For a man whose next door neighbors and some good friends are Bangladeshi Muslim and Mexican immigrants, 44th Assembly District candidate Glenn Nocera is hardly your typical right-wing Republican running for a seat in highly Democratic Kings County.
Nocera will be running against the winner of the Democratic Primary for the District seat. Robert “Bobby” Carroll, Troy Odendhal and Robert Curry-Smithson are running against each other to be the Democratic candidate for the seat left vacant by the recent retirement of longtime Assemblyman James Brennan. The Democratic Primary is on September 13.
But for Nocera, a hardcore Donald Trump supporter, chair of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, president of the Brooklyn Tea Party and Republican District leader for the 44th Assembly District he sees the open seat as an opportunity to represent his neighbors and their concerns in Albany.
“Because I live in a mixed (immigrant) neighborhood, I know their concerns. A lot of them are homeowners and they worry about property taxes and water bills going up. They also have concerns about law and order, and they are hard workers. Many are small business owners and they don’t want the state to nickel and dime them for every tax and fee imposed on small business,” said Nocera. “That’s why I’m for school choice. A lot of my neighbors send their children to religious schools and they need (tax credits) vouchers. That would be fine with me to ensure kids are properly educated. People have choice when it comes to abortion, how about choice for education?”
As a Trump supporter, Nocera says he believes in legal immigration, but doesn’t agree with the way Democrats tend to feel we should have an open door policy.
“Immigration should be based on our needs and not have people come here illegally. That’s like a slap in the face to the people who pay thousands of dollars to be here as legal immigrants. That’s the wrong message to send to law-abiding immigrants,” said Nocera. “We want legal people and of course our country was built on immigration, but at the end of the day they have to follow the laws of the land.”
Nocera said what Trump is saying is to place a temporary ban on Syrian refugees because we don’t know who they are and ISIS themselves stated they will infiltrate refugees from Syria.
“My next door neighbor is from Bangladesh and he visited my (late) father when he was in the hospital. We move each others cars when we’re not home and help each other out. At the end of day if you come legally I don’t care what you are, but terrorism is a real thing and you can’t be blind to that. We have to make sure our citizens are protected and that includes our Muslim citizens.”
Regarding police shootings around the country, Nocera said that the leadership of this country had failed us.
“I feel it is a sad commentary that people feel they need to target police officers. The leadership of this our country has failed us in race relationships because all we see in the news media today is politicians and media fanning the flames of racial division,” said Nocera.
Nocera works as a campus police officer at Brooklyn College, and an Auxiliary Police Sergeant for the 66th Police Precinct. He is also something of a neighborhood historian and aficionado who runs an extremely entertaining Facebook Group page, Kensington Brooklyn NY, which has 1,600 members.
The district includes Windsor Terrace and Kensington with considerable chunks of Park Slope, Greenwood Heights, Borough Park, Flatbush and Ditmas Park.
