A City Council candidate running to represent a new Asian-majority district in southern Brooklyn is under fire for boasting about spearheading major neighborhood relief efforts during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — when she was living over 700 miles away in Indiana.
Longtime Democratic operative Susan Zhuang claimed at a Brooklyn Young Democrats event earlier this month that she persuaded local businesses to donate to food pantries and spearheaded a huge drive to score masks.
“I did get 80,000 masks for all the hospitals in New York City,” she bragged to the group, according to a video of the event reviewed by The Post.
Zhuang was living in Columbus, Indiana, when the pandemic struck in 2020 and didn’t return to Bensonhurst until last year, when she went to work as chief of staff for her former boss, Assemblyman William Colton, according to records and Democratic operatives.
Jin Chiu, a longtime Asian-American community activist and former staffer for the Assembly Democrats, said it’s “outrageous” for Zhuang to claim that she helped New Yorkers during the pandemic.
“I was out there with our neighbors putting my body on the line daily and for her to claim that she was there with us [is] shameful,” he added.
In 2020, Zhuang did reportedly secure 8,000 masks from China, but it was for residents of Bartholomew County in Columbus — which is over 740 miles away from Sunset Park, Bensonhurst and the rest of the new 43rd Council District.
A campaign spokesperson for Zhaung said the pol “worked tirelessly to provide” personal protective equipment during the pandemic for a local hospital in Indiana but skirted questions about her claims of doing similar work in New York and could not immediately provide proof.
She isn’t the first pol who’s made head-scratching claims during the pandemic.
Former Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (D-Manhattan) made bold claims of delivering the public millions of masks and meals during the pandemic, but the numbers didn’t add up.