Former ‘Never Trump’ Queens Republican is backing the president this November
/
Councilmember eric ulrich. photo by john mccarten/city council
By David Brand
The only Republican elected official in Queens says he’s backing Donald Trump for re-election, four years after publicly rejecting his party’s pick for president.
Eric Ulrich, a third-term councilmember from Ozone Park and a former “Never Trumper,” said his “conscience” tells him to vote for Trump, though he disagrees with the president’s racist rants, treatment of women and hardcore stance on deportation.
“We disagree on so many things. It’s amazing,” Ulrich said, citing his own positions in favor of marriage equality, immigration reform, organized-labor and abortion rights. “But we have to ultimately look deep within ourselves and examine our own consciences.”
“If the election was held today I’d be voting for Donald Trump.”
Ulrich’s conscience is guided by a popular conservative talking point: Former Vice President Joe Biden is a front for the left wing of the Democratic Party.
“The president is not perfect. We disagree on a lot of issues, but I think the Democratic Party has been hijacked by AOC and the more socialist wing of the party and I can’t support a lot of things they are putting out there,” he said. “I put things on a scale.”
Many progressive Democrats, leftists and socialists argue the very opposite, however. To them, Biden is not progressive enough and has sidelined key policy goals like Medicaid for All. Ulrich acknowledged that framing but said it’s not his perception of the current state of the Democratic Party.
Ulrich rejected Donald Trump in 2016, but now says he’s voting for the president.
The Trump endorsement is a notable departure for Ulrich, who in 2015 sent a letter to the president and board of directors at Jamaica Hospital urging them to remove Trump’s name from the side of the medical center, where he had donated money.
Ulrich continued to criticize the then-candidate ahead of the 2016 election. He instead supported Ohio Governor John Kasich before writing in Michael Bloomberg’s name on Election Day.
Political observers speculated then that Ulrich was tacking to the center to appeal to moderate Democrats ahead of a potential 2017 campaign for mayor.
That never happened, though Ulrich did make a run for public advocate in a crowded 2019 special election to replace Letitia James after she took office as state attorney general. He finished second, but gained the most votes in Queens and Staten Island.
On Monday, he said his newfound support for Trump — who is glorified by the vast majority of Republican voters — has nothing to do with future political aspirations. He just finds Biden “very uninspiring” and liable to drift ever leftward.
“I don’t get where he wants to take the direction of the country,” Ulrich said. “He hasn’t been able to articulate his own vision for the country and that’s where I think his campaign is making a big mistake.”
Ulrich, who is term-limited next year, said he himself has no plans to run for office anytime soon.
“I want to continue my public service, but I’m not running for the assembly or the senate or Congress or anything,” he said.
Ulrich did pursue the top job at the New York City Board of Elections in late-2019, but that didn’t work out, he said.
“It’s a very dysfunctional place and I would have been a bull in a china closet there,” he said. “I guess the commissioners like the status quo.”
Now he said he has a few other plans in the works, though he declined to discuss them until after the Conflicts of Interest Board weighs in.
“I have a couple other things in the hopper,” he said. “I will move into a new arena.”
