City Council Candidate Dante Arnwine Wants You To Depend On Him

Dante Arnwine (Right) in Crown Heights. Photo: Christopher Edwards.

Walking briskly down Halsey Street, Dante Arnwine starts to feel it. For the past two hours, he’s been knocking on random doors throughout Crown Heights, pleading for signatures on a board of elections petition. To get his name on the ballot for his City Council bid, he must collect 460 signatures in his district by April 3rd. So far today, he’s gathered around 28 signatures, save for a few he worries might be contested.

“This kind of reminds me a little of Boy Scouts,” says Arnwine, 31. “Just being out and doing.”

Since March of 2021, Arnwine has served as the district manager of Brooklyn’s Community Board 9, which makes up Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and some of Flatbush. The district manager is a paid position within the New York City government. The unglamorous job includes fielding complaints from residents, mediating between the people and the government, and sharing important information with the community. In October 2024, Arnwine announced that he would run for Council Member of the 41st district, a major upgrade from district manager. 

Though deeply ingrained in the minutiae of New York City politics, Arwnine has only been living in the city since 2017. He was born and raised in Riceville, Tennessee, an unincorporated community in the southeastern part of the state with a population of 688 in 2020’s census. “I grew up in a town that didn't have a stoplight,” says Arnwine, who speaks with a slight but noticeable southern drawl.

He describes his upbringing as ‘extremely’ conservative and Christian. In the third grade, Dante joined the Cub Scouts. It was his first introduction to the world of civics. There, he realized the importance of finding common ground. “If you communicate with each other, you talk to each other, you can get things that you want in this world,” he says.

The youngest of three brothers, his parents instilled a sense of discipline in him that he carries proudly. “I desperately tried to get out of Boy Scouts, and they were like, ‘No, you have to finish’, says Arnwine of his parents, who he describes as ‘definitely democrats’ but largely apolitical due to the overwhelming redness of their community. 

When Arnwine realized he was gay, he felt compelled to leave his hometown. “I had to live essentially two separate lives,” says Arnwine. “When I was growing up, I wasn't out. It's hard to be out at that time and in that space.”

In college, he turned toward his passion for public service. In 2015, he graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with a BA in political science. But after graduation, he was unsure about his plans. 

He decided to go to grad school at Rutgers University, getting a master's in public administration in 2017. The northeast felt like an instant culture shock for him. “People where I came from, they think every Hispanic person is Mexican,” says Arnwine.

After graduation, Arnwine moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, and worked several jobs in city government, including at the Department of Homeless Services and in Council Member Francisco Moya’s office. 

He hopped around the city a bit, living in Midtown for a year during the pandemic when rents were low, before settling in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. After becoming involved with Brooklyn’s Community Board 9, Arnwine went up for the position of district manager, but it wasn’t without controversy. He faced opposition as a transplant to New York and a recent Brooklynite. 

Mostly reserved and buttoned up, Arnwine quickly becomes animated when it's time to discuss policy. On a sunny yet cold Friday afternoon in Saratoga Park, a volunteer from the campaign of Bianca Cunningham, a community organizer who is also running for the 41st district’s City Council seat, approaches Arnwine. As she begins sharing  Cunningham’s platform, Dante cuts in to inform the volunteer, who does not recognize him, that he is also running. He lights up at the opportunity to try out a stump speech. 

“This district needs presence, communication, and strategy on a very simple level, this district has been missing that,” says Arwnine, clearly referring to Council Member Darlene Mealy, the incumbent who boasted the second-worst attendance record in City Council in 2023. 

The next day, Arnwine is joined by a small team of supporters for a day of door-knocking. His group is made up of Simon Duong, Dante’s partner of 5 years; Lauren Beale, a longtime friend; Akwasi Agyeman, Dante’s newly hired campaign manager; and Isaiah Pecou, a regular attendee of Community Board 9 meetings. 

The day begins awkwardly, with many unanswered doorbell rings and uncertainty about which homes to target. But about half an hour in, the group has better luck. The people who answer the door are typically happy to sign the petition, especially after learning that it is not a commitment of support but rather a means to simply get Arnwine on the ballot. Most people have never heard of him, but he is friendly, so they sign it. 

Arnwine carries himself with the seriousness of someone much older. He says he’s been told he’s mature all his life. “You're very mature for your age,”  is one that I've received more than you can imagine, and I kind of wear it as a badge of honor,” says Arnwine. “Being a Black man, a lot of people have a certain expectation of what you should be, or what you do, and for me to be young and to carry myself a certain way, it makes me feel good”.

Arnwine’s campaign is still in its infancy, with primaries in June and the final election in November. For now, Dante’s primary supporter is Duong, an office manager for a finance firm who lives with Dante in Crown Heights.

“I've never met someone so passionate about community and serving and helping people,” says Duong, who met Dante through a dating app in 2019 and was charmed by his humility and listening skills. “We will talk about a problem, but at the end of the conversation, a solution will always come about.” 

Still carving out his political identity, Arnwine repeatedly arrives at one word: dependable. “When I'm away from people, and when people are talking about me, I want them to say, ’Dante's a dependable person. Might not agree with him on X, Y, and Z, but when I call him, he picked up.’”