Bill Perkins (politician)


Bill Perkins is the Council member for the 9th District of the New York City Council. He is a Democrat. The district includes portions of Harlem in Manhattan. Perkins formerly represented the same seat from 1998 to 2006, and was a member of the New York State Senate for the 30th District from 2007 to 2017.

Early life and education

Perkins was born and raised in Harlem, New York, and attended Collegiate School before receiving a scholarship to Brown University. He graduated from Brown in 1972.

Career

In 1997, Perkins was first elected to the New York City Council, winning the seat easily after losing the Democratic nomination for the Council three times previously. On the Council, Perkins served as Deputy Majority Leader, and championed the lead paint laws that required New York City residences to be tested for hazardous conditions.
Term-limited from the Council in 2005, Perkins opted to seek election to the New York State Senate in 2006, where he won. He was re-elected five times, and served a total of ten years, before resigning to retake his seat on the New York City Council. Perkins also ran briefly to succeed Charles Rangel in the United States House of Representatives in 2016, but later dropped out.
Perkins was one of the few New York lawmakers who endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary over Hillary Clinton.

New York City Council

In 2016, Councilmember Inez Dickens, who had succeeded Perkins on the Council, announced that she would forgo her last year on the Council before term-limits to run for a vacant seat in the New York State Assembly. That seat had become open because long-time Assemblymember Keith Wright opted to also run for Congress, eventually losing the primary to Adriano Espaillat. While he could have run for his Assembly seat again, he opted not to.
With Dickens eventually winning that seat, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called a special election for the Council district on February 14, 2017, or Valentine's Day. Perkins announced that he would be a candidate, along with eight others who had never held elected office. In the end, Perkins won the election with over 33% of the vote. He was sworn into office on March 1, 2017.
Perkins won a full, four-year term in the November 2017 general election.