Erik Bottcher
3rd Council District - Manhattan
Erik Bottcher is a dedicated public servant and activist who has devoted his life to progressive causes and to the betterment of the community he loves.
Now, he is running to represent our community on the New York City Council.
Erik believes that if we come together and rise to this moment, New York City’s best days are still ahead.
Growing up in a small town in the Adirondack Mountains as the only gay person he knew, Erik’s personal struggles with depression sparked in him a lifelong dedication to helping the most marginalized members of our society. His journey from a childhood in a remote area to a life of activism in New York City was profiled in a 2015 feature story cover story in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise titled “Erik Bottcher’s Fight for Equality.”
When the COVID-19 crisis hit, Erik took action, building an expansive volunteer network that made weekly wellness calls to thousands of home-bound seniors and delivered tens of thousands of meals to food insecure residents across the district. Additionally, he is organizing weekly community cleanups in the Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen.
Erik’s effective leadership style is reflected in these and countless other examples, as well as in the deep support his candidacy has received from community leaders across Council District 3, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), TenantsPAC, and the LGBTQ Victory Fund.
As a longtime member of the Village Independent Democrats and a co-founder of United Thru Action, a resistance group created in the days following the 2016 presidential election, Erik has been a fierce fighter for progressive values in electoral politics. He helped organize dozens of buses of volunteers that traveled to swing districts in Pennsylvania and beyond during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles, and was active in the fight to defeat the I.D.C., which gave Democrats true control over the New York State Senate. This year, on top of his own campaign for City Council, Erik organized weekly phone banks for 17 weeks to help ensure the defeat of the most dangerous president in American history. Over 1,000 volunteers participated, making thousands of phone calls to voters in swing states.
Erik is a graduate of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and was a Bohnett Leaders Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government program.