In City Council slugfest for eastern Queens, NYC, Republican is first openly Pagan candidate

[HamdenRice]

This is one of the more colorful election contests in the City today. It pits Kevin Kim (D) against Dan Halloran (R).

The race is for the City Council seat that covers the neighborhoods of Bayside and Whitestone.

If you don't live in New York or even Queens, these names probably mean nothing. Basically Bayside and Whitestone are more affluent parts of this outer borough, and one of the few that remained mostly white longest in what is now the nation's most ethnically diverse county. Halloran is Irish-American, and Bayside is home to many Irish Americans, Jews, and Italian Catholics, as well as the new Asian immigrants.

Because of its affluence, upwardly mobile Asian Americans are moving in from neighboring working/lower middle class Flushing, the "Chinatown" (actually Pan-Asiantown) of Queens.

Kevin Kim is Korean American, and is clearly looking for the Asian vote to put him over the top (although elsewhere in the city, according to WNYC, a Korean American candidate and a Chinese American candidate are in a fierce battle to divy up the Asian American vote).

Halloran, an Irish American, has run a dog whistle campaign that talks about keeping Bayside the way it was and keeping out outsiders, and preventing it from becoming like "downtown Flushing."

In September, it got weird. The local Queens newspaper disclosed that Halloran was a practicing Pagan, and a 'First Atheling,' or King, of Normandy, a branch of the Theod faith of pre-Christian Heathens.

That probably wouldn't go over well in Alabama, but you have to keep in mind that Queens and even this city council district, has many citizens practicing Buddhism, Hinduism, Haitian Voodoo, Latin Santeria, as well as many denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. So Kim's attack on Halloran's paganism may actually have backfired.

In the huge park in this area, in the woods, I've come across many sites for animal sacrifices. This is not a typical "Christian" American electoral county.

On the other hand, Kim is suggesting that the particular kind of Norman paganism Halloran practices is associated with European white supremacy, and in fact Stormfront has endorsed Halloran, even though he obviously did not seek that endorsement.

Ya gotta love NYC politics.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/11/battle_in_baysi.php

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/09/pagan_rites_for.php

http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2009/09/24/queens/queensfchaizh09232009.txt

[Raineyb]

1. Keeping Bayside from looking like downtown Flushing?

(I've never really heard of Flushing referred to as downtown Flushing but I won't spend too much time considering that.) That's not a dog whistle that's a big ass ringing bell! Everyone knows that Flushing has a large Asian population. The only way this racist fuck-wit could have been more blatant if he were to say "keep Bayside white"

The fucking nerve of that Republican POS.

[HamdenRice]

2. The wiggle room is that Flushing has horrific congestion

and iirc, the reason it's a dog whistle and not out right racism is that he makes it sound like he is talking about development and congestion, not yellow people.

He claims that Kim's campaign is funded by "developers."