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Gotham needs change (Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty)
If the Trumpian message of decay and decline has any resonance, it’s in places like Hunts Point. Emerging from the subway here in the South Bronx, I see a man on a payphone pleading to speak with a psychotherapist. Another stands outside the entrance begging for change. A third is challenging street vendors to a hand-measuring contest: the winner gets a dollar (no one takes him up on the offer).
This is not Trump country — far from it. But despair in Hunts Point, where almost half of residents live below the poverty line, and where drugs and prostitution are rife, is forcing a rethink. One shopper here stops to tell me why Biden lost her vote. “What did he give me?” Rosaria asks. “My groceries now cost a bomb, my gas is up and I’ve never felt less safe here in my life.” Just a few days ago, she tells me, her son’s best friend got “snatched up” — kidnapped — and they still can’t find him. He was last seen buying a drink inside the local bodega, but nobody has heard from him since. Rosaria believes it could be gang-related. “I don’t want my children outside after dark anymore.”
In this year’s election, 27% of Bronx voters plumped for Trump, almost three times more than in 2016. And in Hunts Point, right at the heart of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 14th district, the Rightward lurch is even starker. In this neighbourhood, Trump increased his share of votes by 50% compared with four years ago — one of the biggest pro-Trump swings in the country. Nor was this trend unique to the Bronx: Queens, Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn are all becoming redder too. Yet as the electoral post-mortems begin, one big question remains: can New York’s conservative resistance grow?
New York City hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Rudy Giuliani left office in 2001, and the state hasn’t voted for a GOP president since 1984. But dissatisfaction with the status quo has been rising since 2020 as crime, the migrant crisis and housing all worsen. No wonder, then, that 573,000 New Yorkers abandoned Harris. While she might have won the city comfortably, securing over twice as many votes as Trump, her margin of victory was 16% lower than Joe Biden’s four years earlier.
For the Republicans, the main challenge here is less the Democrats, and more voter apathy. Of Hunts Point’s 11,000 or so residents, only around 2,774 voted (2,039 for Harris, 735 for Trump). This means that if Rosaria is the face of the GOP’s new coalition — urban, working class and Hispanic — then it is people like her who Republicans need to rally to their side. And while she has reservations about the President-elect (the “Mexico is sending rapists” line still rankles), she says she’s more willing to vote Republican than ever.
Other voters in AOC’s district are more bullish about their support for the President-elect. In the heavily Hispanic neighbourhood of North Corona, a corner of Queens where nearly half of residents went for Trump, a group of Latino barbers explained why they voted red. “Our neighbourhood is a wreck,” says one. “No one is trying to fix anything around here.” Another says that in the past two years, four of his close friends have lost their jobs due to rising costs. He wonders if he’ll be next. One pulls out a phone to show me his two young boys wearing the full MAGA uniform: red cap, red t-shirt and camo trousers. They all went to the President-elect’s rally in the South Bronx. “He came out here to speak to us,” he says. “I’ll never forget that.”
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SubscribeThe Republicans really need to get some ground game and proper organisation and candidates in big cities which with a couple of exceptions, have been run into the ground by the Democrats in the recent past and present. It’s capitalising on these opportunities which the GOP struggles with. Furthermore ditching neoliberalism and neocons will surely only serve to boost the party. Finally, adopting some common sense economic programs and boosting small businesses could be crucial for the success of the American economy moving forward. It will be interesting to view from afar how the GOP adapts to the changes in their electoral coalition.
How do you define or understand “Neoliberalism” to be?
The proper and accurate description of neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that entails such policies as privatization, deregulation, austerity, “free” trade, etc. Pretty much every single US president since at least Reagan has been a neoliberal whether Democrat or Republican. The only exception would be DJT. It is decidedly NOT the polar opposite of Neoconservatism which is a foreign policy philosophy. In fact almost ALL Neocons happen to be Neoliberals simultaneously.
In a closed primary system, you can only vote in the party you are registered as. Therefore, the “6 to 1” ratio of Democrats to Republicans in NYC is meaningless. Many of these are registered as such so they can vote in the primary, but vote Republican during the general election.
Also, Mike Bloomberg ran as a Republican in 2001 and 2005; as an Independent in 2009. Just saying ….
I look at NY and I see potholes, creaking infrastructure, public and elected officials who just don’t care, because their electorate will never throw them out of office, whether they work hard or hardly work at all.
I hope that this will change. As Einstein said, “The definition of insanity, is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result …”