By Howard Koplowitz
A Monday night debate between congressional candidates David Weprin and Bob Turner was marked more by heckling, cheers and boos than the candidates’ positions on issues affecting the 9th Congressional District during the face-off at the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills.
When Weprin, a state assemblyman from Little Neck, claimed to the crowd that Turner, a retired television executive from the Rockaways, wants to cut Social Security and Medicaid, he was met with shouts of “Liar!” and “You lie!”
A man screamed at Weprin, calling him a “hypocrite” for saying the developers of the Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero have a right to build the center. Weprin is an Orthodox Jew.
When Turner criticized Weprin’s suggestion that the government tax millionaires and billionaires at higher rates as “political sloganism” and impractical, a man in the crowd shouted, “You never got a job for a poor person!”
The outbursts from the crowd were not limited to just Weprin and Turner.
When panelist and TimesLedger Newspapers reporter Joe Anuta asked a question about gay marriage on the federal level, some in the crowd groaned before he was finished asking it.
Reach reporter Howard Koplowitz by e-mail at hkoplowitz@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4573.
