COURIER L 18 IFE, JUNE 26-JULY 2, 2020
OPINION
Council staffer should be canned for calling
Trump supporters white supremacists
I won big betting on this year’s primaries
There was a primary election
this week. Owing to
the enormous number
of unopened absentee ballots,
many election results
will not be clear for weeks.
But most of the candidates
I supported appear to have
won, if we’re basing things
off preliminary results.
This year, an unusual
number of my favorite candidates
were gay Black or
Latino men, often running
against many opponents.
Samy Nemir-Olivares only
ran against one, and so I
shall discuss him first.
Nemir-Olivares is a brilliant
and genuine young
man, and a filmmaker who
migrated from Puerto Rico
less than a decade ago. Challenges
to sitting district leaders
are rarely successful.
Nemir-Olivares ended up being
endorsed by all the local
politicians, like Congresswoman
Nydia Velazquez,
and won over 62 percent of
the Election Day vote — a
huge achievement against
an incumbent.
Nemir-Olivares did brilliantly
and got so much support
partly because he is
amazing but also because so
many people disliked his opponent.
It is the opinion of
this columnist but not the
Brooklyn Paper that Tommy
Torres is a scumbag who
was responsible for my being
knocked off the ballot in the
middle of a pandemic. Many
in north Brooklyn are glad
to see the back of him.
Jabari Brisport appears
to have won a three-way
election for an open seat representing
central Brooklyn
in the State Senate and recently
vacated by Velmanette
Montgomery. Although Brisport
is gay, many LGBTQ+
organizations endorsed one
of his straight opponents.
Although Brisport’s family
has lived incCentral Brooklyn
for three generations, he
was accused by supporters
of the other opponent of being
the outsiders’ tool.
The support and opposition
to Brisport were so
vehement because he is a
socialist. Although some
elections’ outcomes across
Brooklyn may shift when
the absentee ballots are
counted, Brisport is currently
thousands of votes
ahead of his main opponent,
and poised to join Julia
Salazar as the second socialist
— also a millennial,
also a Brooklynite — in the
State Senate next year.
Ritchie Torres ran an impressively
successful campaign
for congress in the
South Bronx against a number
of opponents. Like Salazar
and Brisport, he attended
a fancy New York college in
the last fifteen years. Like
Brisport, he went to NYU.
Like Salazar, he didn’t graduate.
Torres is brilliant and
has been dazzling people
since he became the Bronx’s
first openly gay councilman
in 2013.
Torres’ campaign faced
a notorious homophobe, Ruben
Diaz, Sr. — who shares
a name with his son, the
popular borough president
of the Bronx — and literally
ten other opponents. Torres
argued his campaign
was the only one who could
beat Diaz. It helped that he
was the perfect foil. Probably,
former supporters of
Samelys Lopez and Melissa
Mark-Viverito switched to
Torres to prevent Diaz’s victory.
In the end, Diaz took third
and Assemblyman Mike
Blake took second on Election
Night. Torres appears
to have received twice as
many votes as Diaz. But how
could Torres have known? In
the fog of war of a campaign,
you don’t know how close
your opponents are so you
run as hard as you can.
Nick Rizzo is a Democratic
District Leader representing
the 50th Assembly
District and a political consultant
who lives in Greenpoint.
Follow him on Twitter
@NickRizzo.
WORDS OF
RIZZDOM
Nick Rizzo
Brooklyn City Councilman
Justin Brannan’s
top staffer, Chris Mc-
Creight, called supporters
of President Donald Trump
“white supremacists” and
insinuated that they are not
“decent people” last week.
He should be ashamed, and
Brannan should can him.
It may be hard to believe
for Democrats in Brooklyn,
but Brannan has constituents
that do support our
president. Insulting them
is reprehensible, especially
considering that we pay his
salary.
It also makes no political
sense. In 2017, Brannan only
received 50.23 percent of the
vote, and defeated his Republican
opponent by a mere
794 votes. You don’t need a
PhD in political science to
know that after such a close
election, you should work to
broaden your support, not
alienate those that disagree
on presidential politics.
Referring to a TIME story
on President Trump’s rally
in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June
20, McCreight tweeted that
afternoon, “This is no time
to say ‘haha just a bunch of
white supremacists are going
to get sick.’ I mean, they
are. But they are also going
to infect decent people and
spread this virus. It’s really
a sad day for our country.
People will die because of
this racist.”
This is his tweet verbatim.
Any reasonable interpretation
of this makes it clear
that McCreight is saying
that Trump supporters are
not decent people, and are
white supremacists.
He subsequently tweeted
that the president is a “draftdodging
degenerate fascist.”
It is sad that this has become
acceptable language of
Democrats today to describe
the President of the United
States. Perhaps even worse
is that my councilman’s
chief of staff uses similar
language to describe those
that support Trump, which
includes many constituents.
For example, I was recently
waiting on a long line
at a Bay Ridge Walgreens
when I heard several women
loudly expressing their support
for President Trump.
They said they were tired
of the Democratic hypocrisy
of not allowing people
to go to church, celebrate
graduations, drink at a bar,
or eat in a restaurant, while
having no problem with the
mass protests.
This makes them common
sense Americans, not
indecent people.
Most Trump supporters
also back law enforcement,
and oppose looting, the
tearing down of statues of
our Founding Fathers, and
the takeover of blocks in an
American city like in Seattle.
This makes us responsible
and proud Americans,
not white supremacists.
During my time as a senior
staffer to former Brooklyn
Borough President
Marty Markowitz, and former
Congressmembers Vito
Fossella and Bob Turner, I
knew my public words also
ref lected on them.
I also knew that none of
them would tolerate a staffer
so blatantly insulting many
of their constituents.
The question is will Justin
Brannan?
Bob Capano has worked
for Brooklyn Republican and
Democrat elected officials,
and has been an adjunct political
science professor for
over 15 years. Follow him on
twitter @bobcapano.
THE RIGHT
VIEW
Bob Capano