Klein is the elitist in our midst

To the editor:

I received a remarkable campaign mailing from Jeff Klein that attacked Alessandra Biaggi for being endorsed by City Comptroller Scott Stringer and City Council President Corey Johnson, both Democrats.

Klein labeled them “Manhattan elite.” This attack is remarkable in several ways.

• Klein shows more energy and venom in attacking Democrats than attacking Republicans. He cuddled with Republicans for almost a decade, but attacks progressive Democrats. Very revealing of his true politics.

• Stringer is far from an elitist. He was born and raised in Bogardus Place in Washington Heights, and has always shown reverence for true reform Democrat egalitarian and anti-corruption values. 

When my husband and I lived in Washington Heights and organized a block association, we got solid support from Comptroller Stringer and his staff in our fight against garbage, unsafe pavements, open-air drug dealing and other nitty-gritty problems. I do not know so much about Johnson.

• In contrast with Comptroller Stringer, the group of Riverdale residents who fought for better Bx10 bus service could not even get an appointment with a staffer from Klein’s office, let alone Klein himself. 

He is the real elitist. Our group had gathered more than a thousand signatures on a petition to the MTA and our elected legislators, but we didn’t rate a meeting!

Six months after we sent two emails to Klein’s scheduler, we got an offhand response of essentially, “Oh, well, we forgot about you, but now we sort of remember.” By then, the petition had long since been sent to the MTA.

Klein deigned to add his signature to the cover letter after being contacted by the other two local legislators, but his staff snubbed the constituents who did the hard work.

Klein seems closer to Republicans, even Trump Republicans, than to real Democrats.

Deborah Wallace