New York Gov. Kathy Hochul made a surprise guest appearance at The Bronx Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote rally for the Harris Walz presidential campaign held at the Party’s headquarters on Williamsbridge Road in Morris Park on a sunny Sunday, Sept. 8. Joining her were volunteers, young and old, elected officials from across the City & State, as well as local political clubs, including the Unity Democrats.

 

Bronx Democratic Party chair and State Sen. Jamaal Bailey (S.D. 36) rallied the troops, at times evoking baseball imagery, in hopes of inspiring those gathered into ensuring Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who visited the Bronx in 2021, becomes the first female president of the United States on Nov. 5.

 

After paying tribute to Bronx Democratic Party press secretary, Ariana Collade, who, Bailey announced recently passed the bar, the Party chairman said voters were 60 days out from Election Day, and were also marking the first day of the NFL season. “In NFL games, there are approximately 60 minutes,” he said. “So, right now, we’re in the proverbial first quarter of the game. We’re still able to register, we’re able to get our plays set, figure out what’s the best offense, what’s the best defense.”

 

He continued, “Fifteen more days, we got to start the real playbook, but we can’t take a halftime break. There’s no halftime break to fight against Project 2025. There’s no halftime break to fight against another stacked [Republican-majority, United States] Supreme Court.” Referring to former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as the “former crook-in-chief,” Bailey said, “We can’t have that come back.”

 

Of Harris’s former role as attorney general of California, he said, “They [Republicans] talk about law and order. Why wouldn’t you want a former prosecutor who was one of the first to set alternative to incarceration in San Francisco, who became an attorney general, who did more about alternatives to incarceration, who was a U.S. senator?”

 

Bailey said people kept forgetting Harris’s record. “That’s how society treats women, for better or for worse,” he said. “They forget all of the accomplishments, and they look at the title vice president, next to Biden. Excuse my language; she busted her ass to get where she is!”

 

Then, before introducing Hochul, Bailey said, “Speaking of someone who is busting her proverbial tail to get where she is, we’re looking to make “herstory” in the country, but we’ve made it in New York State. Number 57 is not just Heinz ketchup. I don’t like ketchup, but I like our governor because she’s not been a stranger to The Bronx, but other people have. Since she was a lieutenant governor, she has consistently invested not just in political speeches and ribbon cuttings, but in the people and in the fabric of The Bronx.”

 

Lauding Hochul for having visited The Bronx when he said it wasn’t popular to do so, and amid some laughter due to a brief delay as the governor had not yet arrived, Bailey reintroduced her once again as the “57th governor of the great State of New York.”

For her part, Hochul compared the energy in the room to that at the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Amid intermittant chants of “Kamala! Kamala! Kamala!” and “Win! Win! Win! Win!” Hochul said the Bronx Democratic Party had a chairman in Bailey who understood what it took to win elections. Appealing to people not to assume a win was guaranteed because New York was a blue state, the governor said, “We have a major, major fight on our hands. We cannot get complacent. Our biggest enemy is complacency.”

 

Though she predicted a Harris presidential win, Hochul added, “You know what else President Harris will need, she’ll need a Democratic House of Representatives to be her ally, and making our own [Brooklyn Rep.] Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) from New York the next speaker [of the House of Representatives].”

 

The governor urged voters to vote down the ballot and to knock on doors not just in The Bronx but also in Westchester. “It’s so important that she has [Democratic candidate for NY-16, Westchester County Executive] George Latimer at her side in The Bronx and in Westchester,” she said. “We’ll send [Democratic candidate for NY-17] Mondaire Jones in Northern Westchester as well, and many of our other allies in the Hudson Valley. We can do this. I feel so good about this. You know why? Because we have transformed the New York State’s Democratic Party into the powerhouse it always should have been.”

 

Hochul went on to say that over her 30 years as an elected official, she never got help from the New York State Democratic Party when running for town board, for county office, or for Congress. “I said if I ever get a chance to be in a position to use that power and bring it right down where it matters, the grassroots organizations, helping fund our local operations all over the State, then I will do it,” the governor said. “That’s exactly what we’ve done.”

 

She went on to say that starting in 2023, knowing that 2024 was going to be an important election year, the party began to open and now has opened over 35 field offices all over its battleground areas. “We hired over 100 people. We have 800,000 voter contacts. We have thousands of people out there on the streets, and I need all of you to help this effort,” Hochul said.

 

The governor, who announced days after the rally that she had a form of skin cancer for which he underwent minor surgery, said Latimer not only needed to win his congressional seat, he needed “to crush it” with high margins. “Let’s spread out that love,” Hochul said. “Let’s spread out that effort. I need you to go everywhere and make phone calls and do the voter contact and do everything you can because the rest of the country is counting on us,” she said. “They truly are. We have to save democracy.”

 

The governor paid tribute to the elected leaders in the room who she called her friends and allies in Albany and talked about how good it would feel on Election Night to be a  part of an army responsible for winning across all races. “I have much respect for everyone, and we’ll get it done. Are you with me, my friends?” she said, in part, amid shouts of “Consider it done!”

 

Following chants of “Kathy! Kathy! Kathy! Kathy!” Bailey said it was often said, “As goes New York, so goes the nation.” Joking, he added, “We know it’s the truth. This isn’t hate against the other 49 states or the territories. Shout out to Guam! Shout out to everybody, but as goes New York, so goes the country. We have our first woman governor. We will have our first woman president.” Playing on words, he said New York had been a deliverer for Hochul. “Yes, we’re going to use it as one word, ‘deliver-her,’ he said, before Hochul quipped, “Moms know all about delivering.”

 

Bailey went on to thank Hochul, saying, “That record investment that the State party, led by our governor and our state chair, Jay Jacobs, [ensured] is critically important because we get people to places where they need to vote.” The Party chair went on to say that when he first entered the State Senate, he walked in on a presentation by Latimer who he said seemed to know every electoral district in places he had never heard of, in districts that the Party wasn’t even competitive in at the time.

 

“He knew where the votes were,” Bailey said in part. “As county executive, he’s known how to, in Westchester, take care of our seniors, having fare-free buses all summer. He’s known how to make sure that more parks were opened up under his watch. So, I just want to make sure that if you’re not familiar with him in The Bronx, you should be, because he’s going to win in November and he’s going to be one hell of a congressman.”

 

For his part, Latimer, who defeated incumbent Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman (NY-16) in the June Democratic primary, was jokingly diplomatic at the Bronx event, referring to it as the greatest borough in the City of New York and Westchester as the greatest county outside of New York City.

 

“Westchester is your kid brother,” Latimer said. “You guys are bigger than us, although we’re pretty big. We’re the biggest Democratic county outside of New York City, but you gave us Jamaal Bailey as a state senator, you gave us Nathalia Fernandez as a senator, you gave us Carl Heastie to lead the New York State Assembly. We helped you out. We gave you Andrea Stewart Cousins to lead the New York State Senate.”

 

Latimer added that The Bronx and Westchester, working together, would make Harris president and, “lead to doing great in Connecticut and New Jersey and Delaware and all those other states that we’re listening to.” He continued, “So, our job is to be in the weeds. We’re going to be in train stations together, subway stations together, senior citizen stations together, roll up the sleeves, work alongside the leadership of this man [Bailey], under the leadership of this woman [Hochul], and we are going to win!”

Latimer went on to deride Trump who he alleged hates communities of color. Trump denies that he is a racist, though, among other ostensibly racist actions, he was found to have discrimminated against Black people when it came to housing in the early 1970s, and he also famously took out ads in City newspapers in the ’80s, calling for the death penalty for the so-called Central Park Five / Exonerated Five, one of whom, Yusef Salaam, is now a Harlem city council member.]

 

“I don’t want my children to live the next four years with a person who treats humanity the way he does, and is a compulsive liar,” Latimer said. “We have to make sure that we do all our parts, and the next day after the election, we don’t have to regret anything that we didn’t do. So please go out there, work as hard as you can, and make sure that we elect Vice President Harris as the new leader of this country.”

 

During his remarks, State Senator Luis Sepúlveda (S.D. 32) talked about Hochul’s $10 billion allotment to increase the number of people who can benefit from the public health care system. “This is one of the poorest counties in the world,” Sepúlveda said of The Bronx. “Now, those monies came from the Inflation Reduction Act, and guess who worked on that Inflation Reduction Act? Our vice president, Kamala Harris. When you see what the other side wants, rather than increasing the number of people that can get health care, they want to completely destroy it.”

 

Sepúlveda went on to talk about Harris’s fight for reproductive healthcare. “When you see on the other side that they want an oath that you’re going to kiss President Trump’s ass if he wins in order to keep your federal job,” he said “That’s what you’re getting when you see someone who wants to treat immigrants as if they’re all criminals and rapists. They want to blame everything that’s wrong in this country on our immigrants, when they should value the work that they’ve done.”

 

The senator said it was important to ensure the country wasn’t going backwards. “And that’s what the other side represents, going back to one of the darkest eras of this country, going back to something that’s similar to what they had in Nazi Germany,” he said. “We have to make sure that each and every one of us go out, even beyond your districts, even beyond the State of New York. We have to make sure that we elect Vice President Harris as a new president.”

 

Chants of “We ain’t going back!” and “Let’s do this!” ensued. Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Yudelka Tapia (A.D. 86) talked about how as a voting bloc, women typically turned out to vote, and how they needed to continue to do so. “So yes, we have to say and repeat it and repeat it, ‘Yes! Bronx women are with Kamala Harris!'” she said.

 

Tapia continued in part, ‘We cannot stay home. We know that the men in our community, the men are behind us, making sure that we do it. So, from today and up to Nov. 5, we are going to be registering people, register our neighborhood, our neighbors, and making sure that we have that commitment that we are going to talk to somebody every single day, starting today. I know that here in The Bronx, the most Democratic borough in the whole United States, Kamala Harris is going to be the first woman president of the United States.”

 

Later, introducing Assemblywoman Karina Reyes (A.D. 87), a registered nurse, Bailey commended her for having returned to the front lines as a healthcare worker during the pandemic, and as an elected official, for championing health care and mental healthcare.

 

Reyes said the reason why voters should vote for Harris was because certain Zip codes in The Bronx had some of the highest death rates in the country amid the pandemic. “During the same time, we had somebody in the White House who was not only a science denier, but somebody who was literally putting our lives at risk,” she said, adding that Bronxites couldn’t afford to have people who were not driven by [scientific] evidence leading the nation.

 

Trump did get vaccinated himself against COVID-19, and his administration rolled out the first COVID-19 vaccine. However, he made other bizarre comments amid the crisis, famously querying whether a potential solution to COVID-19 might have been to inject people with bleach. An extract from the American Oversight website reads, “With fear about the novel coronavirus spreading as fast as the disease itself, the Trump administration’s mismanaged handling of the pandemic led to mistrust and anger and put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.”

 

American Oversight is a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog that purports to advance truth, accountability, and democracy by enforcing the public’s right to government records.

 

Reyes continued, “We just clocked the hottest summer in the history of our planet. We cannot have people in control who don’t believe in climate change because, brothers and sisters, when it rains, it pours in The Bronx! Have you been on the Bronx River? Okay, we are literally drowning. We need those resources and that investment coming from Washington D.C., and we need people who believe that we have a true problem, because we live it every day. The future of our children, the future of our borough, the future of our country is at stake, and we need to act like it. So let’s go out there.” Trump is an advocate for oil drilling and has famously mocked climate activist Greta Thunberg.

For his part, Assemblyman Landon Dais (A.D. 77) said people should vote for the candidate with integrity, the candidate with a plan, and someone who would always put the country before party. He said it spoke volumes that former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney was backing Harris over Trump. “He also puts America’s values first, and he realizes that there is a threat to our country, and he would rather go with a Democrat, than to go with the Republican nominee,” Dais said.

 

He then asked what former president or vice president had come out in support of Trump. “Zero,” he said, adding not even his own former vice president, Mike Pence had “because he tried to kill him on January 6th.” Nonetheless, Dais said the election would be won, not through negativity, but by talking about what Democrats would do to help everyday Americans.

 

“Are we fixing the streets? Are we putting the lamp posts back on? Is the garbage being picked up? Are we creating more jobs?” he asked, before adding that 142,000 jobs were created in the month of August. “The Democratic Party is the party of job creation,” Dais said. “Let’s go back to the basics. Let’s remind people why we are the difference makers. We are the party of the people.”

 

Later, a youth leader for the Young Democrats spoke saying in part, “It is important to make sure that we are not only upholding the elected officials that we help put in charge, but also [creating] the leaders of tomorrow. It is important that we use our relationships that we have and the connections that we still have to the younger generation to be able to speak to them because now, we know that not all the time they’re thinking about tomorrow.”

 

He said some young people couldn’t afford to think about tomorrow as they were too busy thinking about today. “[We have to] make sure that every last brother and sister that came up on 197th and Marion, and 206th and Bronx Boulevard, and 138th and Alexander knows why it’s important, why their voice matters, because they know there ain’t no guide when you turn 18,” he said. “All you got is people like me and word of mouth. So, I’m going to ensure that we hold voter registrations every week through that deadline in October to ensure that we’re creating the new voter base and the voices of tomorrow.”

 

Bailey closed out the event by thanking all who showed up. Returning to the baseball analogies, and though not a Yankees fan, himself, he said Bronxites had to close the election cycle like the Yankees. Of the opposition, he said, “We get to turn them on their proverbial head when we elect someone cogent, competent, and qualified,” to which one person shouted out, “a woman!” Bailey agreed, adding that Harris might be the first but definitely not the last female president of the United States of America.

 

“I just want to remind you that we are in that first quarter of the game. Don’t get complacent. We’ve got an early lead in the football game, but anything can happen. But in the fourth quarter, nobody closes better than The Bronx.”

 

Editor’s Note: The last day to register to vote in person and by mail is Oct. 26. Applications to register by mail must be received by Oct. 26. New Yorkers must register to vote to be eligible to vote on Nov. 5. There are also deadlines for making changes to your registration, such as changes to address or enrollment. Visit https:// vote.nyc/page/all-important-dates for more information.

 

For more information on skin cancer, visit https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/cancer/skin/.

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