Astoria, LIC City Council Candidates Says Rival Tore Down Posters

ASTORIA-LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — Julie Won and Jonathan Bailey, who are both running for the Queens District 26 City Council seat, told Patch that their campaign posters are being ripped down by an opposing candidate’s team members — the latest in a series of negative campaigning tactics in the district, she said.

On Monday, Won shared an image taken by Bailey of their campaign posters stashed behind bags of trash. The week before, Won Tweeted an image of one of her torn down campaign posters that was ripped in half.

Won told Patch that she knows which candidate’s team has been tearing down her — and others’ — posters, but is choosing not to name them in order to give them less attention.

“So many people have offered to go on record for me and say that they've witnessed this person's team member ripping down my poster, or have surveillance footage from their business, but campaigning shows what kind of character you have, and what kind of leadership you’re going to display when you’re elected,” Won said.

While Bailey doesn't know which campaign specifically is taking down the posters, he told Patch that in the crowded, 17-person race to represent western Queens there's an incentive for campaign's to "tear down other campaign posters, because whether voters see and recognize a candidate could be a big factor in who they vote for."

Instead of naming any one campaign and being "immature" Won says that her campaign has chosen “to take the high road, which just gives us more fuel to the fire.”

When a block of her posters were torn down last week on Skillman Avenue, a highly-trafficked, commercial area in Sunnyside, Won said that volunteers doubled down on their support.

“Sign up to put more posters up. They take 1 down, you put 10 up,” Tweeted one supporter, linking Won’s volunteer sign-up form under the image of her ripped up poster.

After Monday’s incident another supporter tweeted “the best thing for y’all to do is to show the haters who’s boss and sign up to volunteer.”

“I'm not even going to bother naming them because that person is going to come in like 10th place and they know it,” said Won, adding that for her, being targeted is a measure of her success.

“People feel threatened by our popularity, by the number of volunteers we have, and the turnout rates of all of our events,” she said of her campaign, adding that when it comes to her and Bailey’s campaigns she thinks people are also threatened “by our progressive values,” like fighting for worker’s rights, and to reallocate funding from the police to community-based social services.

But, she is still disappointed that the posters are being torn down, because for her they represent money and time that people have donated to her campaign.

“This is real grassroots money and time from our neighbors that people are ripping off,” she said, adding that her campaign is primarily funded by people of color, many of whom are unemployed, retired, or students.

“These are hardworking people who don’t have a lot of time or money to spend, and they’re using it to support our campaign,” she said, adding that the negative campaigning is "unfortunate, but we're going to use it to fuel our campaign and motivate people to help us and work with us even more to make sure that we get the right people elected."