City Council Member Christopher Marte (photo: William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit)

---

Four Democratic candidates, including the incumbent, are running in the City Council District 1 primary election this year, set to culminate on June 27. One Republican contender has declared for the race as well, at this point ready to await the Democratic primary winner for the general election to follow in what is a heavily Democratic Lower Manhattan district.

All 51 City Council seats are on the ballot again this year, just two years after the prior election due to the decennial redistricting cycle after the Census.

The 1st Council District is home to one of what could be around a dozen particularly competitive races this year, whether in the primary or the general. The district includes parts or all of Battery Park City, the Financial District, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Seaport, SoHo, TriBeCa, the Lower East Side, Governors Island, Ellis Island, and Liberty Island.

Christopher Marte, the district’s current City Council member, ran for the seat in 2017 and narrowly lost his Democratic primary challenge to the incumbent at the time, Margaret Chin. In 2021, Chin was term-limited from running again and Marte won a crowded and competitive race.

The district is racially and economically diverse — its roughly 177,000 residents, per the 2020 Census and Redistricting and You: New York, is 44.9% white, 32% Asian, 13.4% Hispanic, and 4.8% Black.

The primary will include in-person early voting, from June 17 through June 25, and absentee balloting is available, on top of in-person voting on primary day, June 27. The primary will use ranked-choice voting, a feature first introduced in the city in 2021 for city-level primary and special elections whereby voters are allowed to rank up to their top five choices in order of preference and an “instant runoff” occurs if no candidate gets more than 50% of the first-choice votes upon initial tally. (Marte won the 2021 primary after receiving 39.4% of the initial first-place votes.)

New voters can register through June 17.

Apart from incumbent Marte, the candidates in the June Democratic primary include Susan Lee, a nonprofit grant writer and the founder of a community alliance group; Ursila Jung, a private investor and a member of the local Community Education Council; and public school teacher Pooi Stewart.

Helen Qiu, a Christian pastor and former electrical engineer who sits on the same education council as Jung, is the lone declared Republican candidate in the race.

Gotham Gazette spoke with the candidates about their top priorities leading up to the primary.

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board website, the total amount raised by each candidate from private fundraising and the city’s public matching program as of June 11 were: $262,918 for Marte; $213,638 for Lee; and $187,473 for Jung. Stewart is no longer listed on the website due to a compliance error, according to her, and her campaign website has been taken down, but she confirmed that she is still running. Qiu had $8,365.

District Issues
COVID-19 hit the district especially hard even beyond the health impacts, particularly the many Asian-owned small businesses, and the xenophobic reaction among many to the Chinese origins of the coronavirus. Business closures, hate crimes, and other problems have festered, though many New York officials and advocates have sought to aid the area, particularly Chinatown.

The district has also been embroiled in a yearslong dispute over the planned construction of a new jail in Chinatown, part of the borough-based jails program that aims to close the Rikers Island jail complex by 2027. The fight over the jail continues to be a major local issue, and even though all the candidates are opposed to its construction, it is a key issue on the campaign trail.

Located along the southern coastline of the Manhattan peninsula and hit especially hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012,  Council District 1 is also home to several environmental resiliency projects, including the Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resilience project, located in the Two Bridges neighborhood.

Other top issues include education policy, small business recovery, hate crimes against Asian-Americans and other public safety concerns; homelessness, affordable housing, and development writ large; the future of under-occupied Lower Manhattan office and commercial space, neighborhood quality of life issues like the proliferation of smoke shops that sell marijuana illegally, and more.

When Marte won the seat in 2021, his platform included pursuing affordable housing while limiting overall development and following community-led land-use policies; mitigating climate change; and supporting small businesses. He also ran on opposing the demolition of the existing Lower Manhattan jail and replacing it with a new, larger jail as part of the borough-based jails plan.

Given the affordable housing crisis in the district, Marte has faced criticism for his stance against virtually any new development, though he has received major support from district residents who oppose new housing and most construction. The SoHo/NoHo Neighborhood Plan, which was heavily contested in the district, was approved in late 2021, and will add additional housing to the area, including some units with income-based rent restrictions.

Marte has also faced criticism from other candidates for his stance on policing, in which he has supported efforts to move some funding from the NYPD to social services and he has questioned aggressive police tactics. As he’s branded soft-on-crime in the race, Marte maintains that he does not want to “defund the police,” but rather has remained focused on directing attention and resources toward community organizations that do work to complement the NYPD, including city agencies and local nonprofits. Unlike several members who left, Marte did remain in the Council’s Progressive Caucus as it passed a platform including a commitment to pursue reduced funding for the NYPD and Department of Correction in order to better fund social services.

Christopher Marte
Marte, the Democratic incumbent, is in the midst of a number of legislative pushes a little over a year into his City Council tenure. He continues to advocate for passage of a bill to end the 24-hour workday for home care workers and said he is in conversation with the union representing those workers and the Council Speaker’s office. Marte hopes to push the bill through this year, ending a practice he called “modern day slavery” that home attendants have been organizing against for many years.

He has also introduced a package of bills this year, working with Council colleagues, to add additional lighting to and increase the minimum height of New York City scaffolding structures required as part of building construction projects. He said one of the bills, which enforces a more stringent scaffolding removal timeline when construction projects lag, was an attempt to tackle “structures that always seem to go up but never seem to come down.”

Marte was born in District 1, and was raised by working-class parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic. He attended public school on the Lower East Side, and worked in finance at IBM before time as an immigration law researcher and at the political training academy, ARENA. He attended St. Agnes Boys High School on the Upper West Side before earning a bachelor’s degree from Long Island University’s Global College program.

In his reelection bid, Marte has endorsements from a growing number of political and community organizations and fellow elected officials, including the Downtown Independent Democrats, Planned Parenthood of Greater NY, Stonewall Democrats of NY, the United Federation of Teachers, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, the New York League of Conservation Voters, PSC-CUNY, the Council of School Administrators, the Grand Street Democrats, the Village Reform Democrats, the Local 28 Sheet Metal Workers, Voters for Animal Rights, the Village Independent Democrats, NYIC Action, and the New York City Asian-American Democratic Club, along with Assemblymembers Charles Fall, Ron Kim, and Grace Lee. (Notably, Marte has not been endorsed by any of his City Council colleagues or fellow Manhattan elected officials other than Lee.)

“We’ve done a lot this first year,” Marte told Gotham Gazette in a March interview. “We've been delivering on our promise that we made to voters in 2021 of what we're going to do in this district, and I think they've seen firsthand, both on the streets or in our office, how we've been able to serve them. We’re here to serve our community and represent our community. And that's why we're excited about this campaign, to continue to engage with voters, to let them know how they can interact with the government and that we're there for them. It’s definitely been an honor of my life to do this.”

Marte’s leadership has been under some fire. Earlier this year, Steven Wong, a top aide in Marte’s office, left angry voicemails filled with misogynistic language toward a reporter. Initially, the staffer remained employed, and Marte said the actions were not “unforgivable.” He later said he could not take action until an investigation was complete, saying “I wish.” In late March, Wong resigned. Marte declined to comment on the incident during his interview with Gotham Gazette, referring back to a statement released by his office following the aide’s resignation.

“I hope this decision can bring healing to those who were hurt by his actions,” Marte said in the statement, first made to the New York Daily News.

Combating climate change and its effects on District 1 is a top priority, Marte says, pointing to resiliency projects across the Lower Manhattan coastline. He did run in opposition, though, to the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, arguing that it included unnecessary temporary destruction of East River Park. He has called for bike lane expansions, allocated funding for the planting of more trees, celebrated the opening of two district parks, and allocated funding to rehab another, Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side. Marte worked in 2022 to launch the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge-Montgomery Coastal Resiliency (BBMCR) project, meant to reduce flooding — construction is ongoing. Marte called the project “a model of what can be done,” and said he is working on furthering the progress of similar projects in northern Battery Park City and TriBeCa.

“The community was involved from the very beginning, we worked with all the agencies to make sure that there will be space to use the waterfront throughout construction,” Marte said of BBMCR, with apparent implicit reference in contrast to the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project. “And once we kicked it off, there was no protest. There was no advocacy against it. It went, and it's still going, without a hitch.”

As city budget negotiations unfold between Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council, Marte said he disagrees with many of the “austerity-type” measures the Adams administration is taking and proposing, like cutting funding to libraries, schools, and parks. He wants to see a focus on maintaining funding, agency staffing, and maintaining key infrastructure.

“That's where my focus is for the next few months, to make sure that we have a budget that represents our values as a city, and that doesn't undermine some of the most vulnerable people in our communities,” Marte said.

Marte has faced some criticism for his approach to housing, largely opposing new development.

“I don't believe in trickle-down housing,” Marte said. “What we need is deeply affordable housing that’s reflective of the communities that are there now. I'm not against development — I'm against developments that aren't for working-class people in our community.”

Preserving affordable housing and advocating for zoning favored by many long-time district residents have been at the top of Marte’s list of priorities during his 2023 campaign. During his time in office so far, he has sued the city over plans to build four luxury towers on Lower Manhattan’s coast and bolstered the Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan, which aims to fight displacement in the district. He has also allocated over $1 million toward NYCHA housing, he said. Marte is among the officials and advocates fighting for 5 World Trade Center to be built as 100% affordable housing. And he continues to fight against the construction of the Chinatown jail — instead, he is advocating for adaptive reuse of the current Lower Manhattan jail to still allow for Rikers Island to close by 2027.

“We've been working with world-renowned architects and advisors to tell the city that they can't physically do this at these sites. And we're going to keep on pushing — we've been pushing so hard that nothing has happened at the Chinatown site compared to the three other sites…We think it's a win-win-win for our city, for the community, and for the people who will be detained there.”

On public safety and policing, an issue that has been front of mind for many in the district, Marte pushed back against his opponents’ claims that he is in favor of ‘defunding’ the police department.

“I think they're just trying to use that narrative to push a conservative agenda in our district,” Marte said. “We worked with all the community stakeholders in our district to make sure that our neighborhood is much safer — whether that’s city agencies, local nonprofits, and, as the mayor shows, crime has been going down citywide, and so I think we have been seen some good responses or some good metrics on the work that's being done on a local level and a citywide level.”

Instead, Marte says he is focused on preventing crime by funding organizations that work in complement to the NYPD on issues like mental health care, affordable housing, and community relations. Education plays a role in this prevention too, he said. He also emphasized providing support to those who have already been affected by crime and public safety issues by providing them with housing, social services, and anything else they may need to recover after a crime or trauma has occurred.

Marte said that schools in his district are underfunded and understaffed, and advocated for increasing teachers’ salaries (which has since happened through a deal announced in June between the city and the teachers union). In response to a question about testing requirements in city schools, Marte said he’s primarily focused on securing more robust funding.

“For me, if our schools are not modern and functioning, if our kids don't have the resources like textbooks, then we're not serving these kids to be the best that they can be,” Marte said. “I think we have to put our money where our mouth is.”

In answering the city’s official voter guide through the New York Campaign Finance Board’s NYC Votes program, Marte identified his top three issues as stopping the “displacement crisis,” putting an end to “sweatshop” working conditions in the city, and enforcing “responsible environmental resiliency plans."

In the voter guide, he also emphasized the importance of supporting small businesses in reducing the cost of living and promoting economic resilience. He added that he believes “reproductive health care is a human right,” and said he’s done work in partnership with Planned Parenthood during his term to ensure patients can more easily access reproductive care.

Susan Lee
Lee, who immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong with her parents at the age of 6, grew up on the Lower East Side, and attended public schools. She graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School before earning her bachelor’s degree from Barnard College and her master’s from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She ran for the same seat in the more crowded 2021 Democratic primary, gaining 7.8% of the initial first-place votes.

She has worked at and founded multiple nonprofit community service organizations and has done community development and international public finance work, writing grants for nonprofit organizations. She founded the Nomi Network, advocating to end modern-day slavery, and the Alliance for Community Preservation and Betterment, which works out of Chinatown to bolster community services and quality of life in the area.

Lee told the city’s official voter guide from NYC Votes that her top priorities are protecting communities from crime, improving the quality of schools, and providing economic opportunities for constituents.

In addition to calling for more public school funding, Lee supports keeping the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test as the sole admissions criteria to the city’s specialized high schools. She also wants to expand gifted and talented programs, allowing more students to enter the program at an increased number of entrance points. A student who participated in an earlier iteration of a gifted and talented program herself, Lee lauded New York City Mayor Eric Adams for his expansion of the program, a move that came after Mayor Bill de Blasio had put the city on a path to replacing the program with a universal school enrichment model.

“I know that public schools can be great — we just need to invest in it,” Lee said in an interview with Gotham Gazette. “I do believe in the gifted and talented program. For a lot of kids whose families are low income or immigrant families, this is their path to success, their pathway out of poverty.”

Lee’s campaign also places heavy emphasis on seniors, a group she called “the life and labor of love for the community.” She aims to  collaborate with the city’s Department of Aging, fund retirement communities, and expand affordable senior housing.

“They built the community that they raised their families in, and I want to make sure that they can retire in place and not get displaced due to rising costs in our city,” Lee said.

On affordable housing, she is also advocating for the renovation of commercial spaces into residential, affordable housing, a practice she saw in action after the devastation of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. This, she said, will allow the city government to tackle affordable housing “head on.”

Lee said that though she supports providing shelter services to homeless individuals, the Lower East Side and Chinatown have become oversaturated with such facilities.

“It goes back to providing robust social services, be it mental health, drug addiction, substance abuse — it's all hands on deck,” Lee said. “We need to not just provide housing — I think housing is important — but we need to provide wraparound services to be more of a holistic approach to tackling the issue of homelessness.”

Public safety and community policing are a top priority for Lee, who said she has heard from constituents that many do not feel safe within the bounds of her district. She criticized Marte’s approach to the issue, saying he is advocating to reduce the size and scope of the NYPD.

Lee said this is part of how Marte leans farther left politically than much of the district’s constituency, and that she is campaigning on a more moderate platform.

“There are issues and the constituents are not getting the services they need from their Council member,” she said. “But also, at the same time, when you look at the incumbent, he is toeing the line of [Democratic Socialists of America] ideology, which is not reflective of the desire and the need of our constituents. So that begs the question: Who will he advocate for? Is it for the political ideology or really the needs of our constituents in the district who actually do want safer streets and quality of life being addressed?”

Lee wants improved public safety in the district through more focus on taking illegal guns off the streets and shutting down illegal smoke shops that have proliferated in the district and beyond in recent months after the state’s legalization of adult-use of marijuana. She claimed that she has even seen smoke shops opening across the street from schools in her district, and said she testified in a recent City Council oversight hearing about the businesses. The candidate wants to see increased fines related to the selling of unlicensed cannabis products because of the danger she says they present to youth in the district, and to the violence she claims they attract.

“I think that we need to hit these illegal smoke shops in the pocketbook, where it hurts,” Lee said, a move that is already in the works via state- and city-level efforts after public outcry.

Another of Lee’s public safety priorities involves a focus on community policing and reform that is informed by the needs of both the NYPD and the community, she said, though she did not go into specifics. She is advocating for increased funding for NYPD training programs, as well as more support toward the recruitment and retention of officers.

“There needs to be a sense of not being afraid of police officers — police officers aren't the enemy,” Lee said. “I think that that's been a lot of the narrative that's out there. We need to be able to have police officers to do the job that they're equipped to do. And we need to make sure that they are doing it properly without violating residents’ civil rights.”

She expressed support for changes to the state’s bail reforms, ensuring more alleged offenders, especially alleged repeat offenders, can have bail set in their cases and potentially be jailed pre-trial.

Lee also took issue with Marte’s handling of his staff member, Wong, making misogynistic comments toward a reporter earlier this year, and wrote an op-ed calling on Marte to fire him. Though the top aide resigned less than 48 hours after the article was published, Lee stands by her claim that Marte “failed a big leadership test.”

“Chris could have and should have taken the immediate steps to put him on leave,” Lee said. “And then, if the claims were verified, which they have been, he should have fired him immediately. I would have done that as a Council member. There is zero tolerance for that kind of behavior in an elected official’s office in any capacity, especially when dealing with misogynistic language. So the buck stops with Christopher Marte, and he failed to lead in that instance.”

According to her campaign website, Lee has gained endorsements from several major labor unions and advocacy organizations, including the powerful District Council 37 (DC37), the city’s largest municipal union, as well as the Uniformed Fire Officers Association and the International Union of Operating Engineers; women’s groups Eleanor’s Legacy and The New Majority NYC; good government group Citizens Union; the United Democratic Organization, New Leaf Democrats, PLACE NYC, AIA New York, and the 504 Democratic Club.

Lee said she hopes to have the opportunity to lead the district she grew up in, with an emphasis on constituent services.

“I am proud to come back and give back to my community and to serve my community, a community that raised me and really nurtured me into the woman that I am today,” Lee said. “So I hope that the voters — the residents, because even if you don't vote for me, I'm still working for you, because you're a resident of this district — I hope that they'll give me an opportunity to represent them and be their voice.”

Ursila Jung
Jung has lived in lower Manhattan for over 20 years, serves on the Community Education Council, and has led her children’s Parent-Teacher Association at the public school they attend. She is also an angel investor, currently investing in several companies, and was formerly a social development specialist at the World Bank. Jung received her bachelor’s degree in Delhi, India, and has two master’s degrees — one from SOAS University of London and another from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

In the city's official voter guide from NYC Votes, Jung said that her top priorities are public safety and government accountability, quality schools, and small neighborhood businesses.

“I am not a politician — I'm just a regular person,” Jung said in an interview with Gotham Gazette. “I became an American by choice as an adult, because I believe this country, and specifically the city, has the ability to just reinvent itself all the time, and has just so much life and power.”

A self-described “moderate, common-sense candidate,” Jung said she hopes to represent her constituents who do not align with “extreme left” or “extreme right” ideologies. She criticized several of Council Member Marte’s policies, claiming that they do not represent the policy needs of most of District 1.

“There is the extreme right, which we talk about all the time in a condescending manner,” Jung said. “But I think the extreme left is not doing us any favors either in New York City, and a lot of our Council has chosen to go down that route. Most people I meet who are just taxpayers working, we just want to have a good life, we want to be able to raise our kids, send them to a decent public school, have them use a safe subway system to get to school, have clean streets — just really basic things. And I think the city's been failing us in some of them.”

Jung expressed concern for the state of the public school system in the city, calling for increased funding, and said the system is “amongst the weakest in the country.”

“I see people, regular middle-class families, making sacrifices and sending their kids to parochial schools, if not private, because they feel that public schools are not providing their children with what they need or deserve.”

Jung wants the city to retain entry testing requirements, including the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, and criticizes those who have called the policy racist for failing to properly fund students and schools in underserved communities.

“I actually think it is negligent towards weaker socioeconomic sections, and Black and brown students, to say that we don't care about your results,” Jung said. “We don't need to test you, we’ll just lower everybody else. I think it is really offensive and racist to say that we don't think our Black and brown communities are capable of doing well if we invest resources in them. I actually find that really, very offensive.”

She plans to push for investments in free tutoring services after school or during the day, as well as increasing funding toward dual language programs, more inclusive gifted and talented programs and other services schools need to support their students.

Jung said in the city’s voter guide that she plans to advocate for converting unused office space into housing and legalizing basement apartment units. She added that she hopes to speed up construction approvals and relax rules around zoning. She also advocated for the quick implementation of a broad climate resiliency plan, which she said must include clear timelines and community input.

On the issues of policing and public safety, Jung is against reducing funding for the police department, instead calling for increased investment in training programs and officer retention, as well as communication with communities to build trust. She wants to see expanded NYPD foot patrols to discourage people from shoplifting or committing other crimes in the district.

“It’s stupid and naive and foolish to say that the NYPD has no problems, and that police systems around the country don't have problems,” Jung said. “There is a culture of blue, and it is problematic. Is there inherent racism? Yes, it looks like there is. Is there a culture of brutality and violence? Yes, it looks like there is. But have I heard anyone suggesting a better alternative? No.”

Jung said she is staunchly against the construction of the new jail in Chinatown as part of the plan to close the Rikers Island complex and that the district’s constituency has made its opinions on the matter obvious.

“Whatever the problem is, the message is loud and clear: People in Chinatown who live there, who work there, who commute there, who walk through there, who shop there, do not want it,” she said. “And I think that the wishes of the community must be respected.”

Jung also criticized Council Member Marte’s approach to his staffer’s resignation, calling Wong’s behavior “110% unacceptable,” and saying Marte should have responded in a more timely fashion.

According to her campaign website, Jung has gained endorsements from Emgage, the Parent Party, and PLACE NYC.

Overall, Jung wants people to get out and vote, calling voter turnout her “personal passion.” In the city’s voter guide, Jung said she wants to work toward bolstering voting security and maintaining transparency in the voting process.

“If you don't vote for me, just vote. I really have a problem with the fact that we're in this democracy that's not really functioning like a democracy, because we're not all represented,” she said. “…Even if I get a few thousand new voters into the conversation, to feel like they are engaging and being listened to and being represented, I will take that as a personal win.”

Pooi Stewart
Stewart is a full-time public school teacher in the city, and has worked as a special education tutor at the system’s Institute for Environmental Learning. She has also served as a volunteer for the City Parks Foundation and an urban gardening program, GreenThumb. She immigrated to the United States in 1973 from Malaysia, and is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Malay. She is a mother of three children, and her husband is a train operator in the city.

Stewart was unavailable for an interview with Gotham Gazette and does not appear to be running a particularly active campaign.

She is running on a platform that emphasizes bolstering public safety and funding educational institutions. On her campaign website, Stewart says she plans to support police officers and increase undercover agent presence in the district in an effort to remove illegal guns.

“We deserve safe neighborhoods where people can walk our streets absent fear of being robbed or shot,” Stewart’s website reads. “If our streets are not safe, people who live and work here will abandon our City, and visitors will travel elsewhere.”

In the city’s official voter guide, Stewart said her top three issues are improving public safety, creating better schools, and bringing jobs back to New York City.

On the issue of education, Stewart is advocating to “stop filling the school-to-prison pipeline” and better prepare New York City students to pursue higher education. She plans to provide complimentary high-speed internet to underserved neighborhoods and affordable housing, and wants to hire more teachers who are fluent in foreign languages. The candidate supports Hochul’s plan to lift the cap on New York City charter schools, claiming that “ALL children deserve a school that works.”

Helen Qiu
Qiu is the lone Republican candidate running in the 1st City Council District. She unsuccessfully ran for the New York State Assembly to represent the partially overlapping Assembly District 65 last year, and ran in the partially overlapping 10th U.S. House of Representatives District race a few months earlier. She lost the House election in the primary, and the Assembly election during the general to Grace Lee, who received over 75% of the votes.

Qiu is a Christian pastor and former electrical engineer. She received a master’s degree from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, according to her LinkedIn page, and is a member of a local New York City Education Council. According to Qiu, in that position, she has advocated for unvaccinated students to gain access to afterschool programs.

Qiu’s campaign website calls gubernatorial use of executive power on COVID-19 mandates and policies “draconian,” and her campaign is centered around bolstering public safety by eliminating cashless bail, which would need to be done at the state level, lowering taxes, increasing parents’ rights in the educational system, ending vaccine mandates and rehiring workers who were fired due to their implementation, and mediating housing conflicts between landlords and renters.

“I’m a very practical person. I just have solutions. I’m very good at it — that’s why I made six digits,” Qiu said in an interview with Gotham Gazette, referring to her salary as an engineer. “I received four raises in one year, and they’re not inflation standard raises at all. All four raises are for achievements. I received four in one year in Silicon Valley. So I’m a very successful problem solver. I’m going to do so good for our district and our city.”

“The rest of the Democrats will not do it,” she said of advocating for tougher bail laws, particularly her call for all crimes to be bail eligible.

She also proposes to double criminal penalties against those who commit crimes that affect senior citizens, women, or children.

“If you prey on our vulnerable, you will double your penalty, because that is more evil than just some random attack on a strong, big guy,” Qiu said.

Qiu is calling for armed guards in schools as a response to school shootings. She argues that there are armed guards present in lobbies of banks and jewelry stores, and in a confined space like a school people should be protected with firearms as well.

“I’m not a radical, but I think I just want to have technical solutions,” Qiu said. “You need to protect it, and we need armed guards. We have [school] safety agents right now, and they don’t work because they aren’t armed…We need someone that can protect in the moment. They pull out a gun? They will be shot down.”

Qiu is against eliminating or reducing entrance testing requirements in public schools. “I want a merit-based solution. I want a high education standard,” Qiu said. “I don’t like the lottery standard that the Democrats are proposing. I think it’s hurting the people, even the people that get the lottery. It gives them the false idea that life is a lottery. You don’t need to work hard, just luck.”

She also called for better “quality control” for teachers, citing personal anecdotes in which she experienced teachers who she considered subpar leading classrooms. She suggested that the union representing teachers in New York should put those who do not meet their standards on leave, arguing that some teachers only keep their jobs because of their union membership.

“Some teachers are very good, and some other teachers are bad but being protected by the teacher’s union simply because that person is a member,” Qiu said. “Basically, we need quality control. Every iphone goes to quality control. If it does not pass the test, that iphone will not go into your hands. But we don’t have any quality control for the teachers right now. Where is the quality control for teachers? There is none.”