New York’s 110th mayor will emerge next week
On the Democratic side, the field began with a record three dozen men and women who looked in the mirror and saw a mayor. That quickly whittled down to about eight, with two primaries playing out side by side in one party. On the progressive end, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, Diana Morales, and Shawn Donavan are fighting for the right to carry the red banner forth, while on the more moderate flank, Andrew Yang, Eric Adams, Ray McGuire, and Kathryn Garcia are duking it out.
For the Orthodox community, the election comes at a time of record anti-Jewish violence, after 18 months of officials blaming everything from Covid to vaccination rates on Jews. Governor Andrew Cuomo called the pandemic an “ultra-Orthodox Jewish problem” and red-zoned frum neighborhoods, while Mayor Bill de Blasio sent his infamous “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities” tweet. Unlike Cuomo, de Blasio has apologized several times.
But the overarching issue in the campaign, the first, second, and third issues for the Orthodox community, is the state’s attempt to tamper with the yeshivah system. Sender Rapaport, the director of the soup kitchen Masbia who has organized several voter registration drives, says this is what animates voters.
“The kitchen table issue is yeshivos,” Rapaport said. “It’s not like something else is issue number two. Everything else is issue number 25. The first 24 issues are yeshivos, yeshivos, yeshivos. This is all people are talking about.”
Create a free account to keep reading.
