NY-10 Candidates Pitch Brooklyn Political Clubs
5 of the NY-10 candidates at Monday's forum (photo: Ben Max)
*Reposted from Gotham Gazette. Written by Rachel Cohen.*
Nine Democratic candidates running in the crowded race to represent New York’s new 10th congressional district appeared before several Brooklyn politics clubs on Monday evening, answering questions about pressing issues in the district, their policy platforms, and more.
The forum — which was moderated by Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max and hosted by the Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, the New Kings Democrats, the Brooklyn Young Democrats, South Central Brooklyn United For Progress, and Equality NY — was split into two panels of candidates, who gave introductory remarks, answered various questions crafted by the host groups (some targeted to individual candidates), and closing statements.
The first panel included Rep. Mondaire Jones (who currently represents a Hudson Valley district but recently moved to Brooklyn to run in NY-10), former small business owner Brian Robinson, former certified teacher Jimmy Jiang Li, and Quanda Francis, who has been a data analyst at the NYPD. The second panel included former Mayor Bill de Blasio, Assemblymembers Yuh-Line Niou and Jo Anne Simon, City Council Member Carlina Rivera, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Goldman. [The full video of the forum is embedded at the end of this written recap.]
“New York-10 is one of the most important and looked at races through all of New York State, if not the whole country, and it is so exciting that so much of that race is happening right here in Brooklyn,” said Hunter Rabinowitz, the president of Brooklyn Young Democrats, introducing the forum, which was held at a downtown Brooklyn church and broadcasted over Zoom.
The new 10th district spans a set of diverse neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, including the East and West Villages, Soho and Noho, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Battery Park City, the Financial District, portions of Downtown Brooklyn, Gowanus, Park Slope, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Borough Park, and more. Given various contours of redistricting, the race presents a rarity in which no incumbent is running. (Rep. Jerry Nadler, who represents the current 10th district, is instead running for the new 12th district against Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Suraj Patel after his West Side base was drawn into the new 12th.)
The congressional and state senate primaries will conclude on August 23, with early voting preceding that and absentee balloting as well. The winner of the Democratic primaries in NY-10 and many other New York City districts are all but certain to win the general election given the heavy Democratic tilt of most parts of the city.
Although almost all candidates running to represent the 10th district were invited to the forum, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman was most notably not in attendance. Another candidate, attorney Maud Maron, was not invited by the political clubs, who said in a public statement that she “uses her platform on social media to instigate a moral panic around gender identity, intentionally citing falsehoods and scientific inaccuracies to justify bigotry against the transgender community” and that they “will not provide a platform for Maron or her bigotry.” Maron responded by saying the decision shows that “the ideological party purge continues, to the detriment of the Democratic Party and our voters.”
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