In her campaign to replace incumbent councilman and congressman-elect, Ritchie Torres, on the City Council, Elisa Crespo wants to focus on the issues affecting the residents of the 15^th District more than on her candidacy.  Among the most pressing issues, she finds, is the high rate of unemployment.

“We are at Great Depression level [un]employment rates in the Bronx,” Crespo told the Norwood News in a phone interview. “In some parts of this council district, there’s a 30 percent unemployment rate.”

Together with her mom and siblings, Crespo, 30, experienced job and housing insecurity growing up in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. “What keeps me up at night, and what I always think about, is how are we going to put people who are unemployed in the Bronx back on a pathway to a middle-class job,” she said.

Her solution is a program she describes as a municipal jobs guarantee. The initiative would bring together organized labor, the private sector, and government agencies to not only provide jobs but also the training necessary to fill a wide variety of positions. “We train people and give them vocational and labor skills,” she said. “We provide them a pathway to city service jobs with job protection and benefits.”

Whether at the federal or local level, Crespo sees the role of government services as a lifeline for many families. “I was raised by a working-class Latina who worked a lot of [low] wage jobs,” Crespo said. At one stage, she said her mother received Section 8 housing assistance through the federal housing program. It allowed her to leave an abusive relationship.

Crespo said she appreciates how government services can be a safety net for some people, especially when it comes to housing. “That [Section 8] really saved our lives,” she said. “It started a new chapter of our lives.”

That new chapter included new responsibilities for Crespo as she helped her mother around the house with paying bills and buying groceries. With two brothers in the household, one older and one younger, she realized she needed to do more to help the family. “It was now just us, and I realized I had to grow up quicker and step up,” she said.

While helping her family, Crespo also made higher education a priority in her life by attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science with a focus on human rights. Her academic training has led her to serve in her current position as education liaison for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. In this capacity, she specializes in helping special needs students who require special education services.

Other candidates in the 15th District race include. Oswald Feliz, tenant lawyer and adjunct professor at Hostos Community College, Ischia Bravo, district manager for Community Board 7, Latchmi Gopal, a community organizer, John Sanchez, district manager for Community Board 6,  Altagracia E. Soldevilla, a community organizer and Kenny Agosto, district director to New York State Senator Jamaal T. Bailey. Julian Sepulveda, an official at the Department of Education, suspended his campaign in November and endorsed Crespo.

Crespo has also bagged a number of other endorsements. She received the backing of several Democratic district leaders, along with City Council members, Helen Rosenthal from Manhattan, and Jimmy Van Bramer from Queens.

Along with Dan Padernacht, who is running in the 11^th City Council race, she also received the endorsement of Northwest Bronx Democrats, a group which recently endorsed Republican candidate, Gene DeFrancis, in the latest 80^th Assembly District race, which he lost.

As for campaign funding, Crespo trails front-runner, Bravo, by less than $1,000. A Nov. 30 review of the New York City Campaign Finance Board filings show contributions to Crespo’s campaign totaling $16,707. Meanwhile, Bravo has raised $17,546. It is too early to draw any meaningful conclusions regarding the June primary, but these figures could give Bravo and Crespo an advantage going into a likely special election sometime in February or March.

If she wins, Crespo will succeed Torres who served two terms representing the city’s 15th district. Torres, won New York’s 15th congressional district race on Nov. 3, having earlier won, after a lengthy ballot count, in the highly competitive June primary, becoming the first, openly gay, Latino congressman to do so. His victory will trigger a special election to replace him on the City Council.

The councilman previously made history in November 2013 when he became the first, openly gay candidate to win a prominent political race in the Bronx. Crespo, too, is poised to make history, if elected. She would be the first transgender woman elected as a lawmaker in the Bronx, and in the City Council.

Crespo knows the pain and loss suffered by her community and attributes this to a lack of understanding by others, particularly among law enforcement. Last year, she lost a friend who died inside a restrictive housing cell, more commonly known as solitary confinement, on Rikers Island.

Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, a trans woman with epilepsy, suffered seizures during her detention which were not supervised regularly by correction officers.

Recently, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams pushed for municipal legislation to improve training of medical professionals in caring for transgender and gender non-conforming patients. His action came in response to an increase in anti-trans violence nationwide, a situation he describes as a “state of crisis.” He has also asked the City to officially recognize Nov. 20 as Transgender Day of Remembrance.

For her part, Crespo is clear about not wanting people to judge her on the historic aspect of her candidacy. “I want people to support me for my ideas and not my identity,” she said. “In many ways, my story and my struggle is similar to theirs. It’s time for regular people to step up and get involved in this [political] process,” she said. “This is a new day in the Bronx.”

*Síle Moloney contributed additional reporting.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.