Trump’s Question — What Do Black Voters Have To Lose? — Echoes Loudly in Gubernatorial Election in New York

Lee Zeldin is addressing crime and education far more squarely than Kathy Hochul.

AP/Mary Altaffer, pool
The Republican candidate for New York governor, Representative Lee Zeldin, left, and Governor Hochul debate on October 25, 2022, at New York. AP/Mary Altaffer, pool

“What the hell do you have to lose?” Donald Trump asked Black Americans in his 2016 campaign. His question underscored the fact that the African-American community, which has historically voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, remains stuck at the bottom of the income and employment ladders.

It turned out to be a prescient question. Many Blacks appeared to respond to Trump’s challenge; some voted for the brash Republican, while others refused to vote for the Democrat, Secretary Clinton. Exit polls indicated Mr. Trump won 8 percent of the Black vote in 2016, more than the 6 percent the Republican, Senator Romney, won in 2012.

In addition, turnout amongst Blacks in the 2016 election is estimated to have fallen to 57.7 percent from 62.1 percent in 2012. That drop in voter participation could well have cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency. It was a smart gambit by Mr. Trump — one that Congressman Lee Zeldin, running for governor of New York, might yet benefit from.  

In Mr. Trump’s opinion, given the slow progress recorded by Black Americans over several decades, even as welfare programs ballooned and civil rights laws expanded opportunities for minorities, African-American voters should reconsider their allegiance to the Democratic Party. He was right then, and the same is true today.

Two issues beckon — education and crime. Even as Democrats pretend to care about racial equality and “equity,” they shamelessly refuse to overhaul New York’s public school system, which condemns too many black and brown children to a life of poverty. Where is the outrage?

Where are the promises from Democratic state officials to completely boot out those in charge of education and to guarantee Black youths a better chance? There are no plans to disrupt the status quo, because the Democrat-supporting teachers unions have an iron grip on our public schools and don’t care.

Their response to criticism is to attempt to limit testing, dumb down graduation standards, and beg for ever more money to feed a broken system. Money is not the problem. New York spends over $30,000 a student, making it the most expensive school system in the country.

The problem is where the money goes, largely enriching the unions and their officials and expanding the school. The head of education policy at the Reason Institute, Aaron Smith, wrote a year ago, “a typical classroom of 20 students cost New York taxpayers $615,000 each year.”

Mr. Smith’s group reported, “New York’s inflation-adjusted public education revenue skyrocketed by $12,068 per pupil, or 68 percent …by far the highest growth rate in the country.” Furthermore, “school administration grew by 65 percent in the last two decades and now consumes $1,133 per student each year, far exceeding the nationwide average of $738 per student.”

Black parents also deserve better on crime, the spike in which threatens, especially, black neighborhoods.  Governor Hochul, along with other Democrats, denies that violent crime is a problem, ignoring the ongoing cascade of atrocities, prompted in part by bail “reform” laws passed by her colleagues in Albany. 

“From 2019 to 2021, murders went up 52 percent, shootings went up 104 percent” with “the brunt” of the increase “borne by Black New Yorkers,” the New York Times reports. The data are clear. Black New Yorkers “were the victims in 65 percent of murders and 74 percent of shootings.”

Only when polling showed Ms. Hochul’s campaign in trouble did she even address rampant crime. The crime wave, like the failing schools, is unacceptable. Voting Republican is one way to shake up the failing status quo in New York. Hence the question: What do Black voters — indeed, all voters — have to lose?


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