'He needs Hasidic voters': Mayor Adams' campaign gambit on a Brooklyn bike lane
A legal battle over a three-block-long bike lane in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood has become a central issue in Mayor Eric Adams’ re-election campaign.
The mayor in June ordered the transportation department to move the newly installed bike lane on Bedford Avenue between Willoughby and Flushing avenues away from the curb, where cyclists are protected by parked cars, and into the middle of the street. The directive now sits in limbo after a state appellate judge temporarily blocked the move on Tuesday.
Critics of the mayor chastised it as a political move aimed at garnering political support from Hasidic Jewish voters in South Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant, who have protested cycling infrastructure for decades, citing concerns over safety as well as a general preference to give cars priority on streets in their area. It comes as Adams, who skipped the Democratic primary in June and plans to run on a ballot line in November called either “Safe&Affordable” or “EndAntisemitism,” rushes to build a coalition large enough to compete in the general election.
“ The mayor needs Jewish voters, he needs Hasidic voters. He's squaring off against [former Gov.] Andrew Cuomo, who did really well with Hasidic voters during the primary, he's obviously squaring off against [Zohran] Mamdani, who did not do as well with Jewish Hasidic voters,” said Chris Coffey, CEO of the political consulting firm Tusk Strategies who worked on several campaigns, including ones for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Yang. “He's looking to use this as one of the issues that galvanizes support.”
https://gothamist.com/news/he-needs-hasidic-voters-mayor-adams-campaign-gambit-on-a-brooklyn-bike-lane