Yahay Obeid, who came to the United States from Yemen at age 8, trained as a pilot, and now controls air traffic at JFK Airport, is more than just an example of an American immigrant.
At the height of Donald Trump’s first administration, he was singled out in a speech by Democratic leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx as a victim of the “Muslim ban,” government shutdown and “anti-immigrant policies.” “Emotion” is coming out of the White House.
But on Tuesday, Obeid and thousands of fellow members of the Bronx’s Muslim community, which includes both the poorest and most depressed congressional districts in the country, voted for Trump, as did many of the region’s Hispanic and Latino residents.
“What we’ve done now is hold the Democrats accountable,” said Obeid, who is among the 65,000 new Trump voters in the borough that the Republican candidate has targeted with his pledge to fight inflation and illegal immigration. “They took our vote for granted.”
In a shift that shook New York City’s Democratic establishment, Kamala Harris won just 73% of the vote in the Bronx. That’s 10 percentage points lower than what Joe Biden won in 2020. The voting pattern across the borough is over 70%. The fact that 50% of registered voters are Democrats suggests the party has lost support in communities where it once formed its core base.
Many in the Bronx, which has one of the worst public health records in the state, have calculated, “How much worse can it get?” said Mike Rendino, a former firefighter and chairman of the Bronx Republican Party. “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 rally in Crotona Park in May and has spent the past few weeks driving around the Bronx in his truck for Republicans, said he believes the backlash against his party is I’ve said it’s been coming for a long time. .
“We Hispanics are conservatives, not liberals,” the ordained pastor said. Even among first- and second-generation immigrant communities, illegal migration was “one of the major problems,” he added.
Diaz said there is outrage over measures such as the debit cards the city administration is handing out to immigrant families to buy food.
The Bronx, governed by Democrats for decades, has higher rates of murder and violent crime, while Staten Island, a Republican stronghold, “has better security, better street cleaning, better services,” Diaz added. .
Even before Trump’s re-election bid, a slight shift was coming toward the Republican Party. Last year, the Bronx elected a Republican to its city council for the first time in 40 years.
While the Republican Party itself has not spent money campaigning in the Bronx, Trump has sought to capitalize on growing support there, visiting once for his own rallies. fox and friends He went to a local barbershop and told the customers, “You guys are just like me.” He was the first Republican presidential candidate to campaign in the Bronx since Ronald Reagan won in New York.
Conversely, according to Sammy Ravelo, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a teenager and served in the U.S. military, Harris and the Democratic Party have forgotten that people in the Bronx are “just like any other regular American.” New York police. “They know where their wallets are and how much their eggs cost.”
A local Democratic politician’s recommendation that President Trump would jeopardize Social Security benefits was seen by some as an insult because it meant their communities depended on government payments, Ravelau added. “The Dominican community is not a monolith,” he said.
Far from delaying Trump’s pledge to enact mass deportations of illegal immigrants, Ravello argued that a small but growing number of Dominicans are welcoming this tougher stance. “Do you know who most wants mass deportation?” asked Ravello, who was one of the first responders during the September 11 attacks. “Legal immigrants.”
A store owner in the Bronx’s Morris Park neighborhood, who asked not to be named, said he agreed with Republicans on cultural issues, including opposition to Proposition 1, a New York constitutional amendment that conservatives say would allow transgender people. Children were given the opportunity to play on girls sports teams that passed Tuesday night.
Trump’s courtship of the Bronx vote had its hiccups. At a rally in Manhattan in October, a comedian sparked outrage by referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating pile of garbage.”
“Trump should have fired the person who allowed that person to continue,” said Rendino, a Republican. He believed he had lost significant support in the borough as a result.
But Democrats’ attempts to talk about the threat Trump poses to democracy itself are increasingly being ignored, Obeid said. Obeid said, especially among his Yemeni community, whose elders strongly support Republican candidates, right before the election.
“We grew up in a dictatorship. “You can’t fool us by calling someone who speaks frankly a dictator,” he said. Instead, he saw it as tacit support for the “genocide” taking place in Gaza, and said, “We felt the world would end under Biden.”
In response to Trump’s victory, Bronx Democratic Rep. Rich Torres blamed the “far left,” adding that the working class “isn’t like that.” [their] “Ivory tower nonsense”.
This was not the case for Obeid. On Tuesday, he decided to re-elect Ocasio-Cortez, one of a handful of senior New York City politicians who called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza while voting for Trump.
