Queens council race pits progressive strategy against Republican strength
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City Council candidate Felicia Singh canvasses in Ozone Park alongside Queens Borough President Donovan Richards ahead of the Nov. 2 general election. Eagle photo by Max Parrott
By Max Parrott
South Queens District 32 is gearing up for a primary that will test a divided electorate.
For decades, Queens’ last remaining swing district has pitted moderate Democrats against Republicans. In the coming general election, the district will match Joann Ariola, the chair of the Queens Republican party and close affiliate of the incumbent Republican Councilmember Eric Ulrich, against Felicia Singh, an Ozone Park teacher and Democrat.
A third independent candidate, Community Board 9 Chair Kenichi Wilson, is also on the ballot, but has not run an active campaign.
Singh has charted a path to victory in the swing district by tapping voters in the northern immigrant-populated parts of the district – an electoral strategy she utilized in her primary win.
The strategy is one that’s increasingly common in the age of the progressive insurgent, but new to the South Queens Council district. It’s more reliable in districts that vote overwhelmingly Democratic in general elections. Since the ‘80s, District 32 has alternated between elected Democrats and Republicans.
Higher turnout in the more conservative southern half of the district has historically played a determining role in electoral outcomes in the general.
In recent election cycles the district’s northern neighborhoods like Richmond Hill and Woodhaven, which skew heavily Democratic, have had some of the lowest turnout in Queens. This area’s dense population of new immigrant groups including Guyanese, Latino, Bangladeshi and Punjabi communities, coincides with a citywide trend of lower voter turnout, according to the city Campaign Finance Board’s community profile of the neighborhoods.
“New immigrant groups, and this goes back a hundred years, vote less. And the reason is that they're preoccupied with making their lives, with getting established, with learning the language, with finding a job, a place to live — just the basics of everyday life are very consuming for them,” said Queens College political science professor Michael Krasner.
Krasner added the caveat that the electoral organizing within immigrant communities that has gone on under Trump has changed these voter patterns in some parts of the city.
To a large extent, Singh is hoping her campaign can manifest this change in South Queens. In the Democratic primary this summer, voter turnout surged from the previous Council primary in the northern sections of the district that overlap Assembly Districts 38, 28 and 31, which Singh carried by a significant margin.
Even with those gains, the number of Democrats that participated in the district is small compared to the 25 percent turnout citywide. Only 16 percent of Democrats voted in District 32.
The general election tends to bring out a much larger swath of the population in District 32. Turnout in the district swelled from 5,676 in the Democratic primary to 24,454 in the 2017 general.
Even though the district’s Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, Ulrich, the incumbent, won the district by over 30 percent.
Earlier this month, the Eagle asked to attend canvass with both campaigns to gauge how their voter outreach was going. Singh’s campaign accepted and Ariola’s ultimately did not. At first an Ariola campaign surrogate told the Eagle that she would have to get clearance because the campaign had been door-knocking with the NYPD. Over a week later, a spokesperson told the Eagle the campaign wouldn’t be able to comply with the request, but clarified the officers were off-duty police members of the Police Benevolent Association, which has spent $140,869 on mailers and ads attacking Singh.
In recent weeks the race has grown increasingly negative as the candidates have gone head to head in a series of forums and debates, and more attack mailers have been sent out against Singh from pro-business PAC Common Sense NYC, in addition to the PBA.
From the outset of the campaign, public safety has remained a core disagreement between the two candidates. Ariola framed it as one of the most crucial issues in the election and attacked Singh for supporting the “defund the police” movement. Singh’s platform proposes cutting at least $1 billion of NYPD funding to social services as a means of “re-imagining safety.”
In lieu of an opportunity to attend a canvass, Ariola’s campaign sent a statement to the Eagle that said that she has focused on “building positive relationships and solving problems in the community as a civic leader,” and as a fighting for “safe streets, clean parks, lower taxes and quality education,” before attacking Singh’s “dangerous agenda.”
As the last Republican-held Council seat in Queens, the race carries significant symbolic weight for Ariola’s party. Though Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans in Queens, the borough’s GOP is far from dead. Over the past two years it registered members at a faster rate than the Democrats, although it still lagged behind in terms of overall registration.
“If Ariola can win this council race, it gives them a little bit of a base. They've got somebody who will get media attention when she speaks and encourage other people to participate at all levels,” Krasner said.
On the canvass observed by the Eagle Oct. 9, Singh was joined by Borough President Donovan Richards to door knock in an Ozone Park election district that split evenly between her and her opponent Mike Scala in the primary.
As Singh and Richards made the rounds exclusively visiting Democratic voters, they were greeted by largely South Asian or Indo-Caribbean residents, a handful of whom did not speak English as their first language. Singh introduced herself as a teacher and a daughter of working class immigrants, and pulled campaign literature from several stacks that had been translated into Bangla or Punjabi.
About half of the Democratic households she has canvassed are non-English speakers, Singh told the Eagle.
“A lot of the conversations have been quality of life issues about public noise or parking or issues about trash in the community,” she said.
Singh knocked on doors inside two large apartment complexes and stopped by several nearby homes during the canvass shift. The reception was mostly warm – of the 15 homes she visited, a handful assured her she had their vote.
Asked whether she has had tense interactions with Democratic voters in the more conservative part of the district, Singh said that she had, although she maintained that the majority of her visits are positive.
“Most of the time the biggest form of hostility is someone slamming their door in your face and saying, ‘No, I’m not voting Democrat,’ even though they are Democrats,” Singh said.
“There’s this sense of excitement to have something more and see representation in a profound way and then there’s the other side — this fear that we’re going to be taking something away from people, which is not my campaign platform,” she added.
It was near the end of the canvass, when Singh and Richard finally encountered a first of the day: a self-described undecided Democratic voter.
“I think I’m gonna switch [parties] because, I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t like anything that’s going on right now,” said Bernardo Bertolini, a homeowner and landlord with tenants who he says can’t pay him. “Let me tell you something, under our old president that everybody hated, I made more money in those four years than I ever did in my life. It’s been how many months since we got this new clown, and I lost money.”
Richards appealed to Bertolini on the grounds that he and Singh can represent homeowners.
“You want a voice that’s going to talk about the property taxes. That’s going to talk about the water bills,” he said.
Bertolini, not totally convinced, said that he would be keeping his eye on the election.
“I like the whole idea that you’re a teacher. You’re going to stand up for teacher’s rights. They’re probably the hardest working people with no respect,” he said.
