The results are in, and Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and State Senator Kristen Gonzalez will continue to serve Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
Both incumbents comfortably won their primary campaigns, with Gallagher earning 75.7% of the vote and Gonzalez winning by an even wider margin, at 85%. They faced candidates who pitched themselves as the more moderate alternatives to the incumbents. Though Gallagher’s challenger Anathea Simpkins outfundraised the Assembly Member, it was not enough to win, with only 20.8%. The other candidate in the State Assembly race, Andrew Bodiford, garnered 3.5%.
With most of the votes counted so far, the Gallagher-backed Jenna Bimbi and Luke Ohlson appear to have won their races for district leader, against Averianna Eisenbach and Everton A. Smith.
The progressive, DSA-backed candidates easily won in Greenpoint, though it was a mixed bag for the slate overall, many of whom faced off against well-financed candidates. Claire Valdez won her State Assembly District 37 race in Ridgewood, ousting the long-serving Juan Ardila, who faces allegations of sexual misconduct. Eon Tyrell Huntley narrowly lost to incumbent Stefani Zinerman in Bed-Stuy’s State Assembly District 56. On the state level, Representative Jamaal Bowman was defeated by George Latimer, with outside groups spending a record-breaking $18 million to propel Latimer to victory in Westchester.
The primary winners will go on to the general elections in November, though in the heavily blue New York City, they’re all but assured victory.
Greenpointers, you got to be sick in your mind to keep voting for the same people. Are you guys high? Do you see how there is a lot of homelessness? I see many homeless kicking cans and picking them up. You guys complained about pot shops opening up. Did you forget about that? Something is wrong in the community. I feel sorry for the kids in that area. Those idiot parents will never learn and this will pass down to their children. It’s mind blowing that Americans want to implement socialism, and this ideology has failed in many countries. I know some of you are going to say that socialism was a success. Okay. Can you tell me which socialist country had a success? Name one country.
@ Jill: for purposes of this debate, how are you defining “socialist”?
@Tobias I see you haven’t answered my question. It’s obvious that you can’t name a successful socialist country because they are failures. History shows that when socialism is tried it leads to three things: poverty, devastation and ultimately communism.
As Vladimir Lenin once said, “The goal of socialism is communism.”
And socialist regimes continue to commit atrocities around the world.
In North Korea, there is an estimated 180,000 prisoners today. Many of them are subjected to torture and extreme manual labor.
In Venezuela, police and security forces killed more than 19,000 people between 2016 and 2019 for “resisting authority.”
In Cuba, journalists, bloggers and artists are routinely jailed for speaking against the Castro regime.
There are personal experiences people had gone through these atrocities. Socialism is defined as government control over the state. There is no private properties and people are equally poor. Freedom is restricted. You work and starve.
Jill: it seems like a bad-faith argument to criticize me for not answering your question when you didn’t answer mine. And there’s a big difference between a Marxist-Leninist philosophy and a democratic socialist one. (By which I mean, none of the countries you mentioned are remotely democratic. I think we’d agree on that.)
What I was getting at with my earlier question was: what’s your take on, say, the Nordic model? Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all have a lot more governmental regulation of their economies; do you view that as socialism, as a number of people do? Do you think the U.S. under the New Deal was socialist? That’s what I’m curious about.
What do you mean by bad faith argument? If you are saying that I am being misled and deceived then I have to strongly disagree with you. I did answered your question. It’s at the last paragraph. Democratic socialist is just another name for socialism. I wrote down about Vladimir Lenin’s quote. I think you have to read back on what I wrote. There is no difference between Marxism and socialism. Lenin quoted about this. A country to be a socialist has to be regulated by the government. You can have a small business, but the government takes control of it, and you have to follow their rules. If they don’t like you they can close down your business. Nordic countries are not socialist. All those funds come from the free market. That’s not socialism. That’s capitalism. Denmark Prime minister came to the US university and said that it’s false that they are a socialist country. And he explains why. It’s on YouTube. You can check it out. In order for you to understand what is socialism, you have to do your own research. If young people are that hard headed and they think that socialism is the solution to the problem then they will be incrementing a total chaos for themselves and the country. You can’t say that this is better than the alternative because that’s how you feel. You have to step foot in socialist countries. Most of you haven’t been in those countries. Ask yourself why people from socialists countries hate socialism? Think about the experience they had to go through. These people know about socialist regime. They know more than anyone living in America. There are more evidence about socialism and their totalitarian regimes.