(Image: Julienne Schaer for the Washington Post)
Oh well, here we go again. Just when we are all getting tired of talking about the racial issues involved in NY-11, they wind up on no less august a piece of real estate than the front page of the Washington Post. No wonder Councilman Yassky is firing staff.
David Yassky has a solid résumé, lots of campaign cash and plenty of ideas for improving the slice of Brooklyn he wants to represent in Congress. In another Democratic stronghold, he might be the runaway favorite.
But in New York's 11th District, Yassky's candidacy has touched off a controversy about race and turned a sleepy primary contest into an emotionally charged debate over minority political representation. The 11th District is one of the dozens of majority-black seats created in the aftermath of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. And Yassky, unlike his three primary opponents, is white.
Wrong. Part of the problem here is that Yassky obviously moved into the district and started his campaign because he thought the primary field would be divided enough to win by picking up enough white voters. That's the original racial calculus applied in this primary contest, which was never going to be 'sleepy' even without Mr. Yassky's candidacy. However, that subject has been hashed out, not least on this blog, in exquisite detail; and while the Post is weeks late to this party, we've moved on, as it were.
If I had to go out on a limb and diagnose the current objections to David Yassky, they would seem to be his Likudnik views on foreign policy (somewhat unpopular in a district deeply alienated from the Bush régime, and now uneasily contemplating the prospect of war with Iran, which Yassky seems rather too enthusiastic about), his support of predatory developers (184 Kent comes to mind), and a general disaffection, if that is the right expression, with an agenda that seems at odds with a district that is mainly poor and black. Yassky seems too close to power and too far from the people. If gentrification were made flesh, it would look remarkably like David Yassky.
That's not quite the material of which Democratic favorites are made. Perhaps the Post will take note.
