Brooklyn event for mayoral hopeful Erick Salgado was hosted by community activist Joseph Hayon — featured the Democratic candidate and Orthodox Jewish Community leaders, but also included some Republicans
— In addition to Hayon, Rabbi Avrohom Nekelbaum, Rabbi Auziel Admony, Rabbi Beni Rachmanov, Rabbi-Mohel Romi Cohn, Gregory Davidszon and State Senator Ruben Diaz addressed the crowd during the evening.
Brooklyn’s socially conservative and family values Republican Party activist, Joseph Hayon, acted as a combination host, master of ceremonies and ring master for conservative Democrat Rev. Erick Salgado and a gathering of Orthodox rabbis and other leaders in the communities in Southwest Brooklyn.
The purpose of the meeting on Thursday evening was to raise money and garner support for Salgado’s run for mayor in the New York City Democratic Primary in 2013. To that end, everybody had gotten together in the basement of Ahi Ezer Congregation on Ocean Parkway and Avenue M in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. The group would not be what one might have expected to see at an event for somebody running in a Democratic Party Primary. In addition to about twenty Orthodox rabbis and community leaders, there were several Republicans, Tea Party members, supporters of the “School Choice Party,” and “Jews for Morality.” In addition to Hayon, the recognizable Brooklyn Republicans at the event included David Storobin, Moshe Muratov and Jacob Kornbluh.
David Storobin’s presence was also noteworthy because Storobin was the only candidate for City Council from the 48th District present at Democrat Salgado’s event, even though there are five Democrats running in the forty-eighth – Igor Oberman, Michael Treybich, Ari Kagan, Chaim Deutsch and Theresa Scavo.
According to published reports, a number of rabbis addressed the crowd. They spoke out, not only against gay marriage, but also about Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial regulations for metzizah b’peh, a ritual Jewish circumcision practice (See “Democratic Mayoral Hopeful Headlines Event Wary of Democratic Party Values” by Colin Campbell, 4/26/13, NY Observer/Politicker [http://politicker.com/2013/04/democratic-mayoral-hopeful-headlines-event-wary-of-democratic-party-values/]).
According to the Campbell post in the New York Observer’s Politicker blog, Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov Nelkenbaum, was the first to speak and criticized pornography, polygamy and bestiality, as well the main issue that apparently united the group, opposition to the notion of “marriage” between gays and lesbians. Rabbi Nelkenbaum said he feared the presence of these perversions, as he called them, would inherently influence the innocent audiences who witness them, leading to the overall downgrade of society. Unless, that is, Mr. Salgado was there to help fight back. With that, he intoned, “Therefore we’re backing Mr. Erick Salgado because he’s … committed to stopping these perversions and corruptions of the mind.”
As the program moved along, Hayon introduced the Reverend Rubén Díaz, Sr., a Democratic State Senator from the Bronx, who said he was there to make a few introductory statements before turning the floor over to the mayoral candidate everybody had come to see. Diaz forcefully asserted that, “It is my party–my Democratic Party–that takes away everything I believe in.... It is the Democratic Party–my party–that imposes in our communities gay marriage. It is the Democratic Party that wants to impose abortion. It is the Democratic Party that takes away our rights.”
When Reverend Erick Salgado spoke, he vowed to push back against “the left wing” and “the liberals.” According to the Democrat who seemed to relish his position as an outsider in the Democratic field, “We have a tough choice in this election. There’s many career politicians … They do know how to express themselves well. They know how to talk about politics. They know how to move around and change the words.” Then Mr. Salgado singled out Council Speaker Christine Quinn, for attacking him as anti-immigrant during a debate Wednesday. “How many people saw the debate yesterday? At one point, the Speaker tried to twist my words. And she’s an expert at twisting things.” Then Salgado returned to his outsider theme — “They like to say, ‘You have no chance. You have no money. You have no name recognition,’” he mocked his detractors. “But still, If I have the children of God with me, I’m going to achieve the victory.”
It was clear from the enthusiasm of a large part of the crowd of about eighty, that Erick Salgado’s remarks were warmly received and his campaign to be the Democratic candidate for mayor of the City of New York was heartily supported.
According to Colin Campbell’s report in Politicker, “Mr. Salgado, of course, has an uphill battle to the mayoralty. The Democratic electorate, with the exception of some communities, tilts much more to the left than he does and many of his party rivals have institutional support, full campaign war chests and citywide profiles. But the reverend believes that by uniting Hispanic, Orthodox Jewish and other immigrant communities, he has a path.”
For additional coverage of David Storobin’s possible race for the City Council see: “David Storobin Files for Council Run” by Colin Campbell, 4/26/13, NY Observer/Politicker [http://politicker.com/2013/04/david-storobin-files-for-council-run/]; and for additional details of the event hosted by Mr. Hayon for Mr. Salgado see: “Erick Salgado Vows Resilience With Hispanic, Russian and Jewish Coalition” posted by NYC 2013, 4/26/13 [http://nymayor.blogspot.com/2013/04/erick-salgado-premises-defiance-and.html] [with video links of speeches by Rabbi Nelkelbaum, State Senator Ruben Diaz and Reverend Erick Salgado].
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BACKFILL AND BACKATCHA: I received a sudden jolt of hits yesterday due to a tweet by Ross Barkan.
Well turnabout is fair play — what follows is an excerpt from the excellent post from the Barkan Report that gives Barkan's unique and sly insight into Reverend Erick Salgado and what might be powering his patchwork and sometime “social conservative” campaign for mayor (From “So Far, So Good for Gregory Davidzon and Erick Salgado” by Ross Barkan, 4/26/13, Ross Barkan on NYC Politics [http://barkanreport.com/post/48929569281/so-far-so-good-for-gregory-davidzon-and-erick-salgado#.UXvUlqKoqik]):
“Erick Salgado was on stage for the first televised debate of the mayoral race. And that’s already a win for Greogry Davidzon, the Russian media mogul managing the Bronx pastor’s campaign. *** Salgado is, in many ways, a bizarre candidate: he is a religious leader from the Bronx who opposes gay marriage and, until now, was unknown to virtually everyone outside of his congregants. He is also a Democrat—he likes to remind you that he is the only Hispanic Democrat in the race, and that is true. The alliance he is crafting with socially conservative Orthodox Jews is bound to net him some votes and make Davidzon, already the recipient of advertising money from the Salgado camp, the influential player in the Democratic primary that he desperately wants to be. *** So far, so good: .... Just a few weeks ago, Salgado, who has an odd habit of winking when he sees you, was grousing to me about not getting invited to more mayoral forums. That problem is slowly being solved. *** In Salgado, Davidzon has a candidate that can probably garner a several percentage points of the Democratic primary vote based on the Hispanics, Jews and Brooklyn Russians that he would potentially vote for him....
[However Salgado] is not a serious candidate in the sense that he will come anywhere near winning. *** But Davidzon will have a crucial bargaining chip come runoff time.... *** [and] Davidzon, if not quite a kingmaker, will be able to at least make a little money come the fall, right?”
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