Yahai Obeid, who arrived in the United States from Yemen at the age of 8, trained as a pilot, and now works as an air traffic controller at JFK Airport, is more than just a typical American immigrant.
At the height of Donald Trump’s first administration, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx gave a speech in which she said Trump was a victim of the “Muslim ban,” the government shutdown, and “anti-immigrants.” lifted up. Emotions flowing from the White House.”
But on Tuesday, Mr. Obeid and perhaps thousands of fellow members of the Muslim community in the Bronx, which includes both the poorest and bluest Congressional districts in the United States, announced that Mr. Like many of them, they voted for Trump.
“What we’re doing now is holding Democrats accountable,” Obeid said of the 65,000 new Trump voters in the district, whom the Republican candidate targeted with promises to fight inflation and illegal immigration. said. “They take our votes for granted.”
Kamala Harris received just 73% of the vote in the Bronx, amid upheaval that has rocked New York City’s Democratic establishment. This was 10 percentage points lower than the number of votes Joe Biden received in 2020. The overall voting pattern for the district was over 70%. The percentage of registered voters who are Democrats suggests that the party is losing support among the communities that once formed its core base.
Mike Rendino, a former firefighter and chairman of the Bronx Republican Party, said for many residents of the Bronx, a borough with one of the worst public health records in the state, it was a calculation of “how bad can things get?” “At some point, they realized that Democratic policies were no longer working.”
Ruben Diaz Sr., a former state senator and registered Democrat who introduced Trump at a Crotona Park rally in May and has been driving around the Bronx in his truck campaigning for the Republican in recent weeks. , said the backlash against his party had been going on for a long time. .
“We Hispanics are not liberals, we are conservatives,” the ordained minister said. He added that illegal immigration “has been one of the major issues” among first- and second-generation immigrant communities as well.
Diaz said there is anger over measures such as debit cards that city officials are handing out to immigrant families to buy food.
The Bronx, ruled by Democrats for decades, has high rates of murder and violent crime, but Staten Island, a Republican stronghold, has “better public safety, better streets, and better services.” ” Diaz added.
Even before Trump’s re-election bid, some changes to the Republican Party were on the horizon. Last year, the Bronx elected a Republican to its City Council for the first time in 40 years.
Although the Republican Party itself did not spend money campaigning in the Bronx, Mr. Trump sought to capitalize on growing support there, visiting once for a rally and once to photograph a rally. fox & friends At a local barbershop, he told a patron: “You guys are just like me.” He became the first Republican presidential candidate to campaign in the Bronx since Ronald Reagan, who won in New York.
Conversely, Harris and Democrats have forgotten that people in the Bronx are “just like any other American,” Sammy Rabelo said. He came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a teenager and later served in the U.S. Army, becoming a military man. New York police officer. “They know how their pockets are and how much they’re paying for eggs.”
A recommendation by a local Democratic politician that President Trump would jeopardize Social Security payments was taken as an insult by some as suggesting that the community is dependent on government benefits. Ravello added. “The Dominican community is not a monolith,” he says.
Far from being swayed by President Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants, Rabelo argued that a small but growing number of Dominicans welcome this tough stance. “Do you know who wants mass deportation the most?” asked Rabelo, who was one of the first responders during the September 11 attacks. “legal immigration”
A store owner in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he agreed with Republicans on cultural issues, including opposition to Prop. 1, an amendment to New York’s constitution that conservatives say would allow for transgender people. The bill to allow children to play on girls’ sports teams passed Tuesday night.
Mr. Trump’s courtship of Bronx voters has been problematic. At an October rally in Manhattan, a comedian sparked outrage by calling Puerto Rico a “floating pile of trash.”
Mr. Rendino, a Republican, believes he lost significant support in the district as a result, and said, “Mr. Trump should have fired the person who allowed him to continue.”
But Democrats’ attempts to call out the threat that President Trump poses to democracy itself are increasingly falling on deaf ears, especially among the Yemeni community whose elders had strongly supported the Republican candidate in the days before the election. Obeid said he no longer lends out his money.
“We have grown up in dictatorships. You cannot fool us by calling people who are outspoken dictators,” he said. Rather, he saw it as tacit support for the “genocide” unfolding in Gaza, and “we felt that the world would end under Biden.”
In response to Trump’s victory, Democratic Rep. Richie Torres of the Bronx denounced the “far left,” adding that the working class “wasn’t buying it.” [their] Ivory tower nonsense. ”
That wasn’t the case for Obeid. On Tuesday, while voting for Trump, he also chose to re-elect Ocasio-Cortez, one of the few senior New York City politicians who called for a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
