Grimm, a member of the Republican Party, announced on December 30, 2014, that he would resign from the House effective January 5, 2015, and not take his seat for a third term following his guilty plea for tax evasion.

On May 5, 2015, Republican candidate Dan Donovan defeated his Democratic challenger Vincent Gentile in the election and filled the vacant seat.

[1] In April 2014, Grimm was indicted on twenty felony charges, including mail and wire fraud, perjury, obstruction of justice, employing illegal immigrants, and conspiring to defraud the United States after it was found that he under-reported revenues and employee wages relating to a restaurant he owned.

[10] On February 2, Cuomo, who had given no indication of when he would call the special election for, said that he was "looking at it now" but didn't have a timeframe for setting a date.

[11] Staten Island Attorney Ronald Castorina Jr. filed a lawsuit on behalf of 8 Plaintiffs from Brooklyn and Staten Island, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Non-Enrolled parties, to force Cuomo to call a special election[12] and on February 17, Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York ordered Cuomo to either schedule the election or explain why he was delaying, or he would schedule the election himself.