Miraculous: Tiffany Caban Concedes Queens District Attorney Primary To Melinda Katz After Recount

Tiffany Cabán conceded the Democratic race for Queens district attorney on Tuesday night, officially cementing Melinda Katz’s ultra-close victory after six weeks of contentious recounts and court battles.

Addressing supporters at the Katch beer garden in Astoria, Cabán conceded and said she would keep fighting for progressive criminal justice reform.

Katz, who is the Queens Borough president, now claims victory by a mere 55 votes — 34,913 to Cabán’s 34,858.

Caban, a progressive Democrat endorsed by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, declared victory on election night, but Katz, did not concede.

Caban saw her 1,100-vote lead vanish the next day as 3,400 absentee ballots pushed Katz ahead by 20 votes.

Prominent progressive activists and some elected officials used Twitter to accuse the county party of leveraging voter suppression and even voter fraud to help Katz, though there was no evidence of illegal behavior.

The slim vote margin triggered an automatic manual recount by the New York City Board of Elections, the first borough wide recount in recent history. For two weeks, elections officials pored over every single ballot at an office in a mall in Queens. By the end, Ms. Katz had widened her lead to 60 votes.

Katz was certified as the victor by the Board of Elections on July 29. But still Ms. Cabán refused to concede. On Tuesday, it became clear that her pathway to victory via the courts had all but vanished.

Katz is now favored to win the November general election to succeed longtime District Attorney Richard Brown. He died in May at age of 86.