Yungman Lee, a banking executive and Former First Deputy Banking Superintendent in Mario Cuomo Administration, this week announced he is running against 12-term incumbent Rep. Nydia Velazquez in the June 26, 2016 Congressional Democratic Primary.
If successful, Lee will become the borough’s first Asian-American elected to a paid government office. Currently, Brooklyn has only one Asian-American holding elective office and that is 47th Assembly Democratic District Leader Nancy Tong in an unpaid political leadership position.
The district cuts Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn and includes the borough’s most populous Asian-American neighborhood, Sunset Park, as well as lower Manhattan’s Chinatown. Other Brooklyn neighborhoods in the district include Bushwick, Red Hook, Vinegar Hill, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Greenwood, DUMBO, Cobble Hill and parts of Park Slope.
“The 7th Congressional District, unique in New York City because it includes three of our five wonderful boroughs, is deeply diverse, and deserves better representation than it’s been getting,” said Lee in an emailed statement. “Conversations about needing a new member of Congress began years ago in our Asian American communities in Chinatown and Sunset Park, then connected with similar frustrations in other neighborhoods of the 7th, including Woodhaven, Red Hook, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn Heights, and Park Slope.”
Lee said while he shares many of the same Democratic Party views as Velazquez, he feels she has been running on “low-energy autopilot” for many years.
“She sees the district as she wants it to be, not as it is, and counts on the relative affluence of some of the neighborhoods in the 7th to gloss over what they’ve been missing,” said Lee. “Over the next many months I’ll detail my vision and qualifications, and the incumbent’s shortcomings”
Lee said he came to America with his family at 16, first leaving China for Hong Kong, and then to New York.
“I attended Columbia University during the time of anti-war protests, and then New York University Law School. I led a Community Health Clinic, practiced law at large established firms, and started a successful community law practice,” he said. “I’ve turned around troubled banks, and regulated financial institutions in crisis. I choose to be a community banker to make positive contributions to area families and businesses. Now I’m choosing a new path of public service for our communities.”
Lee has also hired the wily political consultant Michael Tobman, whose resume includes a three-year stint with U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, to run his campaign. Additionally, Tobman was the Communications Director for Grace Meng’s successful 2012 Congressional Primary & General Elections in Queens
“We expect that the entire political establishment in Washington DC, Albany, and City Hall will endorse the 23-year incumbent, it’s what happens. But everyone who does so should remember that the entirety of New York’s Asian-American communities will be carefully following this race. The incumbent will run the campaign she believes appropriate, and Yungman will run his,” said Tobman.
“The incumbent counts on being a certain brand rather than a hard worker. She trumpets votes in Washington that dozens of her colleagues also took rather than stand-alone efforts at home. Velazquez has become a textbook example of having become ‘too comfortable in DC,” he added.
