With 1.2 million Jewish residents in the inner city alone, New York City is one of the largest Jewish cities in the world.
Accordingly, people in the 8.3 million metropolis are also looking at the voting and candidate behavior of Jewish New Yorkers. Because on June 22nd the primaries for the mayor’s post will take place. For the first time, voters are no longer allowed to choose just one candidate, but have the option of choosing five according to their preferred order.
LISTING There is a large number of applicants, 13 have qualified and are on the official list of candidates. These include Jewish candidates like Aaron S. Foldenauer or Scott M. Stringer – but the question is not whether a Jewish candidate can win, but who can win the majority of Jewish voters.
By the beginning of the year, it seemed fairly clear who the favorites were. Because of the majority in New York, it is not a question of whether a Democrat or a Republican takes over the seat of the mayor, but rather which Democratic candidate wins the race, Brooklyn’s long-standing Borough President – the district mayor of the huge New Yorker District -, Eric Adams, front.
The charismatic 60-year-old is popular with black citizens as well as Orthodox Jews, who have an important say in New York’s politics. The African American was a police officer for a long time, knows racist degradation from his own professional experience and can therefore convey a lot of political compensation.
Survey According to polls, Adam was ahead of almost all voter groups. Only with white residents, democratic first-time voters, those who consider themselves to be particularly liberal, as well as non-Orthodox Jews, the ex-cop, who always wears a smile, was unable to take first place.
Kathryn A. Garcia, also from Brooklyn, took it. The adopted daughter of a teacher couple grew up with four other children of different ethnic backgrounds in Park Slope, Brooklyn. So far she was the top city cleaner, an extremely important office which, in addition to garbage collection, also includes street cleaning and snow removal.
The 51-year-old is ahead of the white, Jewish and very liberal voters. Their rise is a threat to Eric Adams – because both are vying for the more moderate voters of the democratic center. The election campaign for the liberal Jewish votes, also and especially outside of Brooklyn, is meanwhile tougher.
MINORITIES Adams promised to fill 50 percent of the posts on his government team with members of the minority and recently attacked Garcia, who is under pressure for allegedly unjust pay of women under her leadership in the city cleanup. “I don’t throw dirt around,” said Adams, according to the Washington Post, in the direction of Garcia. “But if you don’t have your agency under control, how do you intend to control all the other agencies?”
The actual elections will take place in early November.
“The mud fight begins,” Garcia stated coolly. Not only the mud fight – the struggle for the favor of the democratic voters suddenly intensified. Because at the beginning of the year Andrew Yang threw his hat into the ring. Last year’s short-term presidential candidate announced in January that he wanted to become mayor of New York City.
Yang, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, also fishes in the waters of Adams and also tries to attract the Orthodox voters. Adams still seems to be ahead in Queens and in the Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn – but Andrew Yang is endangering this perspective.
radiance The 46-year-old tries tirelessly for the Orthodox votes – and generally develops a great charisma for Jewish voters. At the beginning of his candidacy, Yang unmistakably condemned the anti-Semitic character of the Israel boycott movement and emphasized his support for the Jewish state. “The BDS movement is not only rooted in anti-Semitic thought and history, as evidenced by the revival of the fascist tradition of boycotting Jewish shops, BDS is also a direct threat to the New York economy,” Yang said in an interview with the “Forward”.
“Close ties to Israel are essential for a global city like New York, which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel,” analyzes Yang. “Our economy is struggling hard – we should make sure that we get small businesses back here instead of preventing trade through boycotts.”
Such plain text naturally met with approval from Jewish voters, even if there was criticism of Yang’s statements from the left wing of the party. “When I look around, he’s the best choice for New York City and the best choice for the Jewish community,” says Daniel Rosenthal, an Orthodox MP from Queens. In addition, Yang is popular with Orthodoxy because he vehemently defends the yeshiva system.
SATMARER So Andrew Yang has gradually occupied the fields that Eric Adams had already booked for himself – or the Jewish candidate Scott Stringer, the head of New York’s financial regulator. However, the 61-year-old has to contend with allegations of sexual assault that have cost him the support of the Democrats.
At the moment everything seems to boil down to Andrew Yang, who was also able to win the support of the Satmarers, who are influential in parts of Brooklyn, in May. A son of national Chinese immigrants, raised on the sign of the mayor of Satmarer Hasidim – something like this could and can really only exist in New York City.
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