A strong voter turnout among Brooklyn’s Russian Jewish population helped Hakeem Jeffries win his democratic primary on Tuesday, by a wide margin, against perceived anti-Semite and noted anti-Zionist, Charles Barron.
“An incredible and unprecedented turn out by Russian Jews, one poling place I stopped by had 746 votes by 3 pm and some polling stations already had lines with people waiting an hour to vote,” Mordechai Torkasky, who heads the Russian American Jewish Experience, told The Algemeiner.
Torkasky says current and former members of the RAJE were active in their political advocacy against Barron.
“We would have voted for Howdy Doody [over Barron],” Mark Fleischer, a retired principal in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, told the New York Post.
New York Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny told The Post he had not seen voters so overwhelmingly support a candidate in the way in which constituents came out for Jeffries.
Barron, who has likened the Israeli government to a terrorist group and compared the Israeli treatment of Gaza Strip residents to the Nazi treatment of Jews during World War II, claimed after the defeat that the “white media” was against him in the 57th district of New York.
“I think people are really tired of radicals on both sides,” Krasny said.
Notable New York politicians who came out in support of Jeffries’ bid for the democratic nomination including Governor Andrew Cuomo and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer.
