Not all Dominicans will vote for countryman in NYC searing battle

New York.- Many Dominicans registered to vote in Tuesday’s Democratic primaries will not cast their ballot for Adriano Espaillat because in their view their countryman neither favors their community when he should have nor Dominicans who seek the city’s elected posts.

The results are from a poll carried out in the sectors Washington Heights, Morningside Heights, Harlem, Inwood, East Harlem and part of the Bronx in upper Manhattan along the streets of Saint Nicholas, Broadway, Amsterdam, Dyckman and Sherman, 181st, 204th and 207th, Kingsbridge and Bedford Park and part of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Many of those polled say Espaillat, currently a NY State assemblyman, reminds people that he’s Dominican only when he’s a candidate during an election.

Quoted by elnuevodiario.com.do, some of those polled say when the community most needs his vote Espaillat doesn’t support them and when another Dominican launches a bid for a city post, “he acts against them as the worst of traitors.”

They said in 1992 Espaillat supported Puerto Rican Bill Alicia over Dominican Julio Hernández for a seat in New York’s Assembly; against Dominican Manny Lantigua’s bid to Manhattan’s District Council 7 in 2009; against Dominican Manny Taveras’ bid for the State Senate In 2010, and voted against Dominican judge Rolando Acosta for a New York State Court of Appeals bench that same year.

During the 2012 elections for Dominican Deputies Overseas, Espaillat said he neither supported any of the candidates nor gets involved in Dominican politics.

“As it’s his custom to vote against Dominicans, Espaillat condemned the recent Constitutional Court ruling on Dominican nationality,” the outlet said, and quoted Julio César Malone, a prominent a Dominican journalist based in New York, who recently said the lawmaker should be rebuked for being “the most damaging, toxic, perverse and corrosive Dominican” since the dictator Rafael Trujillo. “He doesn’t represent Dominicans and never supports any Dominican.”