They preferred a black gay man. Russian was not allowed to participate in the New York mayoral elections
A native of Tomsk, Russia, Vitaly Filipchenko, who received US citizenship and decided to run for mayor of New York, was excluded from the election race.
Why this happened, Filipchenko told in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets.
According to him, the signatures and documents he initially collected were approved.
“When I submitted everything to the election commission, a week or two later the answer came: your candidacy was approved. Another week later, my last name was translated into Chinese, because not all Americans read English. And a little later I received another letter stating that I did not have enough qualified signatures. It turned out that one of my signatories was not registered in the database, so it is impossible to identify them, someone indicated an inaccurate address, and for someone, something else changed while their ballots were being checked,” recalls Filipchenko.
According to him, in the United States there is a Wikipedia for mayoral candidates, where information about each is given in advance.
“My biography was posted after I was eliminated from the elections. Throughout the entire election race, they tried to hide my candidacy in every possible way so that no one would know anything about me. For example, all candidates were interviewed in a television newspaper, and each was given half an hour. Then it turned out that my interview was not posted on the site, while my rivals were all present. Thank you also for not cutting me out of the debate,” says the failed mayoral candidate.
He points out that the rest of the candidates were not hidden, although there were quite strange people among them.
“For example, a black guy ran for mayor of New York, he’s gay, and he’s also a rapper. To be honest, he looked like a clown. So his interviews were everywhere, but mine were not. I sent official letters to all television companies, saying that I wanted to make myself known, and in response there was silence. Although according to American laws, everyone has equal rights. What does this mean? Maybe they hid me because they were afraid that I would win? I ran as an independent candidate, I had no interests. That’s why people believed me,” Filipchenko said.
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