All U.S. congressional districts are holding elections in 2018 and a Ugandan has expressed interest in running for Congress in New York’s Ninth Congressional District which is located entirely within Brooklyn.
Mr Adem Bunkeddenko, a banker turned community organizer, is challenging incumbent Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clark for the Democratic nomination ahead of the elections slated for November 6, 2018.
The 29-year-old son of Ugandan immigrants who fled the country during the civil war of 1980 has, according to New Yolk Times, caught the attention of several politically powerful people in New York City, the most populous city in the United States.
Vernon Jordan, a leading American business executive and civil rights activist, who was chosen by President Bill Clinton as a close adviser and Politician Mr. Ravitch are among many local press say are supporting Mr Bunkeddenko’s candidacy for congress next year.
The incumbent Congresswoman whose mother was also in politics, has served New York since 2013. Her tenure has, according to the New York Times, gone undistinguished by any major legislation.
“It says something that in the most diverse, progressive, enlightened city anywhere, the political culture is so static,’’ Mr. Bunkeddeko told New York Times on Thursday. “I think there’s a tape delay from what people feel and what the political culture looks like.”
His Promise to the Electorate
Mr. Bunkeddeko is running with an aggressive agenda on housing, one that would support the creation not just of vaguely affordable rental apartments, but of routes to ownership for families making between $30,000 and $80,000 a year.
The program would rely on subsidies of the kind deployed during the Mitchell-Lama era that started in the ’50s.
“Adem has a voice and he has seen with his own eyes what is happening in this community,’’ Donna Mossman, a prominent tenants’-rights organizer in the community said, referring to constant evictions and displacement. “The more voices, the better,” she added.
His Story
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