Outside a Sikh temple in the Little Punjab section of Queens, hundreds of people lined up around the block, waiting to receive plates of hot chickpea curry and deep-fried bhatura bread. It was the third Sunday in April, and the temple had prepared thousands of meals to celebrate the Indian harvest festival Vaisakhi.

Inside, the local assemblywoman, Jenifer Rajkumar, who had traded her signature red dress for one in harvest yellow, was working the crowd.

“Who here likes to have a Punjabi representative in office?” she asked the congregants, referring to herself. About half of them raised their hands.

Ms. Rajkumar registered faint disapproval. Everyone should raise their hands, she said, because “as a community, we have never been more powerful.”

She had a point. Last November, many of the people in the room had helped elect Zohran Mamdani as the first South Asian American to become the mayor of New York City. But as Ms. Rajkumar seeks another term in office, her race may test whether this community’s support of Mr. Mamdani was rooted more in identity or ideology.

Her Democratic primary opponent, David Orkin, is a democratic socialist who is also courting the mayor’s supporters, and earlier that afternoon, he had also visited the temple. He was accompanied by an entourage of progressive South Asian volunteers who helped to ingratiate him with the local community.

Ms. Rajkumar, who had brought her mother along, gave an impassioned speech; Mr. Orkin helped make the festival’s bread.

The June primary contest has grown fractious, with each candidate accusing the other of election fraud and Mr. Orkin recently suing to kick Ms. Rajkumar off the ballot. The primary may also be a measure of the Democratic Socialists of America’s growing momentum in New York.

Mr. Orkin is the first Democrat to primary Ms. Rajkumar, the incumbent, since she won her seat in 2020, when she and Mr. Mamdani made history as the first South Asian Americans elected to the State Assembly.

But this year, the same progressive South Asian and Indo-Caribbean networks that helped elect Mr. Mamdani as mayor are trying to rally an energized South Asian electorate around Mr. Orkin, potentially dividing voters in Queens who might otherwise gravitate toward backing Ms. Rajkumar.

Mr. Orkin, an anti-Zionist Jew, has now become a familiar figure at South Asian temples and community events in Queens, being squired about by members of DRUM Beats, the political arm of Desis Rising Up & Moving, and the newly formed Hindus for Human Rights Action.

“During Ramadan I probably went to like eight iftars,” Mr. Orkin said. “Every Friday, I’m going to masjid and doing jummah prayer, and then I think we’re gonna get into a practice of, every Sunday, going to a gurudwara.”

Andrew Singh, an Indo-Caribbean DRUM Beats organizer who lives around the block from Ms. Rajkumar’s office, spends much of his free time phone-banking for Mr. Orkin and introducing him to congregants at local temples, so as to “not let the identity politics get in the way,” he said.

Ms. Rajkumar is running on more than her identity. She came to office after serving as the state’s first director of immigration affairs under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, where she created a $31 million fund to provide legal services for immigrants.

As a second-term lawmaker, she successfully championed legislation in 2023 that made Diwali — a festival observed by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists — a public school holiday in New York, an achievement noted by many people interviewed for this article.

More recently, Ms. Rajkumar gained broader attention for her frequent and often perplexing appearances at news conferences and events held by Eric Adams, Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor as mayor. She also unsuccessfully ran for public advocate last year, losing to the incumbent, Jumaane Williams, by more than 50 percentage points in the Democratic primary.

Ms. Rajkumar has always said that her Indian parents’ rags-to-riches journey was what inspired her to work in government. Her family was one of millions that had been dispossessed during the 1947 Partition of India, and her parents, both doctors, “came to America with $300 and a suitcase.”

Her back story, as well as her work in the Legislature, has earned the respect and continued support from members of the Bangladeshi American Society, including many who also backed Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy.

“The vote that we did with Mamdani is totally different,” explained Mohammad Ali, the head of the Bangladeshi American Society. He and a dozen other local leaders who have supported Ms. Rajkumar said that they voted for Mr. Mamdani not because of his socialist platform, but, at least in part, because they felt they knew him.

Mr. Ali characterized Ms. Rajkumar as “a true friend to our community.”

But her track record has failed to impress DRUM Beats, whose leaders say she has not meaningfully delivered for her working-class constituents.

“Vast parts of the community know that she is just like every other politician,” said Simran Thind, a Punjabi organizer who recently took Mr. Okrin to two Sikh temples during Vaisakhi. “She shows up, she says a few words in our language and she leaves.”

The organization’s executive director, Fahd Ahmed, said that, early on, it had been willing to try to work with Ms. Rajkumar. Then the assemblywoman formed a close alliance with Mr. Adams, and any hope that they could reconcile their differences evaporated.

“It just reinforced what we were already assessing her to be: pro-police, pro-real estate, pro-corporation, highly focused on personal relationships,” Mr. Ahmed said.

Ms. Rajkumar defended her relationship with Mr. Adams, saying that she “got to be involved in every single issue in this city,” adding, “everyone saw me everywhere.”

It was also a practical calculation, she said, allowing her to “deliver for my constituents in ways they had never been delivered for before,” like making Diwali a school holiday. She compared her appearances with Mr. Adams to Mr. Mamdani’s visits to the Trump White House.

Some left-leaning groups remain dubious.

In March, Mr. Orkin, 34, met with progressive organizers at Saar Indian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, where he chatted over masala coated canapés and happily accepted the endorsement of Hindus for Human Rights Action.

The posters decorating the walls of the restaurant championed “A Free Palestine,” but the Hindu group, which has modeled itself after Jewish Voice for Peace Action, aims to fight right-wing Hindu nationalism in the Indian diaspora.

The group’s political director, Ria Chakrabarty, explained that its decision to endorse Mr. Orkin was motivated by its distrust of Ms. Rajkumar. Since 2020, Ms. Rajkumar has been accused — including by Mr. Mamdani — of welcoming right-wing Hindu nationalist ideology into her orbit, by accepting campaign donations from people and groups supportive of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Ms. Rajkumar and the Coalition of Hindus of North America have characterized those accusations as discriminatory for singling out the Hindu donors of a Hindu politician.)

“Five years ago, she might not have been as unpalatable,” Ms. Chakrabarty said. “But this is, for us, a moment of real clarity.”

When Mr. Orkin addressed the gathering that night at Saar, he acknowledged the seeming incongruity of his own presence.

“Probably to some of you I am just a random white guy,” he said. But as a longstanding member of Jewish Voice for Peace, he said he was also someone who could understand the perspective of the progressive Hindus and noted the importance of “speaking out against Hindu nationalism and its very obvious connections to Zionism.”

A resident of Ridgewood, in the district’s more liberal northern enclave, Mr. Orkin spent the last three years working as a staff attorney at the immigrant-advocacy nonprofit Make the Road New York. He is openly gay, Jewish, Mexican on his mother’s side, and speaks fluent Spanish. He got the idea to run for office last July, after campaigning for Mr. Mamdani, and his background was appealing enough to DRUM Beats that the group endorsed him on Day 1 of his campaign.

Amit Pratap Shah, a leader of the Ridgewood Nepalese Society, said that “at a very grass-roots level, when it comes to support, we have to first look at who can be the best candidate for our community.” He said that he voted for Mr. Mamdani and supported Ms. Rajkumar, but added that his Nepali cultural center welcomes diverse voices and “it’s up to our community members to decide what they want to support.”

At the moment, Mr. Shah said, he thought that Ms. Rajkumar was the favorite because “people know her.” Then he reconsidered. Mr. Orkin, he allowed, “also visited our community center.”

In 2019, New York’s legislature passed a law that allowed judges to consider a defendant’s documented history of surviving domestic abuse when determining what sentence to impose. If the judges found that the history played a role in the crime, they were able to reduce the sentences.

Since the law was enacted, prosecutors across the state, though, have at times requested that defendants waive that right in order to receive a plea deal and to avoid a trial.

But in an opinion on Thursday, New York’s highest court said prosecutors could not make defendants give up that right. In the 4-to-3 decision, written by Judge Jenny Rivera, the majority found that forcing a defendant to waive the right deprived them of the benefits of the 2019 law.

The practice “threatens to essentially eviscerate the statute by excluding the overwhelming majority of defendants who have suffered domestic violence,” Judge Rivera wrote.

Thursday’s decision also highlighted how an overwhelming majority of cases in the legal system end in plea agreements, rather than being decided at a trial. As of 2019, 96 percent of felonies and 99 percent of misdemeanors ended in a plea, according to state data.

The decision is one of the rare times that the state’s highest court has acknowledged a defendant’s rights cannot be set aside as part of a plea agreement, said Paris C. DeYoung, an attorney with Legal Aid who argued before the judges on behalf of the petitioner in the case.

“It’s very hard in our system to get the court to protect certain rights from waiver,” she said. “We’re excited that this sort of opens the door for folks to continue to pursue things that they are entitled to without having to deal with just another waiver on their plates.”

The case at the heart of the appeal was that of Nicole Hudson, who was charged with second-degree attempted murder and two counts of first-degree assault for running over her sister’s girlfriend with a car while fleeing her abusive ex-boyfriend. She took a plea deal and waived her right to have the abuse she had dealt with considered in her sentencing.

In a statement on Thursday, Ms. Hudson said the decision “has given me my life back.” Waiving away her ability to have the hearing before she was sentenced was “an injustice not just for me, but also for my child and for my family,” she said.

Oren Yaniv, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Ms. Hudson’s case, said the office was concerned the decision “will make it harder to resolve appropriate cases early.”

“Crime victims and surviving relatives deserve finality, clarity and a process that does not unnecessarily prolong painful experiences,” he said.

The law the decision aims to protect, the Domestic Violence Survivor’s Justice Act, was passed in 2019, when progressive Democrats had taken control of New York’s Legislature.

It allowed some defendants to have their history of domestic violence to be considered during sentencing if they showed that they were largely influenced by their abuse at the time of the crime. The judge could sentence the defendants to receive less prison time than what the law called for or alternative incarceration programs. It also gave people already in prison the opportunity to apply for resentencing.

The law came as crime in New York hit historic lows, and the Legislature overhauled parts of the state’s bail law and compelled prosecutors to hand over reams of case material to defense lawyers in a timely manner. However, as crime inched up after the pandemic, and after a public shift in sentiment on crime, lawmakers began to make changes to the policies. Both laws have been amended.

Ms. Hudson’s case began in 2019. She was at an outdoor party by her home when her abusive ex-boyfriend arrived. After an altercation broke out, during which her former boyfriend was injured, Ms. Hudson fled to her car and tried to escape. As she began driving away, she ran over her sister’s girlfriend, striking her three times and dragging her body down the street under the car. The woman was left permanently paralyzed and Ms. Hudson was charged with second-degree attempted murder and two counts of first-degree assault.

While her case was pending, Ms. Hudson, 34, asked that her history be reviewed by the court to see if she would be eligible to be sentenced under the domestic violence law. Her lawyers requested that the court sentence her to six months of incarceration and five years of probation.

Ms. Hudson’s lawyers included supporting information in her application, including a psychological report that said Ms. Hudson had experienced “repeated psychological and physical abuse” at the hands of her former boyfriend, who is also the father of her child. The first instance of physical abuse occurred when she was 20 years old and five months pregnant, the report found. His physical and verbal abuse escalated after.

While her application was pending before the court, Ms. Hudson was offered a plea deal through the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, offering her five years in prison and five years of probation. Their agreement, according to the opinion, was on the condition that she waive her right to the hearing to determine if she could get a reduced sentence.

Her lawyers objected to the provision, and the judge overseeing the trial also “expressed concern as to whether a defendant may waive,” the opinion said. However, the judge ultimately concluded that Ms. Hudson could waive her right and the court accepted her plea in 2021.

After she was sentenced, Ms. Hudson appealed, but the state’s Appellate Division found that the right could be waived. But the four judges on the state’s highest court on Thursday said that they agreed with a decision in another case that found some rights were “too valuable, both to the [defendant] and to the community, to be sacrificed in plea bargaining.”

Ms. Hudson said she was now “excited to finally have the chance to tell my story. I know that I caused great harm, and I take full accountability for that.”

“I also know that my actions came from my years of abuse,” she said.

But, in a dissent on Thursday, Judge Anthony Cannataro argued that a remedy should come from legislators and not from the judiciary.

Ms. Hudson’s case is an example of the sentencing law working, Judge Cannataro said, because she was offered the very lowest end of the ordinary sentencing range, “despite the serious and lifelong injuries that defendant inflicted.” Now, as a result of the decision, and the likelihood that prosecutors will withdraw the agreement, Ms. Hudson “may find herself subject to a far longer sentence than she agreed to,” he said.

There may still be survivors who will choose to plead guilty instead of going through the process to see if their case could be determined using the sentencing law, said Kate Mogulescu, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and part of the Surviors Justice Project.

“But what is not allowed now is for prosecutors to foreclose that,” she said. “That is an important distinction.”

For almost 40 years, a stretch of Manhattan’s West Side from Greenwich Village to Hell’s Kitchen has had a gay representative in the City Council, reflecting the district’s large L.G.B.T.Q. population and its role in history as the site of the Stonewall riots, a pivotal moment in the gay and transgender rights movement.

But a special election next Tuesday may see a straight person elevated to the Council seat for the first time in decades, after Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Lindsey Boylan, an activist who was also the first woman to accuse former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment.

Mr. Mamdani’s endorsement has injected questions of ideology and identity into a contest that previously attracted little attention and raised questions about how important it is to the voters in the Council’s Third District, and to the city at large, to elect an L.G.B.T.Q. person to the seat.

It has also drawn the race into a broader conflict between Mr. Mamdani and Julie Menin, the Council speaker and a more moderate Democrat. Ms. Menin has endorsed Carl Wilson, a community activist and legislative aide who is gay.

Mr. Mamdani’s endorsement came just before the start of early voting and quickly elevated Ms. Boylan, a democratic socialist, in a contest that had previously been dominated by Mr. Wilson, who had secured a wide range of endorsements and said he planned to join the Council’s progressive caucus if elected.

The mayor’s decision to wade into the race has upset some gay activists, including Allen Roskoff, 76, who successfully pushed to create what he called a “gay winnable” Council seat in 1991.

“We want to continue honoring the people before us who did give their blood, sweat and tears to acquire this seat,” said Mr. Roskoff, whose late partner, Jim Owles, was a prominent activist who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in the area in 1973.

Mr. Roskoff has endorsed Mr. Wilson, but says he would not have done so if he did not believe him to be the best candidate.

“In this district we have someone eminently qualified, and our history needs to be respected,” Mr. Roskoff said. He added: “I don’t think a straight person can say, ‘I would represent you just as well.’ No. That’s not what representation is.”

Others, including Mr. Wilson himself, have pushed back, saying the focus should be on the candidates’ proposals and experience and not their sexual orientation.

“There have been wonderful queer people elected from the district over the last 30-some years,” said Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, who supports Ms. Boylan. “But I feel now and have always felt we should be voting for people not based on their identity, but based on who they are.”

Some have called the idea of a “gay seat” on the City Council reductive and patronizing to voters, especially in a city that now has many L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials.

“Hell’s Kitchen is an inclusive neighborhood of everybody — every race, every sexuality, every religion,” said Marisa Redanty, a community activist in that neighborhood.

Mr. Wilson and Ms. Boylan are competing to finish Erik Bottcher’s term, which lasts through December. Mr. Bottcher vacated his seat earlier this year when he was elected to the State Senate. The winner is expected to compete in the Democratic primary in June and the general election in November to serve a full term on the Council.

Two other heterosexual candidates, Leslie Boghosian Murphy and Layla Law-Gisiko, are also running but are considered long shots.

In an interview, Mr. Wilson said that while he thought it was “not a requirement” that the district be represented by an L.G.B.T.Q. person, “it’s an important perspective.”

“I am way more than just a gay candidate — way more,” said Mr. Wilson, who has deep relationships in the district and has worked as Mr. Bottcher’s chief of staff. “I’m also the candidate with the longest track record of on-the-ground service in this district and the experience to deliver from Day 1.”

Mr. Wilson and his supporters marked the first day of early voting last weekend with a “drag out the vote” event on Ninth Avenue, where local drag queens urged people to vote. Days later, he and Ms. Boylan both appeared in the West Village to commemorate the 60th anniversary of an important protest held at Julius’, a historic gay bar.

Ms. Boylan has responded to the debate over L.G.B.T.Q. representation delicately. In an interview, she said she would never “take away or diminish how anyone feels” about the prospect of replacing a gay council member with a straight one.

She has also pointed out that many issues, including affordability, affect people of all sexual orientations, especially in a district that includes some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States.

“About half of our residents are severely rent-burdened,” said Ms. Boylan. “It’s a real challenge to stay here.”

Ms. Nixon echoed that point, saying the Third District used to be “a much scrappier part of the city.”

“And a lot of those queer people have been priced out,” she added.

The mayor’s endorsement of Ms. Boylan came at a time when he needs allies on the Council. Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Menin have been engaged in a feud over a range of issues, including taxation and the budget.

When he endorsed Ms. Boylan, Mr. Mamdani praised her as a leader who shared his vision of New York’s future, and noted her courage in speaking out against the former governor.

“As we work to usher in a new era in our city’s politics and advance our affordability agenda,” Mr. Mamdani said, “I need partners in the work like Lindsey.”

A spokesman for the mayor, responding to controversy over the endorsement, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Mamdani’s “commitment to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community is clear, as is his record on the issue: establishing the first Mayor’s Office of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Affairs, naming director Taylor Brown as the first and highest-ranking transgender leader in the history of the city’s government and supporting numerous queer candidates over the years.”

Ms. Menin is very invested in the outcome of the race and has begun soliciting funds for Mr. Wilson’s campaign, according to someone familiar with the outreach.

Before Mr. Mamdani made his endorsement, Mr. Wilson had secured the backing of influential local political clubs and labor unions, as well as elected officials including Representative Jerrold Nadler, whose district overlaps with the Council district, and the city comptroller, Mark Levine.

He has also received the backing of outside groups headed by influential Democrats, including Greg Goldner, the campaign manager for Mr. Cuomo’s mayoral bid.

Representative Nydia Velázquez, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens and has been in her own conflict with Mr. Mamdani over who should succeed her when she retires at the end of her term, has backed Mr. Wilson.

A former actor who lives in a walk-up rental on 10th Avenue, Mr. Wilson helped start a political club in the district, the Hell’s Kitchen Democrats, and served on the local community board before going to work for Mr. Bottcher.

Ms. Boylan rose to prominence as the first of a number of women to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment, allegations he has denied but that nevertheless led to his resignation in 2021.

Since then, she has run unsuccessfully for Congress in 2020 and Manhattan borough president in 2021. She campaigned for Mr. Mamdani last year and joined the Democratic Socialists of America after he won the Democratic mayoral primary.

Mr. Mamdani defeated Mr. Cuomo in both that race and the general election last November. The mayor’s decision to endorse Ms. Boylan is widely seen as suggesting some lingering animosity toward Mr. Cuomo.

The debate over the district has highlighted the vast changes in New York and across the country since the election in 1991, when the place of L.G.B.T.Q. people in society was different.

Outspoken homophobia was widespread, there was little public understanding that transgender people existed, and the AIDS crisis was at its peak, with more than 30,000 New Yorkers dying of the disease in 1991 alone.

Today, there are many elected L.G.B.T.Q. officials in New York, including Representative Ritchie Torres, who represents parts of the Bronx in Congress, and Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president.

The City Council has several L.G.B.T.Q. members, including one gay Republican and gay Democrats from districts once seen as unwinnable for gay candidates.

Chi Ossé, 28, the co-chairman of the Council’s L.G.B.T.Q. caucus and ally of Mr. Mamdani’s, said he thought the debate over gay and transgender representation extended far beyond the Third District now.

For example, he said, he did not think a gay candidate could have won in his Brooklyn district 40 years ago.

“Decades ago, this was one of the only seats, if not the only seat, where a gay candidate could run and win,” he said. “But that has certainly changed.”

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, the rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, an L.G.B.T.Q. synagogue in Chelsea, has worked closely with each of the district’s council members since the early 1990s.

She said it was “really thrilling” when Tom Duane became the first gay candidate elected to represent the area in 1991. A vocal supporter of both Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Menin, she has endorsed Mr. Wilson.

“I think now it is less important whether or not Carl is gay than the values and perspectives he has,” Rabbi Kleinbaum said. “I think it’s great that he’s gay. I think we need to have that as part of the mix, but it’s not the only issue.”

Sally Goldenberg contributed reporting.