The following is a function that accesses the New York Times District API.

suppressMessages(library(RCurl))
suppressMessages(library(stringr))
suppressMessages(library(jsonlite))
suppressMessages(library(dplyr))

#keeping it simple
#user enters latitude and longitude
#function returns name of the nyc neighborhood and voting district info
getHood <- function(lat=40.758895, lng=-73.985131) {
  #I'm not sure if I'm using this handle right
  handle <- getCurlHandle(httpheader = 
                            list(from="ncapofari@yahoo.com",
                                'user-agent'=str_c(R.version$version.string,
                                ", ", R.version$platform)))
  #basic url without the parameters
  base_url <- "http://api.nytimes.com/svc/politics/v2/districts.json?"
  #coordinates from user
  coords <- paste("lat=", toString(lat), "&lng=", toString(lng), sep="")
  #my api key
  nyt_key <- "&api-key=bbb8916f8e8b9a656e88fd21ee46d7a6:12:36728615"
  #everything together
  feed_url <- paste(base_url, coords, nyt_key, sep="")
  #use jsonlite package to convert data to R data
  json_data <- fromJSON(getURL(feed_url, curl=handle))
  #keep the info we need
  district_df <- data.frame(json_data$result$district, 
                            json_data$result$level, 
                            stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
  #if the coordinates were bad (only NYC coords are accepted)
  if(length(colnames(district_df)) != 2){ return("Only NYC coordinates are allowed.") }
  colnames(district_df) <- c("District", "Level")
  return(arrange(district_df, desc(District)))
}

Test the function.

test <- getHood(40.630064, -74.084583)
test
##        District              Level
## 1 Tompkinsville       Neighborhood
## 2 Staten Island            Borough
## 3            61     State Assembly
## 4            49       City Council
## 5            23       State Senate
## 6            11         U.S. House
## 7            01 Community District

Test the function with bad data.

bad_test <- getHood(40.630064, 74.084583)
bad_test
## [1] "Only NYC coordinates are allowed."