The New York Mayoral Race Has Become a Zoom Hell Intelligencer 2/22/2021 David Freedlander
By the 90th minute of the Staten Island Democratic Club’s Zoom mayoral forum, Richard Flanagan, a professor of political science at the College of Staten Island and the event’s moderator, was getting confused: Most of the candidates had already left, and the index cards he was using to ask them questions were now all out of order.
“The field has thinned,” he announced into his headset from his Bay Ridge home, trying to recover. “I’m told the winner will be the person who stays on until last.”
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In 2018, Staten Island native Lorie Honor introduced former Rep. Max Rose, then a first-time Democratic candidate for Congress, to communities across Staten Island. She fundraised for his campaign as his director of community outreach and helped build the volunteer base that eventually led to Rose’s upset victory. Progressive grassroots groups, including the one Honor helped co-found, Staten Island Women Who March, are considered by local Democrats as being instrumental to Rose flipping the Republican-held seat. (Rose lost the seat to Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis last year.)
Now, equipped with the experience of running a successful grassroots campaign for a novice candidate, Honor is trying to replicate the feat herself: she is running for Staten Island borough president, a position no woman has ever held – and no Democrat has either since 1989.