Assemblymember Jeff Aubry (photo: State Assembly )
This story was first published by the Queens Daily Eagle
Eleven years have passed since Queens Assemblymember Jeff Aubry led the successful effort to repeal the state’s Rockefeller drug laws and address the brutal impact of the War on Drugs on communities of color. Since that fight, Aubry has sponsored legislation to ensure inmates have access to mental health treatment behind bars, introduced a bill to curtail the use of solitary confinement, and called for a special prosecutor to investigate prison deaths and complaints made against correction officers.
The 14-term incumbent, who once taught at a New Mexico prison in the early 1970s, championed criminal justice reform long before criminal justice reform became a hot issue among his Democratic colleagues.
“I’m proud of the way young people in the Senate and Assembly have come to this battle,” Aubry told the Eagle June 10, a day after he voted to eliminate 50-a, the state law that shielded police personnel records. “Once we’re on a roll with justice, you try to keep that ball rolling.” But the ball may keep rolling while he watches from the sidelines.
Aubry, 72, is facing the toughest primary challenge of his 28-year career. Perhaps fittingly, it’s the tenets of criminal justice reform — second chances for the formerly incarcerated, a complex life beyond the superficial label of ‘convicted felon’ — that inform the viability of his opponent, Hiram Monserrate. Or at very least, it’s what enables some supporters to justify their votes for an extremely polarizing politician convicted of cutting his girlfriend and stealing public funds.
In November 2019, Monserrate, a former state senator and City Council member, declared that he would challenge Aubry in Assembly District 35, which covers much of Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, Corona, and LeFrak City. To many voters, the name “Hiram Monserrate” is synonymous with a recent era of political corruption that saw numerous state elected officials charged, convicted and sentenced for bribery, kickbacks and steering schemes.
Monserrate, who did not respond to multiple phone calls, emails, and Twitter messages for this story was sentenced to two years in federal prison in 2012 after he funneled City Council money to a nonprofit and used the cash to boost his Senate campaign. He was ordered to pay nearly $80,000 in restitution, but by February 2020, he had paid less than $9,000.
He told the New York Times he would pay the rest leading up to the primary. It remains unclear whether he actually has paid the money back. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, to whom he owes the money, did not immediately respond to emails and phone calls.
Monserrate was also convicted of a separate domestic violence-related misdemeanor in 2009 after he cut his then-girlfriend in the face with a glass, dragged her to a car, and drove her to a far-away hospital. He and his then-girlfriend said the gash she suffered was the result of an accident.
If that wasn’t enough baggage, Monserrate is known for grinding the Senate to a halt by briefly siding with Republicans and nullifying the slim and, at the time extremely rare, Democratic majority.
“The rise and fall of Hiram Monserrate is like a movie,” Aubry said. “He robbed, he stole, he beat his girlfriend and still he rises. It’s a sexy story and any darn writer can make a novel about that. And I think he sees himself that way.”
On the Ground in Elmhurst and Corona
New York City will soon find out how voters see Hiram Monserrate.
His campaign signs adorn the walls of various shops and businesses around Elmhurst and Corona, though that does not necessarily mean that passersby — or even the store owners themselves — know who he is.
At a bus stop near the corner of Grand Avenue and Queens Boulevard, not far from the Queens Place mall on June 18, five people who said they were registered to vote in the area said they had never heard of Monserrate, whose sign hung in the window of a doctor’s office behind them.
Across the street, a man named M.D. stood outside a bodega and counted himself a Monserrate supporter. “He’s a gentleman. I’ve known him for years,” M.D. said as he scratched off lottery tickets against a railing. A Monserrate sign hung from the window of an Indian restaurant next door.
“Somebody just came and pasted it on the wall,” said the restaurant owner. “I said, ‘OK.’ I don’t know him.”
The same thing happened at a discount store a few blocks away, the store clerk said.
“Some kids just came by and asked if they could put the signs up. We said, ‘Yes,’ but I don’t know who he is,” she said.
The demographics have shifted significantly in District 35, with Latino residents now accounting for more than 60 percent of the population — up from 52 percent in 2012. At the same time, the district’s Black population has decreased. The demographics could help Monserrate, a Latino candidate who connects with many voters in their native language, said political strategist Martha Ayon, who lives in District 35 and has endorsed Aubry.
“From November, all the way until February they could have been doing articles and going on TV in Spanish to criticize Hiram,” Ayon said. “They didn’t take the time before this to reach the Spanish audiences. “You need it to be in El Diario and some of the other Spanish publications in Queens.”
In recent weeks, Aubry’s campaign has circulated Spanish-language literature, but Ayon said it was already too late to reach many voters.
“They weren’t persuading them in the language that they understand,” Ayon said. “Why don’t people care about his criminal history? Because you’ve been saying it in English,” she added.
Younger voters, meanwhile, may not recall his past misdeeds — or Aubry’s achievements
“My story is longer and maybe not so flashy,” said Aubry, who is Black. “You get a younger population where Rockefeller is like the First World War.”
Monserrate has already been elected to a party post during his post-prison comeback. Assembly District 35 Democrats chose him as a district leader in 2018.
During that election, Monserrate helped carry three other other members of his East Elmhurst Corona Democratic Club to district leader victories as well. The four officials are gadflys among the borough’s 72 elected district leaders — two men and two women in every Assembly district. They refuse to support the county party’s endorsed candidates and Monserrate has been an outspoken opponent of the organization, which has long backed Aubry.
Though Monserrate did not respond for this story, loyal surrogates have repeatedly come to his defense.
“If we speak about reform and forgiveness and giving people a second chance then we speak to people who are critical of Hiram,” said Monserrate’s friend and ally Anthony Miranda, a retired police sergeant running for Queens borough president. Ten years ago, Miranda lost to Aubry in the Democratic primary for Assembly District 35. He has received campaign contributions from Monserrate during his bid for borough president.
“I don’t agree with any of the things he’s been accused of, but he was found guilty, he served his time, he came back to the community. And the community residents voted him in,” Miranda said, referring to the district leader election.
Monserrate, a gifted retail politician, has remained active in the community, developing relationships and laying the groundwork for his campaign through his political club.
“Hiram has been physically working and getting out the vote for months, doing mutual aid, handing out PPE, door-knocking and that’s not something that should be taken for granted,” Ayon said.
Monserrate has advised the anti-displacement coalitions Nos Quedamos and East Elmhurst Alliance, which advocate for affordable housing in Willets Point. After the Eagle referenced Monserrate’s criminal history in a 2018 article about those efforts, an East Elmhurst Alliance representative wrote a message explaining why the members value and support Monserrate.
“We believe in fully re-integrating our returning citizens. He has done lots of great things in our community and quite frankly our Coalition has gotten more than a full semester of Willets Point knowledge from him,” the representative wrote.
“His past errors have nothing to do with our fight at Willets Point and our Nos Quedamos Queens coalition stands by him because quite frankly he is the only Leader who is independent of the machine with the knowledge and force to stand up for us when other politicians cut deals with developers etc.,” they continued.
The East Elmhurst Corona Democratic Club has also served as a sort of power broker in the area, running a slate of candidates for elected office in the past few election cycles and hosting higher-office hopefuls like Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and four candidates for Queens borough president: Donovan Richards, Elizabeth Crowley, Costa Constantinides and Miranda, who the club endorsed.
Last year, the club’s pick for Civil Court judge, Lumarie Maldonado Cruz, defeated the candidate endorsed by the county organization in Queens’ first contested Democratic primary for a judgeship in decades.
The club, one of the most active in Queens, features an effective petitioning operation and has organized a get-out-the-vote initiative in the district as well. Two Corona residents said East Elmhurst Corona Democratic club members even visited their home to help their older relatives apply for absentee ballots and then returned a few weeks later with the ballots, which they had picked up from the Board of Election office in Forest Hills.
One resident, Natalia Guzman, said she answered the door and spoke with the campaign worker to prevent the woman from pressuring her mother.
“She asked if she is going to vote for Hiram Monserrate and I said, ‘She’s not going to declare that right now,’” Guzman said. “She was reluctant to let go of the ballot.”
Election attorney Sarah Steiner said that picking up blank ballots is not prohibited, but verges on illegal when a campaign worker pressures a voter while they fill out a ballot — or fills out the ballot themselves.
“There’s a fine line about what’s legal and what’s not,” Steiner said. “You can deliver absentee ballots, you can pick up absentee ballots, but if you help the voter fill out that ballot you could be breaking the law.”
Antagonists Unite for Aubry
On June 18, Aubry — far from an active social media user — tweeted a major development in the race: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was endorsing him for reelection. On Sunday, she even canvassed with Aubry in LeFrak City.
The endorsement was also unique in Queens politics because it united two influential antagonists — Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, the chair of the Queens County Democratic Party, a position he won after Ocasio-Cortez defeated then party chair Joe Crowley.
“Aubry’s going to win. Here’s a man of distinction, character who has served his community with grace and decency,” Meeks told the Eagle Friday. “People in his district are recognizing that.”
Some colleagues and Queens leaders were slow to provide that sort of aggressive support for Aubry earlier in the campaign, however. While elected officials have focused on their own races and the impact of COVID-19, they have also weighed the political risks of alienating Monserrate supporters.
Aubry said he does not fault his allies for showing up late to rally behind his candidacy given the impact of COVID-19 and current political realities.
“Some folks were under pressure from outside forces in their district,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 28 years. I watch and know politics as best as anybody else, and I know the things that people have to watch out for in their own world and have to take into consideration.”
Others spoke out early on. City Council Member Francisco Moya called Monserrate a “disgraced politician” and a “joke” when Monserrate first filed a campaign committee in November 2019. Assemblymember Catalina Cruz from the neighboring 39th Assembly District sponsored a failed bill that would prevent people convicted of public corruption from serving in the state Legislature.
In March, Assemblymember Aravella Simotas vowed to leave the Democratic conference if Monserrate were invited to join after potentially defeating Aubry.
“I will not sit in the Democratic conference if he is sitting there with me,” Simotas said during an appearance on WBAI radio’s City Watch show.
“I’m very passionate about this because I’ve spent years talking with domestic abuse survivors and survivors of sexual assault and women and men who’ve had this violence,” she added. Simotas is facing a tough primary challenge of her own from Democratic Socialist of America-backed organizer Zohran Mamdani.
Yet, it’s more than just tweets and bromides. Support for Aubry has surged in recent weeks based on financial disclosure reports.
Aubry began the year with $114,000 in his campaign account but raised just under $21,000 between Jan. 11 and May 18, according to financial disclosure reports filed with the state Board of Election.
But over the next two weeks, Aubry raised more than $40,000, including a $4,700 contribution from ex-Rep. Joe Crowley’s campaign account, according to Aubry’s 11-day pre primary report.
In contrast, Monserrate raised $68,772.02 between July 15, 2019 and Jan. 11 of this year but just over $4,800 between Jan. 11 and May 18, according to financial disclosure reports. He raised another $7,150 in late May and early June, according to his latest filing.
Ayon, the Queens political strategist, said the race remains wide open a day ahead of the primary.
“That’s why I endorsed Aubry, because I’m extremely concerned,” she said.
Whatever voters think of the candidates and their pasts, there’s a practical reason to vote for Aubry, she said.
“Anyone can be an advocate, but if I’m paying someone to go to Albany and pass legislation, that is not something Hiram will do,” Ayon said. “The governor, Carl Heastie, they won’t let his legislation get to the floor. That’s my argument for Hiram and Aubry: Who can physically do the job? Hiram cannot.”
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by David Brand of the Queens Daily Eagle
@DavidFBrand @QueensEagle
@GothamGazette
Jamaal Bowman's congressional campaign attempts to capture some 2018 magic (photo: Bowman campaign)
This story, and the series it is a part of, has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
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After a massive wave of voters shook New York’s 2018 primary elections and subsequent state government, this year’s primary turnout could be hobbled by the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whereas the 2018 primaries for state Legislature, governor, and other state-level seats saw an immense jump in voter participation from 2014, this month’s party primaries — almost all of which are again among Democrats — for president, state Legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, and other seats, could see a drop.
Many of the strategies employed by campaigns and activists in 2018 — explored in-depth in part one of this two-part series — have simply not been possible during the coronavirus shutdown, fundraising has become a major challenge, and many voters are less able to focus on politics given the public health and economic hardships ravaging New York City.
Across boroughs and races, Gotham Gazette spoke to a diverse array of campaigns to understand how tactics have shifted throughout the coronavirus crisis, and how they are trying to draw voters to the polls — or to the absentee ballots all eligible voters can use given gubernatorial order based on the pandemic — as millions of New Yorkers' lives are upended, advantages of most incumbents appear strengthened, and there is an immense unknown when it comes to voter participation.
Several of these races are in districts that overlap with pivotal districts from the 2018 state primary elections. While there are no statewide seats on the ballot this year as there were in 2018, the state and federal primaries (state Legislature, U.S. House, president) are combined this year while in 2018 they occurred over three different primary days.
Some of the results from 2018 may be instructive in 2020, especially when it comes to the tactics and strategies used by activists and campaigns, the coalitions that formed or grew and remain active, and where within specific districts saw the largest voter turnout jumps in the prior primaries. But at the same time, 2020 has become an election year like no other in recent memory due to the pandemic.
From Door-Knocking to Delivering Groceries
The neighborhoods within Queens’ 34th Assembly District — parts of Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, and Woodside — were some of the hardest hit in the city by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Jackson Heights, one in every 25 people have contracted the coronavirus; in East Elmhurst, one in 23 people have contracted it; and in Woodside, one of every 39 people have had it, according to Department of Health data analyzed by The New York Times.
The devastation and dangers wrought by the virus made normal political campaigning untenable. In its place, candidates started using their campaign apparatuses as mutual aid networks to help residents in need.
“My office and campaign volunteers have shifted to providing much-needed supplies and food to my constituents,” Assemblymember Michael DenDekker told Gotham Gazette. His campaign has largely been on pause since March, and only recently began again, mostly online. “The need has been overwhelming,” he said.
DenDekker is vying to keep his seat from four challengers this competitive primary season; the first time he has had to overcome any primary competition in a 12-year legislative career.
Three of his challengers — former Manhattan prosecutor and local civic leader Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo; former National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health Executive Director Jessica González-Rojas; and Uber driver and organizer Joy Chowdhury — also began to funnel campaign energy and resources into fighting the effects of the pandemic, they said in interviews.
O’Doherty-Naranjo started the COVID Care Neighborhood Network in Jackson Heights, which delivers supplies and staffs a helpline residents with the coronavirus can use to connect to different services. Instead of fundraising for her campaign and appealing to voters, O’Doherty-Naranjo has been raising tens of thousands of dollars to support COVID Care.
“It’s a weird kind of campaign,” she said.
Chowdhury paused his campaign for a few months and started delivering food to residents in need through the Queens Mutual Aid Network. Both Chowdhury and González-Rojas used their campaign staff to deliver groceries and supplies.
“The priority was not IDing voters, but checking in on neighbors,” said González-Rojas, who has amassed significant support from progressive individuals and groups, such as the Working Families Party and immigrant rights group Make the Road Action. State Senator Jessica Ramos, who won her seat in 2018 in the partially overlapping Senate District 13 after upsetting another long-standing incumbent, former State Senator Jose Peralta, had similar progressive support from the WFP and Make the Road Action, among others.
González-Rojas and O’Doherty-Naranjo also said they have prioritized educating voters about the new, pandemic-driven practices around absentee ballots, with both campaigns noting that many voters are confused about the ballot.
Absentee ballots are perhaps the biggest wild card in this year’s primary election cycle, as the New York City Board of Elections scrambles to deliver on an unprecedented increase in absentee ballot requests. It is unclear whether everyone who wants to vote absentee will be able to have their vote counted.
Whether and how campaigns have urged their likely and potential voters to access the absentee voting process could be determinative in closer contests. While absentee voting strategies have always been important, more so in some races than others, this year’s circumstances have given such tactics an unprecedented weight.
In grassroots and insurgent campaigns, where candidates don’t have the benefit of name recognition that the incumbent has, the pandemic has made the hard task of winning even harder.
“The number one most effective thing is for the candidates themselves to be able to speak directly to voters,” said Mia Pearlman, a co-founder of the grassroots political organization True Blue NY, which has endorsed González-Rojas and a slate of other candidates in this month’s primaries. “And then after that, the next most effective thing is for activists like us to do so, or people who work with the campaign. So that’s really been a struggle for campaigns to redesign their strategy in the moment in order to reach voters.”
True Blue NY was part of a coalition of grassroots organizations that helped trigger a wave of insurgent progressive candidates to overtake incumbents in the New York State Senate in 2018. Those races, along with a competitive, intense and high-spending gubernatorial primary, and a renewed interest in local politics spurred by the 2016 presidential election, led to a record-breaking primary turnout in New York in 2018.
These factors helped Ramos, who True Blue endorsed, to victory that year. Voters in swaths of Assembly District 34, especially in Jackson Heights, turned out in force for Ramos in 2018, potentially signaling that the district could be ready for another progressive insurgent in 2020. While the races have many differences, some of the neighborhoods and players are the same.
Pearlman is concerned that challengers this year may get lost in the shuffle.
“The pandemic is an incumbent protection machine,” she said. “Everything about the pandemic favors the incumbents. And it creates a situation in which challengers are really fending off a lot of problems simultaneously.”
Campaigning Without Contact
Typical campaign tactics like door-knocking, rallies, and in-person fundraising events became an impossibility in mid-March, when social distancing measures were put in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Instead, campaigns amped up phone-banking and -texting operations, dipped their toes into virtual events, and tried to meet voters where they were — at home.
In Brooklyn’s competitive 9th Congressional District primary, the race to draw in voters has become more important than ever.
“We’ve had to completely shift the way campaigning works,” Krysten Copeland, the communications director for incumbent U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke’s campaign, said in an interview.
Clarke’s campaign has conducted Zoom and Facebook Live events, and several weeks ago held a virtual campaign rally featuring various prominent endorsers to kick off the stretch run toward primary day, June 23.
The primary race looks tight: four challengers have been campaigning against Clarke, including Adem Bunkeddeko, who narrowly lost to Clarke in 2018 in what was a one-on-one contest. Other challengers this year include City Council Member Chaim Deutsch, small business owner Lutchi Gayot, and U.S. Army veteran Isiah James.
Clarke, who was first elected in 2006, represents a diverse swath of Central and South Brooklyn, spanning from Park Slope to Crown Heights to Brownsville and Gerritsen Beach.
In normal election cycles, campaigns often highlight prominent endorsements to build momentum and gain goodwill with voters. In such an unusual election year, endorsements represent one of the additionally limited tools campaigns have to catch voters’ attention.
Clarke is being backed by a long list of elected officials and power players, including U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the 32BJ SEIU union, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and State Senator Zellnor Myrie, whose district overlaps with NY-9, to name just a few. “I think it sends a strong message that the people of Brooklyn know that Congresswoman Yvette Clarke has been fighting for them in Washington,” Copeland said of Clarke’s local endorsers.
The Brooklyn Young Democrats are among those endorsing Clarke. The group’s president, Christina Das, said that the pandemic has vastly impacted campaigning strategies as they work to get candidates they support elected in Brooklyn.
“It is a stark contrast comparing 2020 to 2018,” she said.
Das and many BYD members campaigned for Myrie when he was making an ultimately successful insurgent bid for incumbent Jesse Hamilton’s seat in 2018. Instead of canvassing and knocking on doors as they did in the area in 2018, the group has been phone-banking and hosting virtual events.
“It feels so much less energizing to get on the phone from your bed…than to knock on doors,” BYD Executive Vice President Julia Elmaleh-Sachs said.
With so many people out of work due to the coronavirus-forced economic downturn, it has also been difficult for campaigns to fund-raise. “I don’t think they can give their $30 to a fundraiser right now,” Elmaleh-Sachs said of many voters.
Both Das and Elmaleh-Sachs said that they think insurgent candidates will have a tougher time this election, as those candidates often rely on new and non-traditional voters heading to the polls.
Myrie was able to score a victory over Hamilton through an extensive campaign network of political groups, volunteers, and progressive activists able to turn the tide of the district and attract new voters, a feat that may be more difficult without in-person campaigning. Additionally, Myrie snagged a broad spectrum of endorsements, including from many of Brooklyn’s big-name Democrats, such as some of the borough’s Congressional delegation, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer, and Council Speaker Corey Johnson, among others.
Bunkeddeko said in an interview that he has made reaching out to residents a priority during the coronavirus crisis, participating in mutual aid efforts across the district and encouraging people to sign up for absentee ballots to not put their health at risk at the polls.
“Our big push has been to push everyone to vote absentee,” he said.
In a crowded field, Bunkeddeko said that his progressive policies and his track record running for election in the district before have helped him stand out to voters when his campaign calls.
“We’ve run the race before,” he said. “We were primarying people before it became cool.”
As of late May, Bunkeddeko’s campaign had hundreds of volunteers, made over 14,000 calls, and sent over 12,000 texts to voters, according to a campaign email. Those efforts have only intensified in June.
“One thing that’s been really powerful as we make calls for Adem in his race is the fact that you’re calling and checking in on people,” said Ricky Silver, the co-lead organizer with Empire State Indivisible, a progressive political activist group formed after the 2016 presidential election and has endorsed Bunkeddeko in NY-9.
“Phone-banking for a candidate as a part of outreach for mutual aid has been, I think, a really critical development in the post-COVID world,” Silver continued. “There’s been a real positive response to those types of outreach calls, because people are looking for help.”
In a time where so many people are looking for assistance, the outreach shows voters that the campaign is looking to help those in the district, not just “transactional ways to get elected,” Silver said.
Empire State Indivisible backed Myrie in his race in the somewhat overlapping State Senate district in 2018. Bunkeddeko has received some of the same endorsements and progressive support that Myrie did in 2018, including an endorsement from The New York Times, but endorsements from many of the major elected officials that backed Myrie have eluded him.
One of the key differences between some of the most contentious 2018 primaries and the 2020 ones is the presence (in 2018) or absence (in 2020) of the State Senate Independent Democratic Conference, whose members had lost a great deal of support from other elected officials, labor unions, and other key electoral players.
While Myrie was running to unseat a Democratic state senator who had helped empower Republicans, Bunkeddeko is again running to unseat a member of the House delegation in solid standing with most of her colleagues. While Ramos ran in Queens to similarly unseat a Democratic state senator whose conference allied with Republicans, some of the Assembly primaries happening in and around her district do not have that galvanizing element for the insurgents.
As Some Things Change, Some Things Stay the Same
Though the pandemic has radically impacted how campaigns are normally run, certain objectives remain the same: attract voters and endorsements, raise funds, and run a compelling campaign.
In the race for the 16th Congressional District, which includes parts of the northern Bronx and southern Westchester, incumbent U.S. Rep Eliot Engel faces one of the most competitive matchups of his political career and this year’s primary election cycle. Engel has three challengers: middle school principal Jamaal Bowman, retired NYPD officer Sammy Ravelo, and tax attorney Chris Fink.
Bowman’s progressive campaign has made enormous waves in recent months, netting high-profile endorsements from the Working Families Party, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and Bronx State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, among many others within and outside New York, such as U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He has reportedly raised $2 million in campaign contributions, and has benefited from a few high-profile gaffes Engel has made over the course of campaign season.
However, the incumbent has many major endorsements of his own, including Governor Andrew Cuomo and former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
Last election cycle, in 2018, Biaggi was able to unseat a powerful incumbent, former State Senator Jeff Klein, in a district that overlaps some with NY-16. Bowman hopes to have a similar upset against Engel, who has held a congressional seat since 1989.
Biaggi’s door-knocking was a key voter engagement strategy for her campaign, and her largest shares of voters were also in the neighborhoods that had some of the highest increases of voter turnout in the district, such as Riverdale. While in 2018 the candidate and volunteers were able to pitch Biaggi’s message to thousands across the district in person, Bowman has had to adjust his own strategies in the age of social distancing.
Luke Hayes, Bowman’s campaign manager, and Biaggi’s before that, said in an interview that phone-banking and Bowman personally calling voters has been a boon to the campaign. The campaign has also sent out mailers, hosted listening tours and livestreams, and connected with volunteers. Bowman has also developed a fairly large social media following, regularly posting direct-to-camera video messages that range from reflective to inspiring to singing and dancing.
“Jamaal is like, ‘Give me more voters to talk to,’” Hayes said.
As of mid-June, Bowman’s campaign had made over 850,000 calls to voters in the district, and thousands of people have signed up to volunteer with the campaign, its representatives said. In the days leading up to the primary, as coronavirus restrictions began to ease, Bowman and the campaign were out in the field more, and are conducting a bus tour around the district to encourage voters to choose the challenger.
In a sign of Bowman's momentum, Biaggi herself recently changed her endorsement from Engel to Bowman.
“Very few people have voted for elections by absentee in New York," Hayes said of the big outstanding question of how that process will unfold and which campaigns may be best able to take advantage of the shift. "So we’re all in the same boat.”
Ravelo’s campaign also has an extensive phone-banking strategy, a representative said.
“The first weeks of the pandemic, we felt destroyed. Because nobody wanted to hear about politics,” said Catherin Corrales, a volunteer coordinator for the campaign. After two weeks, the campaign adjusted, and volunteers started making calls to check in on residents and offer information during the pandemic.
“For everybody, this is a moment to learn and come up with a new plan. In the end, this wasn’t what we were expecting, but at least we were able to do something else,” Corrales said.
Similarly, Fink said via email that he has an extensive phone-banking, targeted email and social media strategy. He is working with a local production company to make videos of himself talking about the issues on camera, as a substitute to talking to voters in real life.
Though campaigns across the city have adapted to a year of new strategies, the results of hotly contested primary races is anyone’s guess.
“You have a massive number of variables interacting in a different number of ways, it’s extremely difficult to predict,” Baruch College political science professor Doug Muzzio said in an interview. Muzzio pointed to the destabilizing effect that the pandemic has had, along with the protests brought on by the police killing of George Floyd, a black Minnesotan, as factors that could drive the election in different ways.
“In New York politics, there’s always problems going to the polls,” said Pearlman, of True Blue NY. “It’s a mess on a good day.”
With all of the issues the pandemic created, turnout for 2020 is anyone’s guess, Pearlman said.
“That, in my opinion, is the number one biggest question mark right now. What will the turnout be?”
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This story, and the series it is a part of, has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
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by Victoria Merlino, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette @victoriamerlin0
Ritchie Torres looks at Ruben Díaz Sr. (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
This story, and the series it is a part of, has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
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New York City has had very limited success in the voter turnout department for congressional elections in recent years. For the 2018 congressional primaries, the turnout did go up — to 11 percent, from a shockingly low 8 percent in 2016. Though the Bronx was part of a huge surge in turnout for state elections in 2018, the last primary election to take place in the borough’s heavily-Democratic 15th congressional district, in 2016, netted a voter turnout of just under 3 percent.
That’s during ordinary times in a district that encompasses south and west Bronx neighborhoods including Hunts Point, Melrose, Tremont, Fordham, and Bedford Park, which collectively make up the country’s poorest and most nonwhite district.
To add to the structural obstacles, would-be voters are now contending with the swirling maelstrom of a still-ongoing pandemic that has ravaged poorer communities in the global epicenter of New York, and its vast social and economic consequences; a mass popular uprising against police brutality that was met with a heavy-handed response from the NYPD; and confusion over whether the primary is even taking place, and if so, in what format.
The 15th congressional district has been one of the hardest hit by the novel coronavirus in what is thus far the most affected city in the country. A mix of higher prevalence of pre-existing conditions and higher concentrations of essential workers who couldn’t work from home has led to higher death rates in the Bronx and a dire socio-economic picture.
Beyond that, the district has some special political upheaval and intrigue this year: an “open” congressional seat, up for grabs for the first time in 30 years. Longtime Rep. José Serrano announced last year that he would not be seeking reelection following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, setting off a scramble to succeed him.
Even by normal-year standards, it’s a crowded race with a deep bench of political figures with history in the district, many of whom have been waiting for just such an opportunity. No fewer than five of the primary contenders are current or former elected officials — City Council Members Ritchie Torres, Ydanis Rodríguez, and Rubén Díaz Sr.; Assemblymember Michael Blake (who is also a national vice chair of the Democratic National Committee); and former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Also in the race are Samelys López, a community organizer and former aide to Serrano who has received the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party, as well as progressive heavy hitters like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders; Chivona Newsome, a former financial advisor who co-founded Black Lives Matter of Greater New York; Tomas Ramos, a program director at the Bronx River Community Center; and a handful of others from outside the established political channels.
“I watched a panel the other day, and there were about five candidates that I wasn't even aware were running that were on that panel talk,” said Ed Mundo, a city tunnels and bridges worker who said he’s lived on the same South Bronx street since he was six years old. Mundo volunteers for a few community organizations, is active in pro-bike advocacy, and is more politically engaged than most of his neighbors, yet he still feels that there is precious little information trickling out about the candidates and the election.
In the current moment of crisis, Mundo worries that “a lot of folks are not aware there is a primary. So many folks are just accustomed to the November elections, see whoever is on that ballot, then they vote.”
The race has become particularly high-profile as a result of its position at the intersection of several broader political currents and movements — longtime political establishment versus insurgent outsiders; the chance to shift the balance of power for the first time in decades; the acute power of federal policy-making during moments of crisis in particular. There’s also the Díaz Sr. factor, as a long-serving, socially-conservative Democrat with strong name recognition, a solid base of support, and a polarizing presence is within striking distance of victory. He has no dearth of critics in the district, a fact that has seemed not to phase him; in fact, he appears to thrive in controversy. His presence in the race has driven local and national attention to the primary.
For the residents of the district, it’s an opportunity to collectively exert real influence, and the race has appeared very much up in the air. Motivating even small groups to turn out can make all the difference, lifting the voices of those living in a district with such great needs.
Several campaigns told Gotham Gazette that they were focused on providing support and services to the community in lieu of pure campaigning. “What we do is we ask people how they're feeling, how they're doing. If they need anything, if they need an errand to run, if they have a need for food,” López said in late May.
“Whenever my volunteers and I are out in the field,” said Torres, “we're limiting ourselves to distributing food and PPE and doing no electioneering out in the field at the moment. The reason for which is simple: campaigning, business as usual, would come off as insensitive to the deep suffering in the South Bronx.”
Newsome said she had her volunteers teaching people how to file for unemployment, and had been riding around the Bronx in a truck with supplies including diapers and baby food. Mark-Viverito has been working with a local restaurant to provide meals to undocumented residents. Not everyone has executed this notion without controversy; Díaz Sr. has been accused of piggybacking off of food distribution events that neither his office nor campaign was involved in to raise his profile, distribute campaign materials and electioneer.
The aid strategy has also been embraced by community organizations, who are focused on simultaneously providing the type of support that their members and clients have always relied on them for, while gently prodding them to exercise their civic voice in the election.
“We started doing care packages, and in those care packages we have a bunch of those safety supplies, some tea, some canned foods, some Asian groceries and veggies. And then we've also put resources and materials in there,” said Khamarin Nhann, campaign director for Mekong NYC, which provides community organizing, cultural activities, assistance with public benefits, and other social services for the Southeast Asian community. These materials include those related to the 2020 Census, access to health care, and elections, including information about where to vote and how to vote in-person and via mail.
The question of tone is one that comes up often as a contentious, high-stakes election unfolds amid a multi-faceted humanitarian crisis. There is real and obvious devastation throughout the district. Yet the overlapping crises to some degree present the opportunity to very plainly tie the political questions at stake to Bronxites’ lived experiences. Questions related to jobs, affordable housing, food security, health care, and police relations have never been abstract in what is the poorest and most nonwhite district in the country, but the pandemic and the social unrest have brought everything into stark relief.
“There are absolutely competing needs for our folks. We've seen our members really struggle with food or worried that when the eviction moratorium ends, will they become homeless and what that looks like,” said Sandra Lobo, the executive director of the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC). “What we've tried to do is really equip our folks with an understanding, a deeper analysis that, what they do, how they vote, and how they organize, absolutely impacts what's next for all of us.”
This has involved emphasizing that none of these issues exist in isolation, and in fact they compound; any effort to tackle the current emergencies must also tackle the circumstances that let them get so bad, especially in the district. “I think communities of color, low-income communities, have always struggled with layered issues,” said Lobo. “We've seen our folks really understand and be sophisticated about, where does the power lie, both in organizing and in the electoral system?”
There are particular groups for whom federal policy-making looms particularly large; for example, healthcare workers, many of whom are represented by 1199SEIU, a union that has endorsed Blake, who has amassed a great deal of labor support in the race.
“We've had our members engaging our congressional leaders. We've done roughly 20 video conferences with our New York delegation, where we've had members…explain the realities of what's going on in the frontline,” said an 1199SEIU official who asked not to be identified. “I think that helped our members make the connection, or made it stronger, that politics is the way that we make the transition” to a system more responsive to their needs.
Nhann said that particularly in the last couple of weeks, he’d actually seen a spike in the number of community residents interrogating the decisions of their political leaders. He dismissed “this whole notion that just because folks don't speak English, they're not aware of politics or they're not aware what's going on in the news. For the most part, our folks are actually pretty savvy.”
Dariella Rodríguez of The Point CDC, a community development nonprofit, said the organization’s approach partly centered around making clear that the district was particularly hard hit not just because of decisions made during the pandemic, but decisions made before. “Although we are struggling with the impact of covid in our community, we've been burdened with issues around respiratory health and asthma, issues with water quality — we've been burdened with those issues for a very long time. We've been saying we know when something like this happens, our community is at higher risk.”
For her part, Newsome has found a natural connection between her work with Black Lives Matter and the campaign, particularly as the outrage over police brutality again takes center stage in New York and nationally. Even before current wave of protests, Newsome said she had been part of a group pressuring Governor Andrew Cuomo to acknowledge that “the NYPD was incapable and incompetent in handling the enforcement of social distancing.” The current popular movements presented an opportunity to connect police brutality directly with political participation.
No one knows how many of the roughly 337,000 eligible Democratic voters in the 15th congressional district will cast a ballot, absentee or in-person, for this month’s election. In 2016, Serrano received just over 9,000 votes in the Democratic primary, beating an opponent who received just over 1,000. A total of about 74,000 votes were cast in the district during the 2016 presidential primary. In 2018, Serrano did not have a primary, but won the general election with around 125,000 votes to his opponent’s 5,000.
One quirk of a low-turnout race is that very small differences in the number of votes cast for each candidate can determine a win and a loss. This fact has taken on an added salience for progressives in the district given the candidacy of Díaz Sr., an always controversial and regularly offensive political figure. A pentecostal minister, he is probably the most socially-conservative Democrat holding political office in the city, having staked out positions opposing abortion and marriage equality. A comment claiming that the City Council was “controlled by the homosexual community” last year got his issue committee disbanded and prompted calls for his resignation. He has also called into question the mandate to report sexual harassment.
Nonetheless, he has held political office in the Bronx for nearly 20 years continuously and enjoys a base of support with religious and conservative Latino residents, who have a strong presence in the district. He won his seat at the Council just three years ago, edging out more progressive challengers as he moved from the state Senate with at least tacit support from much of the political establishment. The concern that candidates to his left will split the vote and hand Díaz Sr. the primary win is being used to varying extents by rival campaigns.
Torres in particular appears to be making opposition to Díaz Sr. a centerpiece of the turnout effort. “From day one, I have been sounding the alarm about the threat of a Trump Republican representing the most Democratic district in America,” he said, adding that in the home stretch of the campaign, he would be pitching himself as the candidate most able to head off this threat. Díaz Sr. did not respond to messages seeking comment. He has repeatedly ducked debates in the race.
A significant concern is that there will be issues not only of enthusiasm, but mechanics. An attempt by the state Board of Elections to cancel the Democratic presidential primary over coronavirus concerns failed when a federal judge ruled that it had to be held, in response to a lawsuit filed by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Yet a number of voters may have heard that the primary was off, but not back on.
Disseminating the information can be difficult, partly because some of the community groups and campaigns involved aren’t entirely sure what the correct information is. “Is the election going on? Where's my polling station? Can I vote early? Who are the candidates? Where's the platform? All of those have been communicated via text via email, via phone,” said Lobo.
The point was echoed by some of the candidates. “There's a lot of confusion. There was that whole back-and-forth around the presidential primary and canceling it, not canceling it. So some people assume that the primary completely is canceled,” said Mark-Viverito.
Some number of voters won’t want to go to the polls due to the extant viral threat, leaving the option of absentee voting, and herein lies another problem: unlike 34 other states, New York typically doesn’t allow “no excuse” absentee voting. In April, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order making the coronavirus part of the existing “excuse” of illness and directing county boards of elections to mail absentee ballot applications to all eligible voters, but the lack of a prior generalized avenue for absentee voting has left many voters unfamiliar with how it works and the New York City Board of Elections appears to be straining under the demand, leaving many unanswered questions as voting of all kinds wraps up on primary day, June 23.
Mundo, the community resident, said he’d gotten a ballot application in late May. “It looks like traditional junk mail. So if you're not actively looking for it, you may bypass it. Or someone like my mother, who's been out of town since April, she's not even going to get that application.”
Rodríguez of The Point said that the group had been providing staff members specifically to explain to voters how poll sites (both for early voting and primary day) work and how to access absentee voting. “We're using apps to do mass texting, we're using social media, we're using Zoom, WhatsApp and Signal. There's even been suggestions of other kinds of apps that folks from other countries use, especially Southeast Asian communities,” she said.
The Point, NWBCCC, and Mekong all had a built-in advantage in that they were part of a coalition that spent months crafting a “people’s platform” that had community delegates participate in crafting a set of issues and proposals meant to be representative of the entire district’s political priorities. The listserv has been useful in disseminating information to the community at large, even via word-of-mouth from individual influential residents.
Fundamentally, the winning approach seems to be one of illuminating how the extant crises are manifestations of broader systemic issues. “You can’t separate the political from the personal, especially at these times,” said López. “So this is the time that we need to rally and organize for the kind of society that we want to live in. And those are the kinds of conversations that we've been having through the phone banks.”
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This story, and the series it is a part of, has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.
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by Felipe De La Hoz, Gotham Gazette
@FelipeDLH @GothamGazette