The
night after Representative Joseph Crowley’s stunning defeat, another
Bronx politician who faces an energetic primary challenge from the left,
State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, happened to be holding a birthday party
at Limani, the upscale Rockefeller Center restaurant.
The topic, inevitably, turned to the fate of Mr. Crowley.
Making the case why his own primary would be different, Mr. Klein told
attendees the story of when he ran into Mr. Crowley, whose district
overlaps with Mr. Klein’s, at a Bronx parade last year.
“Good
to see you here,” Mr. Klein recalled telling the congressman, according
to a person at the party. “You must have gotten a new GPS.”
The
victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old activist, over Mr.
Crowley, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, has reshuffled New
York’s political order. As emboldened progressive activists dream of
their next targets, Mr. Klein and the band of renegade Democrats he led
in Albany, who for years broke with the Democratic Party to help keep
Republicans in power in the State Senate, are at the top of the list.
The
districts of two of the eight senators, those of Mr. Klein and Jose R.
Peralta, overlap with the seat that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez won, underscoring
just how close to home the progressive insurgency had struck. Like in
Mr. Crowley’s race, younger female candidates are challenging both men.
“Even
though I set out on this race knowing this is possible,” Alessandra
Biaggi, the 32-year-old challenger to Mr. Klein said in an interview on
Thursday, “it feels like voters are waking up.”
Click here for the full article.
Source: The New York Times (via Empire Report New York)
No comments:
Post a Comment