The northern suburbs are swinging left but there\u2019s one last Republican stronghold where GOP officials still hold every government seat \u2013 a red town rowing right in a sea of blue.<\/p>\n
Leaders in the southern Westchester County town of Eastchester say they\u2019ve stayed Blue Wave-proof just a few miles from the Bronx by rejecting \u201cwokeism\u201d and embracing traditional values while some locals say they\u2019re perfectly happy in the right-leaning \u201cbubble.\u201d<\/p>\n
Town Supervisor Anthony Colavita cited a pro-police philosophy and fighting to keep taxes low as he offered advice for incoming New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n
Anthony Colavita, the re-elected town Supervisor of Eastchester Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as free lunch. You can\u2019t take from one group and give to another and not expect to have a problem,\u201d he told The Post. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou create dependency and you create resentment. We are directly the opposite of that. We are moving in opposite directions. Advice for him? He\u2019s not going to take it, but, it would be balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colavita has served at the helm for 22 years and he and his town board runningmates sailed to re-election this month after no Democrats stepped up to challenge them.<\/p>\n
The longtime pol, who is up for election every two years, last had an opponent in 2021, whom he beat by 2,312 votes or with 61% of the vote.<\/p>\n
Those results are eye-opening when considering Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in the county by more than 2-to-1 and there are now non-affiliated voters than there are GOP members, according to the local Board of Elections. Republicans have a registration advantage in just one town of the county\u2019s 19 \u2014 Somers, in the less densely populated northernmost tip of the county, the data shows.<\/p>\n
But Eastchester has remained dyed in the wool red even as Democrats surpassed Republicans within its borders five years ago \u2014 which includes the villages of Tuckahoe and Bronxville, each with their own municipal governments and local services. The town is surrounded by Democrat-dominated municipalities like New Rochelle and Mount Vernon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t bite on the political social issue of the day. When wokeism was rampant and DEI, and defunding the cops and all that stuff was all going on, we were impervious to that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could care less about that. We were all about continuing traditional values in Eastchester. Like supporting the police. Keeping Eastchester safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom of three Diane Lindemann loves living in Eastchester. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n
The GOP leader, who noted he hasn\u2019t had a raise since 2004, said even though the average property taxes for Eastchester households is around $20,000 yearly, which is mostly made up from school taxes, the increase from the town each is about four bucks per month next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to piss money away on some stupid program that some social idiot thought up down in Washington or Albany somewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t waste money.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added \u201cold school doesn\u2019t\u201d slam taxpayers.<\/p>\n
But Democratic leaders in the town and county scoffed at Colavita\u2019s chest-thumping \u2014 with town party Chairman John Filiberti saying a change taking effect next year that will move local elections to coincide with state and federal elections may keep the supervisor \u201cbusy next November.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI guess you could ask him to expand on what type of woke policies Eastchester Democrats have presented to him at Town board meetings,\u201d Filiberti said.<\/p>\n
The town of Eastchester remains a GOP stronghold. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n
County party chair Suzanne Berger argued Colavita\u2019s arguments presents a \u201cfalse\u201d dichotomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWestchester Democrats, like Eastchester residents, value responsible local government, public safety and civility,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemocrats emphasize affordability. If by \u2018woke,\u2019 the Supervisor means Democrats deplore the President\u2019s cut-off of SNAP benefits from 42 million Americans, so be it,\u201d she added in reference to the ongoing government shutdown and the repercussions. <\/p>\n
While Eastchester remains red, Westchester has only shifted more to the left over the last decade after President Trump won his first election in 2016. A Republican hasn\u2019t won a countywide race since 2013 and formerly Republican swaths in the lower half of the county like Harrison have become a more battleground town with two Republican-turned-Democrats appearing to win their town board races.<\/p>\n
Eastchester residents and business owners talked up their town\u2019s bearings and insisted the election of Mamdani in the Big Apple will lead to a flood of newcomers similar to when COVID ravaged the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur real estate prices are going to go through the roof! We thought we\u2019d see a surge of the wrong people during COVID but we didn\u2019t,\u201d said lifetime Eastchester resident, Rich, 46, as he got a haircut at Cuts R US.<\/p>\n
Eugenio Garofalo, 54, owner of The Pizza Shop. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019re going to get an influx of the right kind of people here in Eastchester because of Mamdani.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mother of three Diane Lindemann predicted housing values will double over the next five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like our bubble! Eastchester is like living in a bubble,\u201d she said. \u201cI lived in Manhattan in my twenties in Queens for a while, Douglaston, and then after we had my first son we moved back here in 2009.\u201d<\/p>\n
Resident Eugenio Garofalo, 54, who owns The Pizza Shop, admitted he doesn\u2019t know what effect the Mamdani mayorship will have in Eastchester, but knows the socialist darling isn\u2019t beloved in the town.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell you that,\u201d he said. \u201cAll Trump supporters here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The northern suburbs are swinging left but there\u2019s one last Republican stronghold where GOP officials still hold every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2132,57,9,56,63,65,64,2134,58,1628,10403],"class_list":{"0":"post-42128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-democrats","9":"tag-metro","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-ny","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-nyc-headlines","14":"tag-nyc-news","15":"tag-republicans","16":"tag-us-news","17":"tag-westchester-county","18":"tag-woke-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}