: 1150406065

On Monday morning, a group made up of mostly black elected officials and community leaders stood in neat rows, shoulder to shoulder, forming a tight square running up the steps of City Hall. Appearing as a unified block, they called for the Democratic Party to help elect a black Congressman to the 11th district seat in Brooklyn.

A white candidate, City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn), has a commanding fundraising lead against the three black candidates also in the race. The district, which is 53 percent black, has been represented by an African-American since the lines were redrawn in the late 1960s in accordance with the Voting Rights Act, legislation aimed at increasing minority participation in Congress.

While ethnic identity undoubtedly plays a central role in New York politics, such direct appeals to a particular demographic are still rare. In Queens, where two contested state Assembly races have strong ethnic overtones, candidates mainly have skirted around the issue. It’s perhaps the one subject that remains in everyone’s mind but off their lips.

“If that is not racist, I don’t know what is. I don’t know how they can get away with it,” said one Queens campaign official, referring to the Brooklyn race. “They are just completely unapologetic about it.”

Other than party affiliation, nothing predicts voting behavior better than the racial or ethnic relationships between a candidate and the public, several political officials said. In primary races, where voters all come from the same party, the ability to mobilize large ethnic blocks can be the difference between victory and defeat, they said.

That has led some candidates to push the envelope in terms using their own ethnic background to draw voters. But political insiders maintain there’s a thin line between recognizing ethnic diversity and exploiting it. The latter has been known to alienate voters.

“You can’t take ethnic politics out of politics,” said one veteran political official. “But clearly there are ways to frame your appeal that are more artful than other ways.”
In Queens, where the population is extremely diverse, candidates have been careful to emphasize their appeal across ethnic boundaries. Successful campaigns are able to motivate a central ethnic block while still appearing receptive to everyone, campaign officials said.

At a rally to announce that a popular Hispanic official, City Councilman Hiram Monserrate (D-Corona), would run for the state Senate against white incumbent John Sabini (D-Jackson Heights), many Monserrate supporters spoke about having a politician “look like” the district he represents. Monserrate was quick to distance himself from those statements, saying he would run on policy alone.
“Those are their opinions,” he said. “They don’t speak for me.”

Similarly, the three Asian candidates competing against former councilwoman Julia Harrison for the 22nd Assembly seat – Grace Meng, Ellen Young and Terrance Park – have all emphasized the support they enjoy outside the Asian community.

For her part, Harrison, who has been accused of racism in the past, has insisted she is committed to the diversity of the district. She did acknowledge, however, that her campaign was partially motivated by the failure of Asian community to unite behind a single candidate, splitting the strength of their vote.

City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing), who endorsed Young in the race, said such reasoning wrongly assumes that voters make decisions solely based on the ethnic or racial considerations. Harrison’s strategy – one that draws parallels to Yassky’s race, which black leaders have labeled as opportunistic – troubles Liu.

“Using racial division for any purpose to advance anything, whether a candidacy, or even in business, is offensive,” Liu said.

Instead of emphasizing their ethnicity on a local level, minority candidates believe their presence will add diversity to the legislative process as a whole. In the Brooklyn race, the concern is not gaining a white representative, but losing a black one, especially in a body where they are already underrepresented, said City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans).

Still, Comrie did not believe all black leaders must come from black districts, Hispanic leaders from Hispanic districts, and so on. “To say that any one person has an exclusive domain on any part of an ever changing environment is not reflective of the new millennium that we live in,” he said.

Charlton McIlwain, an assistant profession at New York University who has written about race in politics, said there’s little proof that a candidate’s ethnicity will influence his performance at the local level. But if a legislature loses too many minority officials, thereby diminishing their collective influence, he said, then it could have consequences for democracy.

Minority leaders still need to be careful, McIlwain said, “That rhetoric will only go so far.”