Unique | Inside the one Manhattan voting district that favored Trump within the 2024 presidential election: ‘It was a secure metropolis’

This slice of Gotham is seeing purple.

Only one district in Manhattan selected Donald Trump over Kamala Harris in final week’s election — changing into the primary within the borough to vote for a Republican presidential candidate in not less than a decade.

The only pro-Trump district in Manhattan consists of only one house advanced, Knickerbocker Village, a majority Chinese language-American reasonably priced housing improvement within the Two Bridges part of the Decrease East Aspect, which voted roughly 51% Trump to Harris’ 48%.

“All of us voted for Trump, I even donated to his marketing campaign,” Knickerbocker Village resident Shirley Tang informed The Put up Wednesday.

Public security, the economic system and the open use of medicine within the neighborhood have been a number of the largest points that lastly pushed the voting district at Knickerbocker Village – which overwhelmingly leaned blue in 2016 and 2020 – to the purple aspect of the political spectrum, a number of residents mentioned.

“There’s too many homeless, an excessive amount of medicine. My neighbor died final yr from a drug overdose – the hallways are stuffed with drug addicts and we are able to’t say something,” Tang, 50, mentioned.

“Our properties haven’t any security, our lives haven’t any security,” Tang added. “Persons are loopy and nobody will put them in a hospital … Nothing has been widespread sense, and with Trump successful we’re lastly going again to widespread sense.”

One other resident, Susan Dye, 60, additionally famous “the best way the town has modified below Democrats” as a purpose why greater than half of Knickerbocker Village voted Trump.

“It was a secure metropolis, and it’s not a secure metropolis anymore, and it’s like this everywhere in the nation,” Dye mentioned. “There isn’t a legislation anymore. Donald Trump is hard. He’ll carry the legislation again.”

In within the NYPD’s fifth precinct, which incorporates Knickerbocker Village and swaths of Chinatown, Little Italy and the Bowery, main crimes are up 8.6% in comparison with the identical time final yr, per NYPD information.

Subway crime was up 43.2%, petit larceny up 41.9%, theft up 39.6% and rape up a whopping 260%. On the similar time, burglaries have been down 12.6% and shootings are down by 57.1%, based on the police stats.

Residents in Knickerbocker Village additionally cited financial considerations of their reasoning for voting purple – together with a controversial pilot program by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration that gave migrants pre-paid debit playing cards to purchase groceries, and which is slated to finish after the town dropped $3.4 million.

“You know the way a lot I pay in taxes for the homeless, for unlawful immigrants? We now have homeless [people] everywhere in the Bowery, everywhere in the space, and we maintain them,” mentioned Knickerbocker Village resident Peter Chang.

“Individuals from South America, they get a lodge, they get a debit card to spend cash, they get medical,” added Chang, 72. “I don’t care who you vote for – I vote for myself.”

“Final time Trump was right here he made the economic system good, he made us secure, he made the borders safe,” chimed resident Tony Chung, additionally 72. “Kamala Harris was no good … She will’t reply something, besides to say, ‘President Trump’s no good.’”

Knickerbocker Village is the primary Manhattan voting district to vote for a Republican presidential candidate since not less than 2012, based on a Put up evaluation of election data.

Election districts in different boroughs – corresponding to components of Crown Heights, Bensonhurst, Fort Hamilton, Flushing, Little Neck, Richmond Hill and the west Bronx – additionally opted for Trump within the 2024 election, regardless of traditionally trending left.

The New York shift in the direction of Trump, who carried out almost 12 proportion factors higher statewide throughout Tuesday’s election than he did in 2020, needs to be a warning for the left, based on Democratic strategist Jake Dilemani.

“Issues like ‘defund the police’ or a number of the over-woke-ization of social points have been alienating to voters, a few of them who had traditionally voted Democratic,” he beforehand informed The Put up.

“I believe this election now, the place we proceed to see a lack of assist for Democratic candidates amongst black males and Hispanic males, East Asian voters, I believe that’s hopefully the ultimate get up name for Democrats,” Dilemani added.

“The surge didn’t occur in locations just like the Higher West Aspect or Park Slope. It occurred in … working class communities of coloration,” famous Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine in a Nov. 9 X submit. 

“If we don’t take heed to what these voters are telling us on public security, the economic system, housing, high quality of life and so on,” he mentioned, “then these votes usually are not coming again.”

Knickerbocker Village is repped by Democrats down the poll, together with Rep. Dan Goldman within the US Home of Representatives, and by state Assemblymember Grace Lee. state Sen. Brian Kavanagh and Metropolis Council member Christopher Marte

Residents’ considerations about homelessness got here almost two years after the mayor’s announcement of a pilot program to get mentally ailing folks off of the streets and into therapy applications – which has seen 1000’s of homeless New Yorkers checked into shelters to this point.

Adams introduced one other program final month, which is able to pair transit law enforcement officials with clinicians to help folks sleeping within the subway.

Although Metropolis Corridor has but to offer laborious information on migrant crime within the Large Apple, the citywide crime fee has remained comparatively flat since migrants from the border started arriving in 2022.

Requested whether or not he was nervous about Democrats dropping assist within the metropolis and state, Adams beforehand mentioned that “It doesn’t shock me.”

“This far left agenda that I’ve been speaking about for a very long time, the place we’re not specializing in working class folks … involved concerning the future for his or her households,” he mentioned throughout his weekly off-topic press convention Tuesday.

“Whenever you’re speaking about issues that aren’t impacting them, how do I get the MetroCard? How do I guarantee that I can put meals on the desk? These are actual points. And so once you’re not speaking about these actual points, then it doesn’t shock me that individuals are saying, hear, you’re not talking on my behalf anymore.”