Exclusive Interview: The Lubavitcher Running For NYC Council District 41

Lubavitcher and Remsen Village resident Yehuda Shaffer is a candidate for NYC Council District 41 in the upcoming election. He sat down with CrownHeights.info to discuss his campaign.

I am sure many people know you from your work as a Crown Heights Hatzalah volunteer, but I would imagine fewer know you as a fellow resident of Crown Heights/Remsen Village. Can you give us a quick snapshot of your past and how you came to live in Crown Heights?

My parents moved to Crown Heights when they got married in the 70s. I lived in Crown Height my entire life, except for a few years when I was abroad. Now I live in Remsen Village, just across the street from CH. I grew up on Montgomery St between Kingston and Albany, shopping at Rivki’s, learning at Oholei Torah, and davening at 770 with the Rebbe every Shabbos from the time I could walk.

Talking about Crown Heights, I want to clarify that I am running for City Council District 41, which is an area which borders Crown Heights from Utica down to Montgomery and then Troy all the way down. Most of central Crown Heights is City Council District 35. This election cycle District 35 will also have the opportunity to support one of our own, and I’m talking about Benny Rosenberger. While I can’t speak for him, I will venture to say that most of what I have said here, he’d agree with. 

From what I understand, you are hardly new to volunteering as we see with Crown Heights Hatzalah. What drew you towards volunteering and helping the Klal and how did it end up here, with you running for a NYC District Council seat?

For me, the role of city councilman can be used as a platform to help people, and get paid to do it full time. I was brought up to always think of others. It’s something I saw my parents do all the time, not in any official capacity or as part of any organization, but just being there for someone else was the thing to do. I don’t know if it’s by nature or nurture, but there are few things that give me more satisfaction than helping someone else. I see this as an opportunity to be there for others as a full time job.   

I am going to be honest here and ask the question that most people don’t know, and likely don’t know enough to care about. What does the NYC District Council Seat entail, what powers does the seat hold, and what responsibilities would you have should you get elected?

The city council is the legislative body of NYC, like Congress is for the USA, where they create bills and send them to the president to sign into law. On the city level, that is what happens with the city council and the mayor.

Each city councilperson is elected to represent one district. NYC is divided into 51 city council districts and each city councilperson is responsible for representing the interests of their district, for example, where to build jails or housing projects. A city councilperson is also an office where constituents can turn to for help navigating city agencies and accessing city services. Council members also have access to funding for local not-for-profit organizations. 

Probably the biggest responsibility or power, if you will, that the city council has is over the budget of NYC. In this capacity, the city council looks over the city budget as proposed by the mayor, makes recommendations, and conducts negotiations with the mayor to finalize how the city should spend money.

So based on that, what do you plan to accomplish should you be elected? What are you bringing to the table that others running for your seat aren’t?

I want to see the city stop ignoring the core productive middle class residents of this city, the class that gets up to go to work, the business owners and entrepreneurs, the taxpayers. In a city like ours, there is no end of special needs groups and minorities, but while we need to be supporting those groups and interests, it has to stop coming at the expense of the productive, working, tax-paying people. We need to do more to encourage people to be productive. We need to make it easier and incentivize people to get a job or open a business. When someone is weighing their options to either be productive by working, having a business and paying taxes, versus being unemployed and collecting government benefits, we need to make sure that working and paying taxes is the better choice and stop incentivizing unemployment. 

I am not sure you want to talk about this, but I am going to ask. Who are you running against and what do they stand for that you are opposing?

I’d like to say I’m not running against anyone rather running for a better NYC, but with the recent results of the democratic primary elections, I have to say that is something I’m running against. 

I’m running against keeping people poor and discontented just so you can win votes. I’m running against lawlessness. I’m running against entitlement at the taxpayers expense.

I’m running against normalizing radicalism.  

I know that this question may be hard to answer, and you may not even know, but what are your chances of winning? Can you provide some figures for us?

The moment my name appears on the ballot my chances of winning go from zero chance to a chance. For figures, I can tell you this: the incumbent city councilperson got 16,000 votes at the last citywide election in 2021. I need to reach out in a big way to convince more than that amount of people to vote for me. For that, I need to create clear concise messaging and disseminate that messaging to my voters. In other words, I need to campaign, and to do that I need funding. I need to raise $25,500 to fully fund my campaign. That’s approximately $20,000 more than I currently have.  

Realistically, what tangible changes do you think you can make for the community should you be elected? What expectations should we have, and what could the community be able to hold you accountable for should you win the seat?

Our community should have someone to call who will answer the phone when they run into problems. As citizens, our elected officials are accountable to the electorate, but accountability should come at the bare minimum price of every eligible voter going out and voting for what we need. Those who know me will attest that I’m there for my fellow man when called upon and can expect that to continue to be the case as an elected official.

As we close out, is there any message you would like to send to the community regarding the election?

You have to be in it to win it. For me, that means getting my name on the ballot and campaigning for votes. For everyone else, it means making sure you are registered to vote and actually voting! Today, more than ever before, every vote counts!

Go to Anashvote.com and register to vote. 

Go to https://contribute.nycvotes.org/campaigns/yehudashaffer/contributions/new and make a contribution to my campaign. I need 150 contributions of $175 to get fully funded. Be one of my 150.

Encourage others to do the same and make sure to come out on Nov 4th and vote!

Yehuda Shaffer can be contacted by email at shafferforcouncil@gmail.com