Yahay Obeid, who came to America from Yemen at age 8, trained as a pilot and now controls air traffic at JFK airport, is more than just a model American immigrant.
At the height of the first administration Donald TrumpHe was interrupted in a speech by his Democratic representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx, as a victim of the “Muslim ban,” the government shutdown and “anti-immigrant sentiment.” residence” comes from the White House.
But on Tuesday, Obeid and perhaps thousands of members of the Muslim community in the Bronx — home to both the poorest and bluest Congressional districts in America — voted for Trump, as did many residents of Hispanic and Latin in the region.
“What we have done now is force the Party to Democracy must be responsible.” “They took our votes for granted.”
In a swing that shook the Democratic Party establishment in New York City, Kamala Harris won just 73% of the vote in the Bronx – 10 percentage points less than Joe Biden achieved in 2020. Voting patterns across the county, where more than 70% of registered voters are Democrats leader, suggesting that the party has lost support among the communities that form its core base.
For many in the Bronx, which has the worst public health record in the state, the calculus is “how much worse could it get?” said former firefighter Mike Rendino, chairman of the Bronx Republican Party. said. “At some point, they realized that the Democratic Party’s policies weren’t working anymore.”
Rubén Díaz Sr, former state senator and registered Democrat who introduced Trump at a Crotona Park rally in May and spent the past few weeks driving around the Bronx in a vehicle campaigning for the Republican Party, said the backlash against his own party has been a long time coming. .
“We are Hispanic, we are not liberal, we are conservative,” the ordained pastor said. Even among first- and second-generation immigrant communities, illegal immigration “is one of the main problems,” he added.
Díaz said there is anger over measures such as debit cards issued by the city government to migrant families to buy food.
While the Bronx, which has been ruled by Democrats for decades, has high murder and violent crime rates, Diaz added, the Republican stronghold of Staten Island “has better security, Streets are cleaned better, services are better.”
Even before Trump’s re-election bid, a slight shift toward the Republican party was on the horizon. Last year, the Bronx voted its first Republican to the city council in 40 years.
Although the Republican party itself did not spend any money campaigning in the Bronx, Trump sought to capitalize on his growing support in the borough, visiting once to campaign and once to film movie an election campaign. Fox & Friends segment in a local barbershop in which he tells patrons: “You guys are just like me.” He was the first Republican presidential candidate to campaign in the Bronx since Ronald Reagan, who won in New York.
On the contrary, Harris and the Democratic Party forget that people in the Bronx “are just like any other ordinary American,” according to Sammy Ravelo, who came to the US from the Dominican Republic as a teenager and went on to serve. in the United States Army and as a member of the Democratic Party. a New York police officer. “They know their budget, how much they have to pay for an egg.”
A local Democratic politician’s exhortation that Trump would jeopardize Social Security payments was taken by some as an insult because it implied that his community, Ravelo added, would jeopardize Social Security payments. they depend on government support. “The Dominican community is not a monolith,” he said.
Far from being swayed by Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants, a small but growing number of Dominicans welcomed the tough stance, Ravelo claimed. “You know who wants mass deportation the most?” asked Ravelo, one of the first responders to the September 11 attacks. “Legal Immigrants.”
A store owner in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx, who asked to remain anonymous, said she agreed with Republicans on cultural issues, such as their opposition to “Proposition 1.” , a proposed New York constitutional amendment that conservatives claim would allow transgender children to play on women’s sports teams, took the floor Tuesday night.
Trump’s appeal to the Bronx has run into trouble. At an October protest in Manhattan, a comedian sparked outrage by calling Puerto Rico a “floating pile of trash.”
“Trump should have fired whoever allowed that person to continue,” said Republican Rendino, who said he lost significant support in the district as a result.
But Democrats’ efforts to articulate the threat posed by Trump to democracy have increasingly fallen on deaf ears, said Obeid, especially among his Yemeni community, whose elders have supported strong Republican candidate just days earlier. election.
“We grew up in dictatorships, you cannot fool us by calling someone frankly a dictator,” he said. Instead, with what he sees as a tacit endorsement of the “genocide” taking place in Gaza, “we feel the world will end under Biden.”
Responding to Trump’s victory, Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx blamed “the left,” adding that the working class “didn’t buy [their] nonsense like an ivory tower.
That’s not true of Obeid. On Tuesday, in voting for Trump, he also chose to reelect Ocasio-Cortez, one of the few senior New York City politicians to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
