#Jewish vote up for grabs in 2021 NYC mayoral race

The chosen people still haven’t chosen their candidate.

As the 2021 New York City mayor’s race heats up, Jewish voters — one of the most coveted voting bloc in city politics — have yet to settle on a favored candidate for the June 22 primary.

“People first of all can’t stand de Blasio. They think he’s terrible. People here think de Blasio doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Zalmen Hertz, a brash 24-year-old Rabbi from Bensonhurst told The Post, saying it was one of the few things about the race which everyone he spoke to could agree on.

New York City has about 1.5 million Jewish residents, by far the largest population of Jews in the United States. While it’s impossible to say for sure how many are registered to vote, one study from PrimeNY estimated that up to 14 percent of city voters were Jewish, with more than 60 percent of them registered Democrats and thus eligible to vote in the city’s closed primary.

“The race is wide open,” Rabbi Chaim Zwiebel, Executive Vice President of the nonprofit Agudath Israel of America told The Post. Zwiebel said that city comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams’ name recognition gave them an early edge, but that it was still anyone’s game.

“People are starting to pay attention,” Zwiebel said. “Just because they have name recognition doesn’t mean they will emerge as the candidate of choice in our community.”

Agudath Israel, an advocacy organization which made headlines earlier this year for suing Governor Cuomo over COVID-19 restrictions on houses of worship, has been holding candidate forums for eager contenders over Zoom. Banker Ray Maguire and Adams have already spoken. Former Blaz counsel Maya Wiley and newcomer Andrew Yang are on deck soon.

Many Jewish voters — particularly the more conservative-leaning Orthodox and Hasidic in Brooklyn — tend to vote in blocks, amplifying their political power.

In 2013, the last competitive Democratic primary, Orthodox Jewish voters largely backed William C. Thompson Jr. who had the backing of many local community leaders.

The 2021 candidates have taken notice. Andrew Yang — whose personal stance against circumcision made waves in local Jewish media — was out with a forceful op-ed last week in which he promised to get tough on anti-Semitic hate crimes and stand against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which he declared was “rooted in anti-Semitic thought and history.”

On the far left side of the spectrum, Maya Wiley hosted a fundraiser with the National Council of Jewish Women in October.

Stringer is the only major Jewish candidate in the race, but community leaders said that wouldn’t be enough for discerning voters. Stringer’s calls to gut police spending amid rising anti-Semitic violence have been noted. There’s also his public chumminess with Al Sharpton, who is still regarded as persona non grata in parts of Crown Heights for his role in inciting deadly riots there in 1991.

Adams meanwhile has spent years courting Brooklyn’s Jews as borough president, leading a delegation to Israel in 2016 and denouncing efforts by the city’s Democratic Socialists to ostracize pro-Israel politicians.

“I encourage every New Yorker to visit Israel and other places important to understanding the cultures essential to the history of people in our great city,” he said in August. On Friday he rolled out 200 endorsements from NYC clergy, which included an influential clutch of city rabbis.

Jewish leaders like Councilman Chaim Deutsch said in the end, it would ultimately come down to the issues, including a plan to fight anti-Semitism in New York, maintaining strong ties with Israel, affordable housing and security for schools and synagogues.

“We are looking for the person who will bring New York back to normal, take down crime, and let us open our businesses,” Herz said. “We’re not looking for anything crazy.”