Norwood News

It’s Sunday church time on Morris Avenue. Fernando Cabrera’s rising voice is filling with the Holy Spirit. Turning to the left, his profile to the congregation, the Bronx pastor is riffing and ranting like a Baptist preacher man. “Amens” and “hallelujahs” mix into the monologue like commas. He punctuates funny stories with loud, Chris Rock-like flourishes. He’s part pastor, part showman.

“He’s an entertainer,” says Greg Faulkner, the chair of Community Board 7 who joined Cabrera’s New Life International Outreach Church on Morris Avenue about five years ago.

He’s also a college professor, a community activist, a father of two and now a front-runner for elected office. 

A political rookie, Cabrera is running for City Council in the Bronx’s hotly contested 14th District against incumbent Maria Baez and fellow challenger Yudelka Tapia.

Though relatively unknown just a year ago, Cabrera has parlayed his on-stage charisma and natural leadership abilities into a campaign run backed by the most influential institutions and staffed by the county Democrats’ best operatives.

“He’s the perfect candidate,” says his campaign’s communications director, Fernando Aquino, “aside from the one thing.”

That thing would be that he was a Republican who lived in Westchester County just over a year ago. Cabrera, 45, doesn’t deny these facts, but says they are only bit parts of a larger story that began in the Bronx in 1964.

A California Conversion
That was the year Cabrera and his identical twin brother, Angelo, were born at Lincoln Hospital in the south Bronx. At the age of 4, the Cabrera family moved to Puerto Rico where his mother is from because his Dominican father got a job working there for American Airlines.

Hoping to alleviate some of Angelo’s acute asthma problems, the Cabrera clan packed its bags and moved again to the dry warm climate of southern California.

At 17, Cabrera says he “had a call” to God and underwent a conversion experience. “I gave my life to the Lord,” he says.

Soon after graduating college, he moved to Virginia to take a job as head of a faith-based substance abuse rehabilitation center called New Life for Youth, which was created by Victor Torres, a former Brooklyn gang banger and drug addict. Torres also created New Life International Outreach Church.

A teetotaler who says he has never drunk, smoked or ingested anything stronger than Coca Cola (others have confirmed this claim of sobriety), Cabrera says the rehab center “was like a school for me. I saw that if you’re real with people, then they will respond to you.”

Cabrera moved back to the Bronx in 1988 and started up a version of New Life International Outreach Church, bouncing around among northwest Bronx locations as the congregation grew.

In the early 1990s, Cabrera moved his young family to Pelham, a Westchester suburb. Still, his job as a counselor at Walton High School, and his church, kept him in the northwest Bronx on a daily basis. By the late 1990s, Cabrera had earned his doctorate in counseling and in 2000 he became head of the counseling program at Mercy College.

Throughout this time, Cabrera remained active in the northwest Bronx, sitting on the community board, doing service projects at local parks and counseling his parishioners.

A Political Conversion
During this time, Cabrera was also a registered — “but politically inactive,” he says — Republican, which he would remain until after the 2008 presidential primary. He won’t say who he voted for, but says he was inspired by the candidacy of Barack Obama and began to feel that his beliefs were more in line with Democrats than Republicans. (Cabrera doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage, but he does believe in civil unions. He also doesn’t believe in abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger.)

Less than two years ago, Faulkner says he and Cabrera — they met when both served on Community Board 7 from 2004 to 2006 — were talking about the lack of political leadership in the area.

“We were really disappointed that problems we were advocating for weren’t being addressed,” Faulkner said, citing the disastrous Croton Water Filtration Plant project as a prime example.

Cabrera, reluctantly at first, agreed to run after speaking with his congregation at New Life, who he says are 100 percent behind him.

Anthony Springer, a New Life member for the past eight years, is now the Cabrera campaign’s unpaid volunteer coordinator. Springer says what makes Cabrera special is his love and empathy for people. “His heart beats for people,” Springer says. “I’ve seen how he stretches himself to help people just because they asked him to.”

Cabrera moved into his University Heights condo just before announcing his intention to run last fall. Cabrera says he would have made the move regardless, but his opponents seized on it, attempting to paint him as an opportunistic outsider. Tapia even staged a rally outside of his Pelham home earlier this summer.

Cabrera says his daughter, son-in-law and grandson now live there.

A Campaign on the Rise
But Cabrera’s candidacy was already gaining momentum. This spring, the Bronx Democratic Party (under new leadership) and the liberal Working Families Party both threw their weight behind Cabrera. Soon, unions and grassroots groups began following suit.

He now enjoys almost complete institutional support and all the manpower and votes that come with it.

For a challenger, that’s completely unheard of, says John DeSio, a former Bronx political reporter who now works for Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.

Patrick Jenkins, who is the communications director for the Bronx Democratic Party and is heavily involved in Cabrera’s campaign, says Cabrera’s on-stage energy translates to the campaign trail.

“I’m increasingly encouraged by his energy and insight,” Jenkins says. “And he’s a gregarious guy. He pumps me up.”

Yorman Nunez, a 20-year-old former candidate in the race, says he’s still not convinced about Cabrera and has yet to decide on who he’ll vote for come Sept. 15. “I’ve seen Fernando push for good things in the community,” Nunez says, referring to his support for community control of the old Fordham Library and good jobs at the Kingsbridge Armory. “But I also have questions about his residency issues and his party affiliation.” 

Despite claims that he’s a fire-breathing conservative from a wealthy suburb, Cabrera remains relentlessly upbeat. “I’m a very positive person, I’m not going to focus on the negativity,” he says at his campaign headquarters.

Next thing you know, he’s talking about how he’s going to push for jobs as councilmember, how Baez has created a “vacuum of advocacy,” about “the single moms, the families that don’t know they’re going to make it,” and it’s flowing from him again, like he’s up on the pulpit, speaking to the congregation. Then, finally, he says: “I’m ready.”