Deborah Glick, who has represented Tribeca in the State Assembly for 36 years, announced in October that she will not seek reelection. And now, candidates are filing in for the seat. (Primary Day is June 23.) So far five have registered with the State Board of Elections.

The 66th Assembly District includes the East and West Villages, Tribeca and Soho.

I will run profiles or Q&As as we get closer, but in the meantime:

RYDER KESSLER
Ryder Kessler was raised in Chelsea and went to Friends Seminary, then Hunter College High School and Harvard for undergrad. He is Jewish and gay, he noted when I interviewed him during his run for Glick’s seat in 2022, important in his mind since the seat is currently held by Deborah Glick, the first openly gay member of the Assembly. Kessler is the co-executive director of Abundance New York, which pushes for more housing, better public transit and public spaces, and renewable energy and resilience infrastructure.

JEANNINE KIELY
Glick has endorsed District Leader Jeannine Kiely, the former chair of Community Board 2. She is also a co-founder of Literacy Academy Collective, an education nonprofit, and the Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden, created to preserve the open space and save it from the development of low-income housing for seniors.

BEN YEE
Benjamin Yee has worked as a digital director for state political organizations for most of his career, and he founded an organization called ShiftSpark — a crowd funding site for political causes. One bio says he is a lifelong resident of Lower Manhattan — he went to PS 234 and Bronx Science — but another says he moved from Brooklyn to Chelsea at age 10 and went to Brooklyn Friends. For the past eight years, Ben has represented Lower Manhattan on the Democratic State Committee.

DAVID SIFFERT
David Siffert is a civil rights lawyer, NYU law professor and life-long Manhattanite, and also non-binary. Siffert lives in the East Village with their wife and child. Siffert is the founding executive director of NYU’s State Government Initiative, which uses university resources to help state government better serve the people, and worked as a litigator in private practice and as a tax lawyer.

CORINNE ARNOLD
Corinne Arnold is a managing partner at EZ Election Solutions , which offers boutique election, balloting and annual meeting services to coops and condos. She is also a board member of Victoria Owners Corp, on 14th Street just west of Union Square.

Glick, 75, took office in 1990, but her issue-oriented approach to service did not start there. During college (she grew up in Queens Village and has her bachelor’s from Queens College and an MBA from Fordham) and immediately afterwards (she worked at a printshop in Tribeca on Hudson Street) she was involved in political organizing — the war in Vietnam, the first Earth Day, and of course the fight for abortion rights. When she started college, abortion was illegal.

“I have always devoted 100% of my energy representing this district,” she said in a statement in October. “With one year left in my term, running for re-election would mean a three-year commitment. I don’t believe I could continue to dedicate 100% of my energy beyond next year. It has been a difficult decision at this time, and the time may never be right, but my constituents deserve a representative who can work hard every day for them.”

(Agreed.)