[ALOCHONA] New York Times - Courting the Bangladeshi vote in the Bronx

August 18, 2010

In Race for an Assembly Seat, a Challenger Courts the Bangladeshi Vote

By SAM DOLNICK

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/nyregion/19bronx.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

 

Like most New York State lawmakers, Peter M. Rivera, a nine-term Democratic assemblyman, has never had to worry much about job security. He has won his last two races with more than 10 times as many votes as his rivals.

 

Still, that has not dissuaded another long-shot candidate from making a run for Mr. Rivera's seat in the 76th Assembly District in the Bronx. But this time, the Democratic challenger, Luis Sepulveda, is adopting a novel strategy that speaks volumes about New York's rich ethnic political stew.

 

Mr. Sepulveda plans to take down Mr. Rivera, a fellow Puerto Rican, by courting the district's growing population of Bangladeshis.

 

Since February, Mr. Sepulveda has attended nearly two dozen Bangladeshi events, visiting mosques, halal restaurants and picnics, and marching in parades.

 

He has pledged that, if elected, he would hire a Bengali speaker for his staff and to crack down on hate crimes against South Asians. He has promised to push for halal menus in public schools and Bengali lessons in the classroom. He has developed a taste for spicy curries and says he now knows as much about Bangladesh's founding fathers as he does about America's.

 

While Mr. Sepulveda, 46, maintains that he is embracing a group that has long been ignored, he is also candid about his political calculations.

 

"It's surgical," he said. "We know where we have to go to get the votes."

 

Inside New Jol Khabar restaurant on Westchester Avenue on a recent weekday night, as volunteers passed out registration cards in advance of the Sept. 14 primary and a Bollywood-style video played silently in the background, Mr. Sepulveda spoke to a crowd of more than 50 people.

 

"If we can get the Bangladeshi community to get out and vote," he told the packed room, "you will decide who is the next assemblyman."

 

He could very well be right.

 

Bangladeshi leaders hope to register as many as 800 voters. In a district where 5,167 people out of 53,521 registered Democrats voted in 2004, the last Democratic primary, that could be enough to tilt the election. There are more than 2,500 Bangladeshis in the district, according to census estimates, though community leaders say the number is far higher.

 

"If the Bangladeshi community can mobilize toward the primary, I think Rivera has a serious challenger on his hands," said Christina Greer, an assistant professor of political science at Fordham University. "Rivera has done English and Spanish and has essentially treated this small, growing community as nonexistent citizens. Luis has acknowledged them, and that may be enough to get him in office."

 

Mr. Sepulveda's Bangladeshi supporters — they call him Mr. Luis and enjoy plying him with heaping plates of buttery rice — say they sided with him, mainly, because he bothered to ask.

 

"The most important reason was because he was reaching out to us and asking what are your needs, what are your concerns," said Zakir A. Khan, a local real estate agent who has taken on the role of Mr. Sepulveda's liaison to Bangladeshis. "People are saying he is respecting us, he is valuing us."

 

For months, Mr. Khan pointed out, Mr. Sepulveda's campaign trucks have rolled through the neighborhood blaring slogans in English, Spanish and Bengali.

 

"This was the first time we're hearing our language on the loudspeakers," he said. "It was very exciting."

 

Mr. Rivera, 63 ,who has spent much of his 18 years in the Assembly focusing on Latino issues, has not allowed Mr. Sepulveda's strategy to go unanswered. His most recent newsletter included, for the first time ever, a small section tucked on an inside page titled, "Bangladeshi Issues in the 76th Assembly District," though it was written in English and Spanish but not in Bengali.

 

One Bangladeshi group — there are several such associations in the Bronx, many of which do not get along — recently held a fund-raiser for Mr. Rivera.

 

But though Mr. Rivera promises to help his Bangladeshi constituents however he can, he said he had no plans to focus on them as a potential swing vote. "I don't focus on this community or that community," he said.

 

Brooklyn and Queens have more Bangladeshis than the Bronx, but their numbers have increased there in recent years. The Bangladeshi population in the Bronx stood at roughly 2,100 in 2000, but had more than doubled, to nearly 5,500, by 2008, according to census estimates.

 

Bangladeshi leaders say the community has not been especially active in local politics until now. Yet the group's presence in the Parkchester and Castle Hill areas, part of the predominantly Latino district that Mr. Rivera and Mr. Sepulveda are battling to represent, cannot be missed.

 

On Starling Avenue, the main Bangladeshi thoroughfare in the area, women in bright-colored saris pushed strollers past the Bangla Town Supermarket and the Dhaka Beauty Salon recently while bearded men in long robes and white skullcaps shopped at halal butchers. The neighborhood has seen a revitalization in recent years, and the Bangladeshis, most of whom are Muslim, have played a significant part.

 

Many Bangladeshi leaders have found the unexpected campaign appeals alluring, and have grown confident, if not cocky, about their growing political muscle.

 

"Which way this community is going to go is going to be the winning team," said Mahbub Alom, president of the Bangladesh Society of the Bronx. The registration drive among Bangladeshi voters, he added, has been making slow progress.

 

Mr. Sepulveda works as a lawyer for the State Senate majority's office and is assigned to State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., a strong supporter who himself is running for re-election and is also seeking Bangladeshi votes, though he probably does not need them.

 

Like most incumbents, Mr. Rivera enjoys a bigger campaign fund — he has more than $53,000 compared with Mr. Sepulveda's $15,500 — but Mr. Sepulveda, in his first run for public office, raised more money from January to July, according to the latest campaign filings.

 

The campaign has featured some testy exchanges. In a televised debate that quickly turned into a shouting match, Mr. Rivera called Mr. Sepulveda "a jerk" and accused him of running "a seedy campaign" for raising questions about his campaign spending and the clients Mr. Rivera represented as a lawyer before he entered politics.

 

Mr. Rivera, a former police officer, said in an interview that his record spoke for itself, pointing to his efforts to increase minority enrollment at New York colleges and improve access to mental health services in the Bronx.

 

"I think that I have proven after eight elections that I have the confidence of the people in my district," he said. Mr. Rivera has survived several controversies in his career, including reports that he received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the pharmaceutical lobby after he voted against a bill to create a preferred drug list for Medicaid recipients, and that he spent $54,000 in campaign donations on a Mercedes and an Audi.

 

At a time of deep public disenchantment with Albany, Mr. Sepulveda said he believed that Mr. Rivera was vulnerable and that a new voter pool was key to victory.

 

Three hours after the New Jol Khabar meeting was scheduled to begin, with the smell of mutton curry in the air, Mr. Sepulveda and Mr. Díaz argued that a vote for Mr. Sepulveda was a vote for Bangladeshis.

 

If Mr. Sepulveda wins, Mr. Díaz told the crowd, "I can assure you that every other politician in the whole borough of the Bronx will be looking for you."

 

"That is the way to get respect," he added. "You will put the fear of the Bangladeshi community in everybody's mind."

__._,_.___

[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
To unsubscribe/subscribe, send request to alochona-owner@egroups.com

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___