Maurice “Mo” Brown leads incumbent Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli in the Democratic primary for the New York State Assembly’s 129th District.
The race is still too close to call, according to results from the Onondaga County Board of Elections that have not yet been certified.
Brown, a current Onondaga County Legislator representing the 15th District, decided to challenge Magnarelli, who has been in the Assembly for nearly three decades, seeking material changes to the district.
“People are tired of politics as usual, people are tired of the system. And I’m people, myself included,” Brown said.
As of 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Brown held an 83-vote lead over Magnarelli. Brown led the race by a margin of 1.23%. That margin, if it holds, would not automatically trigger a recount, according to state election law.
County Board of Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny, a Democrat, said that there are 51 mail-in ballots received that have not yet been scanned. There are also 459 mail-in ballots that could still be received. An unknown number of affidavit ballots also remains uncounted, he added.
“Those will be opened [Wednesday] in front of the candidates,” Czarny said.
The Board of Elections expects to have a full count of the mail-in ballots and affidavit ballots by June 30. Results have to be certified by July 7, Czarny noted.
Tuesday’s contest represented a local flashpoint in a national war for the future of the Democratic party, where battle lines have emerged between younger progressives and established moderates.
Magnarelli is the longest-serving member of Central New York’s delegation in Albany. Brown got his start in politics as a volunteer for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, and has served in the Onondaga County Legislature since 2024.
Brown has long helped run the campaigns of some of Central New York’s progressive candidates, including former Onondaga County Legislator Mary Kuhn and Assemblymember Anna Kelles in Ithaca.
Magnarelli declined through a spokesperson to speak to reporters on Tuesday night. Diana Abdella, a spokesperson for Magnarelli’s campaign, said the race was too close to call.
The winner of the race will face Republican and former Legislator Shawn Fiato, who has filed with the New York State Board of Elections to run as an assembly candidate.
The race served as a test of Central New York’s progressive movement, which has scored multiple wins in recent years. If Brown were to hold his lead, it would follow a downstate primary trend in which candidates supported by the Democratic Socialists of America — which endorsed Brown — have beaten more moderate candidates.
“I think that we need a better redistribution of wealth,” Brown said. “Bill [Magnarelli]’s reluctance to tax the rich definitely pushed me into the race, but fundamentally, people want a government that stands up for working people, and that’s what I’m going to deliver to this community.”
Magnarelli himself was as recently as 2016 endorsed by the Working Families Party, a party with which Brown is closely aligned.
Asked about it in February, Magnarelli said he thought the Working Families Party had moved away from him.
When Brown first began exploring a race against Magnarelli, the incumbent held a more than $260,000 fundraising advantage over Brown.
By election day, Magnarelli had outspent Brown five to one, Brown said.
“I am afraid of big money in politics,” Brown said. “It creates this unknown variable.”
Magnarelli won the initial batch of mail-in votes displayed on the board of elections’ live results page by about 20%. Brown began gaining on Magnarelli at about 10:30 p.m. As the margin closed to fewer than fifty votes between them, Brown’s watch party — held with the rest of the “affordability slate,” three Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates — exploded into cheers. Two of Brown’s friends, Ruthnie Angrand and Jordan Bellesai, laid hands on his back to pray.
Brown not long after pulled into the lead, sparking cheers of “Let’s go, Mo,” and “DSA!”
New York State Sen. Rachel May, who represents parts of Syracuse in Albany, told Central Current that Democratic voters around the country have decided the party is not “meeting the moment.” The deadlocked race for the 129th District, regardless of the outcome, underscores that sentiment, she said.
“Either way, it sends a message,” May said. “We sure are seeing it all across the country, and certainly across the state, that Democrats in particular are ready for a change.”
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