Bukharian from Queens runs for Assembly

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Fresh face for Albany?

By Michael Orbach

Issue of February 19, 2010/ 6 Adar 5770

Lilianna Zulunova, a 26 year-old observant Bukharian Jew from Forest Hills, wants you to vote. And then, assuming you’re eligible to do so, she’d like you to vote for her.

“Whether you vote for Joe Shmo, I don’t care. It’s important you vote. It’s all based on the vote,” Zulunova told the Jewish Star in her one-bedroom co-op that doubles as her campaign headquarters; a map of the district is taped to the wall. “The Bukharian community needs to understand that.”

Zulunova, a former deputy chief of staff for State Senator John Sabini, is challenging incumbent Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi for the 28th District. Her base is the thousands of Bukharian Jews — Jews formerly of Central Asia — that currently live in the Forest Hills area of Queens. This past Monday, Zulunova, who has a cherubic face and dark brown eyes, relaxed on a couch in her apartment, while her fiancée cut vegetables in the kitchen and a campaign consultant answered messages on his BlackBerry.

Candidate Zulunova has a quintessentially American story. She arrived penniless in the US from Uzbekistan in 1992 when she was 9 years old after a pogrom in the town where her family lived.

“My block was burned down completely,” she said. “I remember my parents huddled my siblings into a car, and packed what we could and we heard gunshots.”

Neither of her parents spoke a word of English when they arrived in the US; the now-defunct New York Association for New Americans helped get them settled. Her father worked as a limo driver and her mother as a home attendant; Zulunova herself worked her way through high school as a cashier in a local supermarket.

“I worked my way up,” she explained. “There was a time when [my family] collected bottles to survive. This is the reality of life. You do what you need to do to get yourself through life.”

As a student in La Guardia Community College, where she is now an Adjunct Professor of Communications, Zulunova met then-State Senator John Sabini, who offered her an internship. She spent the next five years working for Sabini, working her way from the internship to deputy chief of staff, including a stint as the director of constituent affairs.

When Sabini left the Assembly for a position in Governor David Paterson’s administration, Zulunova joined the staff of Senate Majority Leader Malcom Smith.

She left this past summer to run the campaign of Albert Cohen, the first Bukharian Jew to run for higher office, since, in her words, “I’m probably the only Bukharian person involved in politics.”

Cohen lost the six-way election by 800 votes, but the experience mobilizing the tight-knit Bukharian community to vote was enlightening.

“The voting style is different,” Zulunova explained. “We did a huge educational exercise to get people to vote. When we approached people they asked, “Will they take away my social security? Will I get in trouble? There’s a kind of association that voting for someone they want will get them in trouble. It was eye-opening.”

John Sabini, who currently serves as chair of the New York Racing and Wagering Board, said he thinks Zulunova will “be a success in anything she does.”

“In her experience in government, Lilianna has figured out a strategy to work towards empowering the Bukharian community based on her witnessing what other groups in America have done,” Sabini said.

Zulunova was semi-observant while growing up, she said, but became a Ba’alat Teshuva (returnee to the faith) when she met her fiancée, Emanuel Yelizarov, who serves as a rabbi in the Le Frak Jewish Center. The two were set up by a mutual acquaintance, a rabbi from the Bukharian community. Two books about Jewish values concerning feminine modesty sat in the living room.

Her run for the State Assembly comes at an opportune time. The current holder of the seat, Andrew Hevesi, the son of disgraced comptroller Alan Hevesi, has himself been mired in scandal during the past year.

The one-time boss of the New York State Liberal Party, Raymond Harding, pleaded guilty in October to accepting more than $800,000 in kickbacks in exchange for favors performed for New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, among them pulling strings to secure the Assembly seat for Andrew Hevesi. The elder Hevesi resigned in 2006 after pleading guilty to a felony charge of misuse of state workers, but was also investigated over improprieties concerning the state pension fund, of which he was the sole trustee.

Zulunova’s main complaint against Hevesi does not involve corruption, however, but that he is considered to be missing in action in the district.

“People say Andrew who?” she said.

If she wins, Zulunova plans a series of town-hall style meetings inside the district. Her causes include fighting for affordable housing and the Q76 bus line on Queens Boulevard. Her campaign is grassroots, taking on what she considers the machine-style politics of Albany.

“I would rather receive a hundred $20 campaign contributions than one check for $2,000 from a lobbyist,” she said.

She would be the first observant Jewish woman to be elected to the New York State Assembly, and the first Bukharian Jew to hold higher political office.

“I think it’s about time,” she said, “The community is ready.”