NYC Council candidate ripped for ‘lying’ about helping NYers during COVID

A city council candidate running to represent a new Asian-majority district in South Brooklyn is being criticized for bragging about leading major neighborhood relief efforts during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 19 – while living more than 700 miles away in Indiana.

Longtime Democratic agent Susan Zhuang claimed at a Brooklyn Young Democrats event earlier this month that she persuaded local businesses to donate to food pantries and launched a huge campaign to mark masks.

“I received 80,000 masks for all the hospitals in New York,” she boasted to the group, according to a video of the event reviewed by The Post.

Zhuang was living in Columbus, Indiana when the pandemic hit in 2020 and only returned to Bensonhurst last year when she went to work as chief of staff to her former boss, the member of the Assemblyman William Colton, according to Democratic records and officials.

Jin Chiu, a longtime Asian-American community activist and former Assembly Democrats staffer, said it was “outrageous” for Zhuang to claim she had helped New Yorkers during the pandemic.

“I was there with our neighbors putting my body at risk everyday and for her to pretend she was there with us [is] shameful,” he added.

In 2020, Zhuang reportedly got 8,000 masks from China, but that was for residents of Bartholomew County in Columbus – which is more than 740 miles from Sunset Park, Bensonhurst and the rest of the council’s new 43rd district. .

A spokesperson for Zhaung’s campaign said the pol “worked tirelessly to provide” personal protective equipment during the pandemic to a local Indiana hospital, but avoided questions about his claims that he would do similar work in New York and could not immediately provide proof.

She’s not the first politician to make jaw-dropping claims during the pandemic.

Former Congresswoman Yuh-Line Niou (D-Manhattan) boldly claimed she delivered millions of masks and meals to the public during the pandemic, but the numbers didn’t add up.