Suraj Patel Concedes Defeat To Maloney In Congressional Race

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Candidate Suraj Patel conceded defeat on Thursday to incumbent U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, more than two months after a primary election whose results were delayed and contested due to problems counting absentee ballots.

Patel's concession came after 975 additional ballots cast in the 12th Congressional District were counted following a judge's order, his campaign said. The city's Board of Elections certified Maloney as the winner on Aug. 6 as she led Patel by about 3,500 votes, even though a federal judge days earlier had ordered the agency to count more than 1,000 absentee ballots that were discarded for missing postmarks.

It took the city six weeks to count a record 400,000 absentee ballots cast in the June 23 election, as state and local officials accused each other of bearing responsibility for the delays.

My Final Statement on the NY-12 Congressional Democratic Primary: pic.twitter.com/QQAKQUlXwQ
— Suraj Patel #CountEveryVote (@surajpatelnyc) August 27, 2020

In a statement, Patel said about 11,000 ballots remain uncounted that were cast in the district, which covers Manhattan's Upper East Side, Roosevelt Island, parts of western Queens, and Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Patel led Maloney by 25 percentage points in the most recently-counted ballots, he said, suggesting that the race's outcome could have been different had all ballots been counted.

Some of those uncounted ballots include duplicates and ballots sent to people who chose to vote in-person on election day, however. Thousands of voters in the district also reported receiving their ballots late, or never getting one at all.

"At the least, uncounted votes are a multiple of the 3,256 votes we now trail the incumbent by," Patel said, before adding that he would turn his focus to supporting the Democratic presidential ticket in November.

"Therefore, it is with enormous gratitude to my family, my team, and our supporters that I accept the results as certified and concede our race, despite the loss this signifies for the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who have been told their votes do not count," Patel said.

The district's delayed results drew national attention, including from President Donald Trump, who suggested the election be held again and used the delays to advance a baseless claim that the use of mail-in ballots enables voter fraud.

Patel, who also challenged Maloney in 2016, suggested Thursday that he would run again in 2022.

In an emailed statement Thursday, Maloney did not mention Patel's concession, focusing instead on her efforts to investigate recent changes to the U.S. Postal Service and the 2020 Census that were ordered by the Trump administration.

"If successful, Trump's anti-democratic efforts will deprive millions of a free and fair election in November, and cheat New Yorkers of our rightful representation, federal funding and resources for decades or more, and as Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, I'm proud to be leading the fight to stop him," said Maloney, who has served in Congress since 1993.

Related coverage:

• Carolyn Maloney Declared Winner In New York Congressional Primary
• Trump Suggests Do-Over In NYC Congressional Race Due To Delays