pothead <potheadbjoe@gmail.com> wrote in
news:t1ti3m$38pqv$2@news.freedyn.de:

> Use progressives for target practice. Nobody will miss them. Pieces
> of shit.

On Tuesday, the entire city council is up for re-election in party primary
races.

Only a few districts enjoy robustly contested races � and one of them is
Lower Manhattan, from Wall Street to Chinatown.

It�s a rare opportunity to assess whether moderates can wrest control of
local politics from far-left progressives.

Usually, council members are elected every four years, along with the
mayor. This time, thanks to redistricting, council members face the voters
just two years after their recent election.

That�s good, because voters have a chance to look at prospective lawmakers
without being overwhelmed by a larger mayoral race.

But it�s also bad, in that not many people are paying attention, and
turnout might not exceed single digits.

One place where voters have a motive to pay attention is District 1.

The tip of Manhattan up to Houston Street (with a couple of sections
carved out for other candidates) has endured traumatic upheaval.

Just take the news from the past week.

Tuesday, an e-bike battery fire in Chinatown killed four elderly tenants
living above a repair shop.

A day later, an assailant stabbed a 35-year-old man to death in Washington
Square Park in the middle of the afternoon, undeterred by pre-summer
crowds. (The park, in the old district, is slightly north of the new
district, but still a key recreation area for district voters.)

These five deaths were all failures of progressive ideology.

Progressives have refused to properly regulate deadly e-bike batteries, as
they�re afraid doing so will hurt poor workers.

They�ve also refused to support a crackdown on drug sales and use in the
park.

The numbers illustrate the change in downtown�s fortunes: Felony crime in
the three police precincts that overlay the district, though down since
last year, remains 22% higher than in 2019.

In addition to big crimes, the district is plagued by hundreds of illegal
marijuana stores, plus retail theft that is forcing legitimate businesses
to close: Misdemeanor larceny (as reported) is up by nearly two-thirds
since before the pandemic.

Then, there are the things the city wants to purposely do to the district,
chief among them, build the world�s tallest municipal jail, as part of the
de Blasio-era four-borough jails program.

The district�s current councilman, Christopher Marte, is a first-termer
who diligently subscribes to the progressive playbook.

Even as most Manhattan council members have dropped out of the council�s
progressive caucus, repelled by its defund-the-NYPD stance, Marte has
remained.

In a recent NY1 debate, when asked whether the NYPD should enforce the
city�s no-smoking � including no-pot-smoking � laws in Washington Square
Park, Marte couldn�t give a straight answer, saying �I think it�s
working.�

And he opposes a high-rise jail downtown � only because he opposes all
jails.

He wants to close Rikers without providing an alternative.

Contrast these positions with those of Susan Lee, a former paralegal and
grant-application writer who has the most straightforward common-sense
answer on the jail: Rebuild Rikers as a modern jail complex.

�Breaking up Rikers into four borough-based jails isn�t going to solve the
culture� of failure at Rikers, she says. She wants to �rebuild� and
�reimagine� Rikers, with dedicated mental facilities and a training
program for inmates to equip them for reentry into society.

She�s also clear on quality-of-life issues, telling me that, although
people worry about serious crime, what most upsets them is deterioration
in quality of life.

When she talks about smoke shops and e-bikes riding on sidewalks, she gets
a flood of responses, with voters saying �the quality of life has
deteriorated so much that they compare it to the 1980s.�

Lee was crystal-clear in her debate answer on a law against lighting up in
Washington Square Park: �It needs to be enforced.�

As was the third candidate in the race, Ursila Jung.

Jung, a public-school parent, mostly focuses on retaining school choice,
but she, too, had the obvious answer on non-stop smoking in Washington
Square Park: As parents, �we need to enforce it 100%,� she said.

Lee and Jung both want more NYPD foot patrols, to deter shoplifting and
hate crimes.

With two alternatives to ideological progressivism, this race will serve
as a test of the ranked-choice voting system.

Jung and Lee have cross-endorsed each other, meaning that as voters rank
their choices in order of preference, they�d like voters to pick each
other ahead of Marte.

With the risk reduced of two moderate candidates cancelling each other out
reduced in this way, the election will mostly serve as a test of whether
voters are paying attention.

https://nypost.com/2023/06/25/city-council-primaries-testing-progressives-
stranglehold-of-nyc/