‘Greedy Jewish Landlords’ Candidate Loses Manhattan Primary
By Josh Nathan-Kazis September 13, 2017
Thomas Lopez-Pierre, the New York City Council candidate whose campaign focused around a condemnation of “greedy Jewish landlords,” lost in yesterday’s Democratic primary — but took a quarter of the vote on the way.
A longtime political provocateur with a years-long history of outrageous and offensive remarks, Lopez-Pierre aimed to unseat incumbent Mark Levine, who has represented parts of Harlem and uptown Manhattan since 2014.
Lopez-Pierre fell short, but despite his anti-Semitic rhetoric earned 3,000 votes to Levine’s 8,800.
“Thank you to the people of the 7th Council District for putting your faith in me again,” Levine tweeted Tuesday night. “#UnityWins #HateLoses”
Lopez-Pierre has not tweeted since polls closed.
Lopez-Pierre raised only $17,000 for his campaign, but received $99,000 from the city’s Campaign Finance Board. According to the Campaign Finance Board’s website, he had $59,000 left on primary day.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at nathankazis@forward.com or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
