Insurgent City Council Candidate Mawuli Hormeku continues to show signs of staying power in his challenge to unseat City Councilwoman Inez Barron ((D-Brownsville, Canarsie, East Flatbush, East New York, Jamaica Bay) in the Sept. 12 primary.
According to the latest public financing filings that the city’s Campaign Finance Board (CFB) posted today, Hormeku raised a healthy $22,160 and after spending $12,124 is left with $10,036, while Barron raised $27,869, spent $1,214 and has $26,655 plus a $5,000 debt in money she loaned herself for the campaign.
While it appears Barron outraised Hormeku, a closer look at the filing reveals that $17,600 of Hormeku’s fundraising is eligible for the maximum amount of $6-to-$1 matching dollars in the city’s public financing system, meaning the city will add $90,000 to his campaign war chest the first week of August.
Barron, on the other hand, only raised $8,850 in matching dollars and thus will only gain $51,100 in matching funds. So taking in this criteria, Hormeku will not only have more money to spend in the primary race against Barron, but has also shown grassroots strength in that the majority of the money he raised came in small and local donations.
“I call this Economic Karma, I’ve invested so much into my community that it only makes sense that they would want to invest in me,” said Hormeku.
While Inez Barron, along with her husband Assemblymember Charles Barron have long had a political stronghold in the East New York area of Brooklyn, their rein and old-school policy consisting of getting more money from government to fix social ills appears to be on the wane.
Hormeku is part of the new wave of young black professionals consisting of highly- educated and home-grown leaders returning to the neighborhoods which raised them, and making the case for community self-empowerment. This represents something of a paradigm shift away from the Barron’s fix or the social engineering fix that many progressive Democrats are embracing such as rezoning and forced school integration, which some argue leads to further gentrification.
Hormeku grew up in Brownsville’s Nehemiah homes, and went on to graduate from Brooklyn Tech, before earning both a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s of Education from Boston College, and a Masters in Educational Policy and Social Analysis from Columbia University. After traveling and working throughout the world he came back to Brownsville to give back to the community from which he came.
Hormeku’s platform consists of fostering change through social entrepreneurship built upon the ideas of Legacy, Ownership, Vocation and Education, an acronym for love. And between the roughly 2,200 signatures that Hormeku said he received to get on the ballot and his fundraising ability, his message looks like it’s getting through to voters.
“Clearly, raising more money then a political machine that has been in office for 20 years is an indication that there will soon be a big shift within Brooklyn’s political realm. I’m so grateful to be the new face of Black leadership in the City,” Hormeku said.
