PicoBlog

Helen Qiu

Last week, I wrote about the uncanny similarities facing New York City's Jewish and Asian-American communities, and the need for the two groups to align politically to protect themselves and improve life in the city for everyone. Now, it turns out that one determined Chinese-American New Yorker saw that piece, agreed with it entirely, and just happens to be running for office in a district that's the perfect launching pad for creating this cross-ethnic partnership. Her name is Helen Qiu, (last name pronounced just like the letter "Q"), and I met with her in Lower Manhattan recently to hear more about her professional and personal story. 

Qiu came to the United States from China to complete her electrical engineering studies in the early 1990s and by all measures quickly became an immigrant success story. But even after securing high-paying tech jobs in Silicon Valley and a series of promotions, Qiu felt something was missing in her life. That was when she became a Christian and began down the path to being ordained as a pastor. 

But Qiu's journey hardly ended there, she told me she began to have a political awakening in 2015 when she realized the news media and others were deliberately twisting Donald Trump's words about illegal immigration and then many other issues. She was shocked to learn the facts about the massive human and drug trafficking operations at the border and wondered why the mainstream news media didn't only refuse to cover it, but pushed back so hard on Trump and others who insisted on making these threats an issue. She is now a Republican living in the Chinatown section of Manhattan, and has run for office twice already. This year she is running again, this time for a seat in the New York State Assembly from District 65. 

Qiu is already the founder of the Chinese-Jewish coalition in New York City, and she agrees that uniting these two voting blocs would create an unstoppable force in city and statewide politics. 

It turns out the demographics of this district, and what's currently taking place there are perfect for making a very effective statement from concerned Jewish and Asian-American (in this case, more specifically Chinese-American) voters. District 65 is made up of a critical mass of Chinese-American and Jewish voters who, if they banded together to support a candidate truly representing their interests, could do what some think is impossible: elect a Republican from Manhattan to the state assembly. 

Those interests are dominated this year by the massive influx of illegal migrants into New York, a large portion of which are being sheltered in District 65 in places like the historic landmark Hanbee Hotel, a move Qiu has publicly denounced in the name of the tens of thousands of legal immigrants in her district. This is just one small part of the migrant crisis engulfing the city that is threatening all of New York's social services and public safety resources and budgets. But despite the dire problems this migrant influx is causing, the city and state's Democrats from Governor Kathy Hochul down to Mayor Eric Adams refuse to demand or even ask the Biden administration to secure the southern border. These Democrats are asking for billions in federal funding to deal with this crisis regularly, but their political allegiances are precluding them from applying the pressure on the White House that's needed to hit this problem at its source. Even casual voters in New York City are beginning to see this reality very clearly. 

But the migrant crisis is just one reason why District 65 is a possible winning battleground in the fight to wrest New York City from its single-party stranglehold. Another key issue working to wake up more and more traditionally Democrat-voting Chinese and Jewish voters is the rise in street crime all over the city. The Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's blatant soft on street crime policies, even for some violent criminals.  have resulted in a predictably massive jump in crime and recidivism. Plus Qiu points out that with so many criminals being released by Bragg's office before they're even charged, which is artificially deflating the official crime stat numbers. 

Of course that spike in crime includes a rash of violent hate crimes disproportionately targeting Asian and Jewish New Yorkers, including Chinese and Jewish residents in District 65. Qiu makes the interesting point that Chinese and Jewish people are being targeted not only because of bigotry, but because so many of the Chinese and Jewish people walking the streets are elderly and physically smaller than others. Qiu also says her district is disproportionately targeted because businesses in Chinatown rarely take credit cards, and thus criminals know people on the streets in the area are more likely to be carrying cash. 

But regardless of the core reasons for this targeting, more and more New Yorkers are living in the kind of fear we haven't seen in this city since the 1980s. That fear and loathing of crime was precisely what led to the last great era for Republican candidates in New York, resulting in Republican Rudy Giuliani's election as mayor in 1993 and Republican George Pataki's election as governor one year later.

Qiu believes it will take more than fearing crime to get her and other Republicans elected this time around. She's concerned there aren't enough serious candidates, or even any Republican candidates at all, running as Republicans in the city. She also noted that many registered Republicans still aren't voting in local elections at all. 

Secondly, Qiu believes Jewish voters hold the keys for change in many city and state races. She noted that Lee Zeldin didn't get much of the Jewish vote despite the fact that he's Jewish. Since he lost the 2022 gubernatorial election to Hochul by just 377,000 votes, Qiu's assessment that Jewish voters could have easily tipped that election rings true.   

Stiil, Qiu does note the encouraging trend for Republicans when it comes to Jewish voters in New York. She says she noticed a lot more Jewish families coming out in support of her when she ran for the New York City Council in 2023. The results in that loss showed Qiu gaining 8 percentage points more than she earned in the 2022 New York Assembly race, so her impressions appear correct even though she still has a lot of ground to make up before she tries again for the Assembly seat in November. 

But Qiu realizes so much of this is about turnout. As Eitan Hirsch noted for Nate Silver's 538 website years ago, local elections in Democrat-run cities are run in ways that absolutely result in voter suppression for more conservative and Republican voters. Higher-earning corporate employees and small business people in major cities tend to miss local primary and even general election votes, especially in non-presidential election years. Qiu is hoping that the 2024 presidential race and the other factors threatening her district boost turnout among those more favorable voters this time.

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