POLITICO
Yang close to winning support of New York’s powerful Orthodox leaders
The leading mayoral candidate is expected to soon win an endorsement from the Satmar rabbis in Williamsburg, the city’s most populous Hasidic neighborhood.
New York Mayoral Candidate Andrew Yang speaks to members of the media on April 05, 2021 in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
By HANNAH DREYFUS
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NEW YORK Andrew Yang is close to locking down almost universal support among leaders of New York City’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish
community a loyal bloc of voters that can make or break
a campaign.
Within the next week or so, New York’s leading mayoral candidate
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired captain of the NYPD, and Andrew Yang, who declared:
“My fellow New Yorkers … Nothing works in our city without public safety, and for public safety, we need the police. … My message to the NYPD is this: New York needs you. Your city needs you.
“New York cannot afford to defund the police.”
The rush of Adams and Yang to the scene of the shooting, and the messages they delivered, tells us something about the state of play in politics and not only in the city of New York.
Liberal mayors and urban politicians who enlisted in the Black Lives Matter “defund the police” movement after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May, appear to have caught a wave that is now receding.
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Here s a scenario that could play out in the coming weeks: the various state and federal investigations into Gov. Andrew Cuomo could determine he’s acted inappropriately, but lack the proof needed to take further action against him. All eyes and especially those of the governor’s critics would very likely turn to the Assembly, which has launched an impeachment investigation into the governor.
arrow Eric Adams Gwynne Hogan / Gothamist
Outside City Hall on a recent afternoon, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams stood in a pinstripe suit and tie beside Abner Louima, who’d been badly beaten and sexually assaulted by NYPD officers in 1997. Louima spent two months in the hospital after the attack. His beating set off a wave of protests against police brutality.
“This incident happened over 20 years ago. The average young person now, some were not born,” Adams said. “Police reform is not a 2021 issue. This has been a fight that we’ve been having for a long time.”
In recent weeks, Adams has tried to craft a message that draws in younger voters, recalling his activism against police brutality over many years. But for younger New Yorkers, some of whom were galvanized by the murder of George Floyd last summer and who are pushing for more radical change, that message has mostly fallen flat.