Authoritarian Tactics in the City Council Democratic Primary Elections

Campaigning in the primary elections for New York City Council has illuminated how our democracy can be often threatened from within. As a Democratic candidate, my campaign team and I felt compelled to share here with the people a number of facts that have occurred during this period. Elected officials like Lynn Schulman are using their official authority to undermine their political opposition’s right to a free and fair campaign, including by bullying local business owners for putting up other candidates’ signs or hosting their events, deleting critical comments on social media, intimidating opposition campaigners and spreading disinformation to further their re-election. These authoritarian tendencies have manifested repeatedly right here in Deep Blue Queens for City Council.

Some of the facts:

• On February 25, within an hour of publicizing one of our campaign events, the restaurant business owner hosting the event received pressure from Ms. Schulman for it to be canceled. The pressure and manipulation created were so high, that the business owner asked for the event to be changed in name so as not to allow the opposition candidate to speak during the gathering.
• Ms. Schulman has also deleted social media comments criticizing her lack of responsiveness to her constituents and inaction as Chair of the Health Committee regarding public service retirees losing access to their doctors and treatment facilities. Social media platforms are a public forum, and the Supreme Court has ruled this misconduct to be violative of the constitutional right to free speech.
• From February to March, during petitioning, Ms. Schulman’s campaigners surrounded opposition petitioners in an intimidating way. The same also happened during the Austin Street Fair, where Ms. Schulman’s campaigners also would interject and interrupt in, an aggressive fashion, conversations that our campaign team was having with a voter. Furthermore, petitioners for Ms. Schulman located in front of the Natural grocery store on Austin Street in Forest Hills spread disinformation to voters encouraging them to sign multiple candidates petition their petitions, which is prohibited under our election law.
• In mid-May, a business owner reported Ms. Schulman’s campaigners bullying him for having a sign in favor of my campaign in his shop.
• The authoritarian practices persisted when the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce was pressured by Ms. Schulman to prevent me from attending one of its public meetings on May 5th - which Ms. Schulman did not attend. Attempting to exclude a candidate and their supporters from a public meeting is a reprehensible violation of democratic norms and the free exchange of ideas in our community.

Those who say that these types of practices are just part of the elections may have normalized the culture of authoritarianism that exists with machine politics in Queens. Such culture is not normal, and elections should happen for all candidates in a free, fair and respectful way.

These are egregious violations of democratic norms – especially when undertaken using official authority and with the assistance of New York City public matching funds. We should not be financing campaigns that repeatedly undermine other candidates’ right to campaign.