Hasidic New Yorkers Urged To Donate To De Blasio’s Struggling Campaign
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio greets a Jewish community member in Paris, January 20, 2015. Image by Chesnot/Getty Images
By Benjamin Gladstone August 8, 2019
Supporters of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s presidential campaign have been circulating a Yiddish-language donation request to help the struggling candidate qualify for next month’s debate, Politico reported Thursday.
The message called for 10,000 supporters to contribute $1 each to help de Blasio reach the debate’s qualifying threshold of 130,000 donors. As of the publication of this article, only 163 people have contributed via the Yiddish link, raising a total of $202. De Blasio has around 6,700 donors total.
The message is circulating in WhatsApp groups in the Satmar Orthodox sect, which has a large population in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Politico reported. De Blasio has a long history of ties to New York’s Satmar community.
The fundraising request claims that de Blasio had “personally asked” for the community’s support and implied that contributions would “support your needs [and] the entire ultra-Orthodox public,” according to Politico’s translation.
Benjamin Gladstone is an intern at the Forward. Contact him by email at gladstone@forward.com or on Twitter @bensgladstone
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