Oy, vey!
Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich stumped in Borough Park on April 12, trying to win a over a niche voting bloc that could deliver outsized aid in Tuesday’s Republican primary, but locals said he’ll probably get bupkis. The moderate governor visited a Judaica shop, a matzoh factory, and a school for autistic children, but he faces an uphill battle against Republican rivals in right-leaning Borough Park, according to one neighborhood politico.
“The registered Republicans are more for Cruz and Trump, they feel like Kasich has some liberal views — the people around here who are Republican sort of go all the way,” 18-year-old Moshe Rubin said.
And Borough Park Republicans have a big influence. The party awards primary delegates to candidates based on the percentage of votes they win in individual Congressional districts. The 10th Congressional District stretches from Gravesend to Harlem, and was home to a little more than 52,000 registered Republicans in 2012 — many in Borough Park, according to a 2012 WNYC analysis.
If frontrunner Donald Trump fails to win 50 percent of Republicans in the district and Kasich manages to come in second with more than 20 percent himself, he walks into the party convention with a precious extra delegate he can use to negotiate for a nomination as the party candidate in the general election.
And every vote will matter during Tuesday’s primary — only 608 Republicans living in the congressional district voted in the last contest in 2012, Board of Elections data shows.
If statewide polls reflect the sentiment in Borough Park’s district, Kasich only needs to pull some voters from Trump or Cruz to win that delegate — he is polling at 21 percent to Cruz’s 18 percent, while Trump sits at a comfortable 54 percent.
But those polls did not seem to reflect reality underneath the el on New Utrecht Avenue on Tuesday afternoon, where many voters said they liked Kasich, but preferred either one of his rivals for their own reasons. Another young voter who came out to meet Kasich said he thinks he will vote for Cruz — who recently stumped at a Brighton Beach matzoh factory — because he can beat Trump at a contested Republican convention in July.
“Ted has a better shot against Trump — Kasich has good foreign policy and the experience, but people see he only won one state and don’t think he can win, I think those early defeats did him in,” Shimuel Einhorn said.
