Rockaway activist promises to give a voice to
young people in his run for Titus’ Assembly seat
BY MAX PARROTT
Khaleel Anderson, the
23-year-old Far Rockaway
resident who’s running for Assemblywoman
Michele Titus’s
district seat, would be one of
the youngest members to be
elected to the body in more
than 20 years and he thinks
that makes him an ideal candidate.
Anderson, a community
board member and activist,
says that the structure of
Queens Democratic Party excludes
people of his age and
background, which he argues
would make him the type
of legislator his community
needs.
Since Titus won her unopposed
Civil Court seat on Nov.
5, Gov. Andrew Cuomo will
now decide whether to hold a
Special Election to fill the seat
once she vacates her current
office in January.
But in a special election,
the chips are stacked against
newcomers like Anderson.
The process for a special election
does not allow for primary
voting before the election.
Democratic Party rules
dictate that a quorum of four
district leaders decide who
will get the party designation.
In this instance, one of the district
leaders is Michele Titus,
who won’t get a vote in choosing
her successor, according
to neighboring District Leader
Lew Simon.
Anderson is not the only
candidate considering a run
for the seat.
Richard David, a district
leader with close ties to the
County Party, has raised
$15,207 for an undisclosed
campaign, according to a July
filing. All David would have
to do is to convince one fellow
district leader to vote for him
in order to get the designation
and likely win the election in a
district that has reliably voted
Democrat for decades.
Anderson will join a pool
of five other democratic candidates
— including David —
who have expressed interest
in running, but he faces long
odds if he were to run on a
third-party line in the special
election. If he wants to run as
a Democrat, he may have to
wait his turn to run in the primary
in June.
“I’m seeking to have a relationship
with the party, but I
Assembly candidate Khaleel Anderson stands in front of the bus line he advocated to extend into the Rockaway peninsula.
know it’s not going to go further
than wait your turn,” Anderson
said.
Anderson, whose core platform
consists of criminal justice,
housing and youth programs,
said that his reformist
instincts don’t mix with the
current party leadership.
“If you rock the boat just a
little bit, you’re out and that’s
wrong. It takes people out of
politics and it takes people out
of the political discourse,” he
said.W
hile he may be young,
his extensive record of public
service goes far beyond the
average 23-year-old. Anderson
has lived in Far Rockaway
since 2005 and has served as a
member of Community Board
14, the executive board of the
Rockaway Youth Task Force,
the 101st Police Precinct council,
the NAACP and Ready
Rockaway — a local emergency
preparedness organization.
For Anderson, criminal
justice reform is intimately
connected to his mission to
get young people involved in
civic programs. He said he
would prioritize the fight for
youth programming and employment
in the state budget
and sees these programs as
the most effective deterrent
for keeping low-income and
black and brown youth out of
the criminal justice system.
“We want to extend programming,
not just for the
summer, but year-round. We
need funding for — I hate the
term, but — ‘at-risk’ youth,”
he said, pausing before using
what he deemed policy jargon.
“These young people are not
‘at risk,’ they are a victim of
their socioeconomic conditions.”
On housing, Anderson is
farther to the left than any
of his southeastern Queens
assembly neighbors. For the
next session, tenant groups
are already saber-rattling to
pass the “just cause” eviction
bill that was scrapped in the
process of negotiating over
last summer’s rent reform
bill. A
nderson’s only complaint
with the controversial bill is
that the legislation does not
go far enough. He would want
to extend the law to cover oneto
four-unity houses, which
were excluded in Senator Julia
Salazar’s original version.
Out of the neighboring southeastern
Queens districts, Assemblyman
Mike Miller was
the only one to co-sponsor the
legislation last session.
“My family was a victim of
retaliatory eviction. If we had
the protections that good cause
would provide. We’d probably
still be there,” Anderson said
of his former house that would
not have been covered by the
“good cause” eviction bill.
The Rockaway Youth Task
Force (RYTF) served as a
launching pad for Anderson
to get involved on the two infrastructure
projects that he
refers to as his biggest political
accomplishments. In 2015,
Anderson joined RYTF to
build the organization’s halfacre
of community garden on
an abandoned lot that they
secured with the help of the
Parks Department.
He also helped lead a campaign
pushing the MTA to extend
the Q52 rapid-transit line
further into the peninsula so
that it could serve low-income
communities of color living in
the Ocean Bay Apartments, a
Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
24-building NYCHA development
in Arverne.
While Anderson may be at
odds with the special election
process, he is setting up for
the long haul fight for the primary.
His account balance as
of July was $10,658.
Next, Anderson will face
the challenge of the scattered
shape of the district. While
his activism is rooted in the
Rockaways, assembly district
stretches over the entirety of
JFK Airport all the way up
into Richmond Hill, South
Ozone Park and Rosedale.
While Anderson said that
he would never go to another
part of the district pretending
as if he had done work in their
neighborhood, he thinks that
his voice and platform could
speak to for the areas that he’s
less familiar with.
“I think the work that I’ve
done here in the Rockaways
can translate to positive results
for the rest of the district,”
he said.
Reach reporter Max Parrott
by e-mail at mparrott@schnepsmedia.
com or by phone at
(718) 260-2507.
TIMESLEDGER, N QNS.COM OV. 22-28, 2019 3
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