Voters in central Brooklyn approached Tuesday with a mix of anxiety, dread and a bit of cautious optimism as NYC residents in the Democratic stronghold lined up to cast Election Day ballots amid the prospect of a second term for former president Donald Trump.
“I’m really nervous,” Nidhi Hebbar, 34, said after casting her ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris at the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway Tuesday morning. “It feels like eight years ago.”
That’s when Donald Trump, Queens real estate scion and reality TV star, won the White House in a surprise electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton, changing the landscape of mainstream American politics.
“I feel a little bit of dread — I’m pretty worried about what a Trump presidency might mean,” said 47-year-old David May, who also supported Harris.
Trump’s increasingly ominous rhetoric, such as saying he might use the military to combat the “enemy within,” have escalated fears across the nation.
“I can’t say its a day that I feel a great deal of democratic spirit,” May said. “Our democracy is precarious at best.”
The Brooklynite said he felt it was “almost impossible” to imagine Trump winning the popular vote, but worried the electoral college might tilt in his favor.
“I voted for democracy, and for women’s rights, and rights for everybody else,” said Harris-supporter Era Bani, 41, who told the Daily News she flew back from a trip to visit friends in Spain in order to vote on Election Day.
Asked how she felt the election would go, Bani said she was “a little nervous,” and pointed to security preparations in Washington D.C.
“When they put up fences around the Capitol, you start to worry,” she said.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 in an effort to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory — an effort for which Trump himself is facing federal charges for allegedly inciting the mob.
Another Brooklyn voter and Harris supporter, 40-year-old Mickey Robinson, told The News he was “cautiously optimistic” that the Vice President would prevail.
“I think it’s the only right choice,” Robinson said.
“I have a hard time understanding why so many people are undecided when just four years ago the other candidate said we should bleach our bodies to get rid of [COVID-19,]” he added — a suggestion Trump made in the early days of the pandemic that he later tried to claim was a joke.
While he and his wife both voted for Harris, 37-year-old Sam Egendorf said he understood those who weren’t voting.
“I’m more indifferent about this election than maybe I’ve ever been,” he said outside the Brooklyn Museum.
Egendorf said he supported the Biden administration’s efforts to better protect consumers through the Federal Trade Commission, but he worried Harris might represent a rightward shift.
“Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala,” Egendorf said of the hawkish former Republican veep. “It’s terrifying to see neocons line up behind Kamala.”
One Brooklyn voter, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Tasha, said she “didn’t care for” either candidate, and wouldn’t say who she cast a ballot for.
“My main objective is [just] to vote,” the 57-year-old said. “As a black person, we didn’t always have the chance to vote — why throw my vote away?”