A 73-year-old volunteer for Republican state Sen. Steve Chan was arrested after allegedly striking a volunteer for Democratic challenger Larry He during a Brooklyn street confrontation. Chan suspended her but says the rival volunteer’s fall was staged.
Brooklyn’s state Senate race has reached the part of the campaign where the volunteers are allegedly hitting each other. Liu Zhen, a 73-year-old aide to Republican state Sen. Steve Chan, was arrested after a confrontation with a volunteer working for Democratic challenger Larry He.
The two campaign teams had set up tables roughly 50 feet apart on 86th Street in Bensonhurst when the argument escalated. Video reportedly shows a woman appearing to be Zhen reaching across the rival campaign’s table and swiping toward He’s volunteer.
Police arrested Zhen and charged her with third-degree assault, then released her with a desk appearance ticket. The charge is an allegation, not a conviction, and the available reporting does not establish every detail of what happened before the brief video sequence.
Chan suspended Zhen from his campaign and acknowledged that she should not have approached the other campaign’s table. Then he delivered the political plot twist by arguing that the Democratic volunteer’s fall was staged and that Zhen did not hit her hard enough to knock her down.
So the Republican position is now essentially: yes, our volunteer reached across the rival table, no, she should not have done that, but also the Democrat may have taken a dive. Somewhere a professional wrestling promoter just quietly added both campaigns to a group chat.
The He campaign has declined to publicly litigate the confrontation in detail. Video from the scene has nevertheless turned a local volunteer dispute into a much larger story because nothing says ‘get out the vote’ like campaign workers needing separate corners.
The fight took place near a proposed homeless shelter that has already generated intense neighborhood protests. Chan has opposed the shelter, while Democrats in the area have been drawn into the same long-running political battle over the site.
And this is where the story achieves genuine bipartisan absurdity. Democratic Councilwoman Susan Zhuang, who supports He and has also been active in the shelter fight, previously faced charges after allegedly biting an NYPD detective during a protest over the project.
Those charges against Zhuang were later dropped after she completed a restorative-justice program. That means the political ecosystem around one Brooklyn shelter has now produced an alleged police bite, an alleged campaign-table slap and an argument over whether a volunteer’s fall had enough force behind it to be believable.
Neither party gets to claim the dignified high ground here. Republicans have a 73-year-old volunteer facing an assault charge, while Democrats have an allied councilwoman whose earlier shelter protest became famous because prosecutors said a detective got bitten.
Chan’s decision to suspend Zhen was the straightforward part of his response. His claim that the rival volunteer staged the fall keeps the controversy alive because it turns a criminal allegation into a second argument over whether the video shows an assault or political theater.
The shelter dispute itself is serious, involving neighborhood concerns, homelessness policy and competing views about public safety. The campaign behavior around it has increasingly resembled a municipal-policy meeting staged by people who watched too much reality television.
Zhen will have the opportunity to contest the assault charge in court, and no judge has found her guilty. The political verdict will arrive sooner, because Brooklyn voters head to the polls while both campaigns are still explaining how a sidewalk table became the scene of an arrest.
Campaign season usually ends with candidates shaking hands and promising unity. In this corner of Brooklyn, everyone may want to start by agreeing not to slap, bite or theatrically collapse on anybody until at least November 4.
