Voters were ready for a change in the East Bronx.

"They feel like there's no more local control in our community, they dont have a say with what's going on in their neighborhoods and they're just fed up with it," Republican Kristy Marmorato, said on NY1's "Mornings On 1" Wednesday.

That frustration led Marmorato to accomplish something incredibly rare in New York politics - defeat an incumbent Council member, Marjorie Velázquez, a Democrat.

Even rarer, she did it as a Republican in the Bronx, in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than four to one.

But the Democratic advantage proved to be illusory in the eastern Bronx district where a change in zoning of Bruckner Boulevard to get hundreds of new housing units dominated the race.

"Totally major issue - if not one then 1A. I would say that's what encouraged and invigorated a lot of the voters to come out," George Havnarek, a civic leader who led fights against the Bruckner rezoning, said.

He also ran in this year's GOP primary and lost to Marmorato.

He said Velázquez was against the rezoning before voting for it in the City Council.

"It was never presented in its proper form and there was never proper dialogue with the community and the stakeholders that live nearby to maybe mold or shape it in a way that it'd be palatable to the community,' Marmorato said.

In this year's campaign, Velázquez tried to run on her support of it, highlighting in an ad about building new affordable housing units for seniors and veterans.

"Building potentially what could be low-income housing, rezoning something that is suburban to that, that really impacts people directly and so people are going to be mobilized and somehow, that can be somehow not necessarily related to what we call political ideology, on that left-right Democratic, liberal-conservative scale," Helen Chang, a professor of political science at CUNY's Hostos Community College said.

It was local issues that got Marmorato to run.

"They wanted to put a Rikers release program 500 feet from my home, and I reached out to my elected officials and she didn't have to have the answers but she had to at least have the compassion and it lacked compassion, lacked answers and I felt like I didn't have a voice, as well as all of my neighbors," Marmorato said.

Velázquez sent out a statement Thursday evening conceding the election.

"While this is not the outcome we wanted, I know that if we continue the hard work of organizing for values of inclusion, acceptance, and diversity - this community will ultimately reject fear in favor of hope," Velázquez wrote.

"I urge my successor to work for all of District 13 - especially those who've been underrepresented for generations," she continued.