Shekar Krishnan (born June 5, 1985) is an American attorney and politician who is a member of the New York City Council for the 25th district, which covers the northwestern Queens neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, parts of East Elmhurst, and a small piece of Woodside.
Early life Krishnan was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to immigrant parents from Kerala, India.
He received a Bachelor of Sciences in engineering from The Cooper Union and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School.
Career Krishnan worked as an associate for law firms Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. As of 2018, he was also an attorney at Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, directing the organization’s fair housing and tenant advocacy divisions.
He is the co-founder of Communities Resist, a legal services organization that represents tenants and neighborhood coalitions in fair housing litigation and anti-displacement advocacy in gentrified neighborhoods.
In the mid-2010s, Krishnan was the president of the New Visions Democratic Club, which had been founded by local Councilmember Daniel Dromm.
City Council campaigns 2021 City Council campaign
Krishnan announced his candidacy in the 2021 Democratic primary for the 25th District of the New York City Council on November 17, 2020. Incumbent Councilmember Dromm was term-limited and could not run for reelection. Krishnan was endorsed by Dromm, U.S. Representative Nydia Velázquez, and State Senators Julia Salazar and John Liu. Seven other candidates also ran for the seat.
Krishnan centered his campaign on immigrant rights, the taxi medallion crisis, affordable housing, and climate justice. He supported the movement to "defund the police" and advocated "significantly reducing the NYPD's budget" to "redirect those divested funds to communities of color that have been overpoliced and denied countless city resources for years". He also advocated preserving the open street (closed to cars, open to pedestrians and cyclists) that had begun on 34th Avenue in spring 2020, and turning it into a "linear park".
The 2021 primary election was among New York City's first to use ranked-choice voting. Although opponent Yi Andy Chen had more first-choice votes (4,014) than Krishnan (3,915), Krishnan came from behind to win the primary with transfer votes in the seventh round of counting and eliminations, with 53.4% of all votes cast. He won the general election, against three opponents, with 60% of the vote. Along with Shahana Hanif, Krishnan is one of the first South Asians to serve in the New York City Council. Days after being elected, Krishnan was arrested along with Hanif and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani for protesting alongside taxi drivers.
2023 City Council campaign Due to redistricting, Councilmembers elected in 2021 only served for two years, rather than four, then had the opportunity to run again in 2023 to retain their seats for another two-year term. Krishnan successfully ran to retain his seat in 2023, earning 62% of the vote and defeating Ricardo Pacheco and Fatima Baryab in the primary election, and defeating Zhile Cao and (again) Fatima Baryab in the general election. Krishnan had the endorsement of the Working Families Party.
2025 City Council campaign Krishnan successfully ran to retain his seat in 2025, defeating one opponent in the primary election and three opponents in the general election.
On City Council
In his first (2021-2025) term, Krishnan chaired the Parks committee, and advocated increasing the city's parks budget. He said he aimed for Jackson Heights to have a "superblock" of public green space, as the area has "some of the least amount of open space in all of New York City".
In October 2022, protesters criticizing Krishnan's support of local Drag Story Hour programs vandalized his district office with graffiti. Anti-Drag Story Hour protesters then protested at his home in January 2023, writing on the nearby sidewalk and shouting "groomer" accusations at Krishnan while his children and wife were inside.
In June 2024, Krishnan's office organized a town hall meeting on the problem of illegal moped use in bike lanes and Paseo Park, and what the Department of Transportation ought to do to regulate micromobility.
In October 2024, Krishnan, with other members of the Council's Progressive Caucus, signed a letter urging Mayor Adams and the future police commissioner to "ensure that the recent leadership transitions and on-going corruption investigations do not impede accountability for the 2019 NYPD killing of Allan Feliz".
Krishnan introduced a bill to decriminalize street vending without a license. The City Council overrode a mayoral veto to approve the bill in September 2025.
Krishnan endorsed Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City mayoral election. He was then a leading supporter of Julie Menin's successful bid to become Speaker of the City Council for the 2026-2029 legislative session, one of the first progressive Councilmembers to do so. Menin appointed Krishnan to chair the Investigations and Oversight committee, widely considered a powerful and prominent post. He stated that the committee's subpoena power was "a critical and underutilized tool in our arsenal" to fight corruption and "hold predatory corporations accountable", and that he aimed to "revive the subpoena power" to use it more than the Council had in recent years.
In early 2026, Krishnan voted for a bill regulating protest near religious institutions and placing responsibility for those restrictions under the NYPD's purview, but against a related bill (Intro 175-B) that would create a "buffer zone" limiting protest near educational institutions. The City Council passed 175-B, but Mayor Mamdani vetoed it.
Electoral history 2025
2023
2021
See also Indian Americans in New York City
References