New York - 8th District

Incumbent -- Jerrold Nadler (D) ; Running for re-election

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District Information

District Profile from Politics in America

Starting west of Central Park, the 8th travels through Manhattan's West Side from 89th Street south to Wall Street and Battery Park, taking in part of the Theater District and Times Square, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, SoHo, and TriBeCa. At Manhattan's southern tip, it slips through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to skim Brooklyn's western waterfront. It includes some working-class areas, much of Brighton Beach and some of Brooklyn's southern coastline, including Coney Island. The 8th had the state's fastest-growing population since 2000.

Manhattan's finance industry, at the center of the economic crisis, has shed tens of thousands of jobs and left millions of square feet of office space vacant but remains the district's economic touchstone. In lower Manhattan, reconstruction at the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center is still under way. The new skyscrapers will offer office and retail space, and the complex will include a memorial and museum, residential property and an extensive transportation hub.

At the center of the 8th's portion of Brooklyn is Borough Park, with large, conservative and pro-Israel Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish populations. This area of Brooklyn is filed with quirky shops, eclectic restaurants and vibrant nightlife.

Manhattan's heavily Democratic West Side, with politically active gay, minority, artistic and academic communities, has sent liberal representatives to Congress for decades and overwhelmingly supported Democratic presidential candidates. There are GOP-leaning middle-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and John McCain won the 8th's portion of the borough with 55 percent of the 2008 presidential vote. But Brooklyn's conservative voters are outnumbered at the polls by the district's liberal bloc. In 2008, Barack Obama won 74 percent of the district's vote.

Major Industry

Finance, retail, tourism, small business

Cities

New York (pt.), 713,512

Notable

The 8th is home to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Governors Island, South Street Seaport, American Museum of Natural History, Penn Station, Madison Square Garden and City Hall.