In the last weekend of early voting, candidates are pushing voters to get to the polls, especially in the race for an open City Council seat in Harlem.
On Saturday, Democratic candidate Yusef Salaam’s campaign encouraged supporters to ring a bell after they left an early voting site.
What You Need To Know
- Inez Dickens, Al Taylor and Yusef Salaam were out around Harlem to urge voters to back them in a heated contest
- Dickens says she hopes the mayor and City Council tried to work out a compromise before it came to a veto
- Salaam says his focus is on the existing homeless population, even as the migrant crisis grows
And Salaam accompanied former state Assemblyman Keith Wright, the Harlem mainstay who urged him to run to the polls.
“Folks know that this is not politics as usual,” said Salaam, one of the Central Park Exonerated Five. “They know that we are not running a standard campaign. They know that we are fighting to win.”
Elsewhere in central Harlem, home to City Council District 9, state Assemblywoman Inez Dickens was the subject of a meet-and-greet.
Dickens is the only council candidate that Mayor Eric Adams has endorsed thus far in this cycle.
“Well, I always will feel confident,” she said, “but it means I have to work just as hard. I can’t just take it for granted that the community will vote for me.”
State Assemblyman Al Taylor, the third contender for the seat being vacated by City Council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, was at Harlem Pride.
NY1 asked some of the candidates about the impasse between the mayor and the City Council over how to move people out of shelters to make room for migrants.
On Friday, the mayor vetoed council bills expanding eligibility for housing vouchers after he issued an executive order nixing the 90-day waiting period to apply for such vouchers.
“A lot of what the City Council proposed is on point, but I also think that there is a part of the mayor’s proposal that can be interweaved,” Dickens said, adding they she believed they should have worked together before it came to a veto.
She said she didn’t know whether they had attempted to do so.
Salaam said he preferred the council’s solution.
He added, “The challenge is that we also are in a place where we have a huge homeless population. And so, I’ve always said if we can solve for the migrant issue, we most certainly can do something for the homeless population. That’s what my focus is on.”
Taylor, Dickens and Salaam are facing off in the one of the city’s most competitive Democratic primaries.
Early voting ends Sunday evening, and Primary Day is Tuesday.