Adolfo Carrion, the former Bronx borough president, said he is running for mayor of New York City as an independent because “my beloved community has been loyal to the Democratic Party for 50, 60 years and the question is are we better off?”
“The unfortunate resounding answer is no,” Carrion told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV. “There are people trapped in poverty because they have become dependent on an outside agent. There are crutches that we have allowed people to lean on for beyond their useful life.
Story continues below.
“You need temporary help, but when you have generation after generation living in housing projects that were built for transitional steps in the economy, then you have a problem.”
Carrion, who hopes to seek the backing of the Republican Party, faces a crowded field of candidates to succeed three-term Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
They include Democratic City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who hopes to become the first female and first openly gay mayor to lead the nation's largest city, and Republican candidate Joseph Lhota, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
“We need to offer the voters a third voice and a third way and that's why I became an independent,” Carrion told Malzberg. “We're experiencing paralysis at the local level.”
He said he left his position as a regional director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama because of Obamacare.
“There was a split between the folks who said we've got to only do healthcare and that's the legacy piece versus we're entering a potential second Great Depression, let's rescue the economy; it's the economy, stupid,” he said. “And the healthcare folks won.
“At the end of the day, I said to the president: ‘I'm coming back home because all politics is local. I've got to go take care of my city, my beloved city.’ That's how I ended up coming back — and I'm glad I did.”
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.