Queens Borough President Melinda Katz took a surprise lead in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney Wednesday night following a paper and affidavit ballot count.
Ms. Katz, who had the party’s endorsement in the race, had trailed insurgent candidate Tiffany Cabán by more than 1,100 votes after the initial tally of the voting machines from the June 25 primary but before the New York City Board of Elections began the ballot count.
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Queens Borough President Melinda Katz took a surprise lead in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney Wednesday night following a paper and affidavit ballot count.
Ms. Katz, who had the party’s endorsement in the race, had trailed insurgent candidate Tiffany Cabán by more than 1,100 votes after the initial tally of the voting machines from the June 25 primary but before the New York City Board of Elections began the ballot count.
Ms. Katz now holds a slim 20-vote lead over Ms. Cabán after Wednesday’s count. The board counted more than 6,000 paper and affidavit ballots and invalidated about 2,500.
The narrow lead has forced a manual recount to officially call the primary. However, Ms. Katz declared herself the winner Wednesday.
“We said from the beginning that every vote needs to be counted and that every voter needs to be heard, and now we see clearly why this must always be the case,” Ms. Katz, 53 years old, said Wednesday night.
Ms. Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, campaigned on a platform of overhauling the criminal justice system, prosecuting fewer crimes and giving shorter sentences. She had declared victory on the night of the primary, in which seven candidates vied to be the Democratic candidate for the borough’s top prosecutor.
Ms. Cabán’s campaign said Wednesday night that it was reviewing the roughly 2,500 affidavit ballots that weren’t counted by the board.
"Queens voters are inspired by Tiffany Cabán’s campaign and her vision for real criminal justice reform,” campaign spokeswoman Monica Klein said. “If every valid paper ballot vote is counted, we are confident we will prevail."
A manual recount—in which the Board of Elections goes through every scanned vote—is expected next week, board spokeswoman Valerie Vasquez-Diaz said.
Board of Elections officials on Wednesday counted the ballots until 9 p.m. before the new results were released, going through the affidavit and paper ballots for each district.
Ms. Vasquez-Diaz said that the board reviews every vote and that the affidavits are also given to each campaign to review. A vote can be invalidated or not counted if the voter is registered in a different party, or doesn’t live in Queens or for other reasons, she said.
The Queens DA’s race gained national attention, with Ms. Cabán receiving the endorsement of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who took down longtime Queens power broker Joseph Crowley in a primary race in 2018.
Write to Katie Honan at Katie.Honan@wsj.com