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In competitive Queens Council race, a GOP firebrand's brashness is put to the test
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Oct 31, 2025
Modified Nov 5, 2025
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LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Oct 31, 2025
Modified Nov 5, 2025
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City Councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Queens Republican, is facing off against a new political opponent: veteran firefighter Benjamin Chou, 34.
Paladino, 70, is a pro-Trump Republican in a swing district and one of four GOP councilmembers defending seats in Tuesday’s general election. Her race is one of the few considered competitive in the city. Since her election to the City Council in 2021, she has gained a reputation for her far-right stances and provocative social media posts — and is now appearing on the ballot for the third time in five years.
Chou is running as a moderate Democrat, offering an alternative to Paladino’s abrasive approach to politics. Voters and political observers Gothamist spoke to cited Paladino’s controversies as either a reason to vote for her or against her.
Zachary Del Rosso, a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center whose dissertation research is on Republican support in Queens, said the race could be viewed as a test of whether the MAGA movement can have enduring success in conservative areas in the city.
“ I think here actually we are seeing a test of MAGA Republicanism in a place where it seems to have taken ground pretty well,” he said. “So if she were to be defeated, that would be a very interesting case study in how MAGA is maybe theoretically losing support in a place that it found a lot of support over the last five to eight years.”
In 2021, she beat Democrat Tony Avella by a few hundred votes to represent the northeast Queens District. The district had been represented by Democrat Paul Vallone since 2013, and before that Republican Daniel Halloran.
After an abbreviated two-year term for Paladino due to redistricting, she faced off against Avella once more in 2023, and won by a larger margin as the area became redder.
During her time in office, Paladino demanded Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's deportation and encouraged New Yorkers to point green lasers at congestion pricing cameras to break them. She was kicked off the Council's mental health, disabilities and addictions committee after calling Drag Story Hour “child grooming.”
Thomas Paladino, the councilmember's son and campaign director, said her outspoken personality is part of her brand, and that her constituents like it.
“It shows you the disconnect between the rest of the city and what our voters in this area consider to be controversial,” he said. “If anything, what they consider controversial, a lot of people around here consider to be common sense.” Paladino’s platform revolves around loudly advocating for conservative values. She says on her website that she worked to put more cops on the street “while other council districts defunded their cops” and supported corrections officers “against the radicals who want to close our prisons entirely." She also says she supports “preserving” the neighborhood, and she opposes ballot measures that would expedite housing construction.
Chou, a firefighter for 11 years, has campaigned on raising police officers’ salaries, investing more in parks and building a new specialized high school in Queens.
“ I think it is dangerous when we start becoming blunt in the sense that it creates this division and creates fearmongering or any sort of polarizing sense in our communities, it’s what drives a community apart,” he said. “ I am very passionate about rebuilding that sense of community and coming together and figuring out these problems together.”
Outside Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Bayside, one of the early voting locations in the district, Delia Mannix, 73, said she admired Paladino’s steadfastness.
“I've known her since we're teenagers,” Mannix said, adding she cast her vote for Paladino. “She was always so strong in her beliefs and never hesitated to speak up when it was the right thing to do. … She always stood up for what was right. She never changed. All those years she never changed.”
But Grace Downs, 38, said she has found Paladino’s tenure to be “infuriating,” and not representative of her values. She cast her ballot for Chou on Tuesday.
“Her rhetoric is very divisive, very inflammatory and it’s very concerning that she's my representative and represents a diverse population of not just Whitestone, College Point and Bayside,” Downs said. ”I really want to see a community that's more inclusive, and have a representative that's more inclusive of the community.”
Paladino, a member of the Council’s GOP minority, has not passed any legislation in her tenure, but has proposed bills to delay greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements, eliminate fees for firearm licenses and permits, and remove benchmarks for bus lanes and bike lanes from the city’s streets master plan.
Thomas Paladino said passing legislation isn’t what the councilmember's constituents expect her to do.
“ I think they see in Vicki Paladino sort of a firewall and a buffer to support the police and to support law enforcement and to speak on behalf of these people that feel like they're being ignored in the city right now,” Thomas Paladino said.
New York City’s nine-day early voting period runs through Sunday, Nov. 2. You can find more information about who and what is on the ballot in Gothamist’s voter guide. You can also find your early voting site here.
This story has been updated to correctly describe which individuals previously held the District 19 seat, and to correct the spelling of Zachary Del Rosso's name.
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Catalina Gonella
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