first time period, he was among the many audio system at a group rally denouncing Mayor Eric Adams’ appointments of anti-LGBTQ figures to his administration, and most just lately, Bottcher delivered remarks at a Manhattan rally the place activists stood in assist of trans rights within the face of hostility from Mayor Eric Adams and the Trump administration. He has additionally written quite a few letters on native LGBTQ points, together with a current one calling on Amtrak to instantly cease an alleged discriminatory apply of concentrating on people at a Penn Station males’s room in addition to a separate letter earlier this 12 months calling out a Manhattan group training council for allegedly manipulating quorum to forestall votes on resolutions pertaining to transgender points.
Bottcher has additionally spoken out towards assaults from the Trump administration, together with when he joined a rally towards the president’s erasure of transgender people on the Stonewall Nationwide Monument.
Bottcher himself has additionally been the goal of hate throughout his time within the Metropolis Council. In late 2022, he revealed pictures of anti-LGBTQ vandalism at his house and workplace, the place people disparaged him with slurs comparable to “groomer” whereas making threats like “we want Erik.”
Previous to serving within the Metropolis Council, Bottcher was chief of employees to former Metropolis Council Speaker Corey Johnson and beforehand labored on marriage equality efforts within the workplace of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Bottcher’s Metropolis Council seat is broadly referred to as a longtime LGBTQ stronghold the place out candidates have lengthy represented the district, together with Johnson, former Speaker Christine Quinn, and former state and metropolis lawmaker Thomas Duane.
