You might ask how Ethan Strimling, the New-York-born jewish mayor of Portland, Maine, who recently welcomed another 250 homeless ‘asylum-seekers’ from Africa to this small, largely-White city that has already been rocked by a wave of migrant-related crime, has any hope of getting re-elected in a couple weeks:

The only advance notice Portland received [of the migrants’ arrival] had been a call from a Catholic Charities worker in San Antonio, Texas, who had put the asylees — who had crossed into the U.S. through the border with Mexico — on a bus headed for the coastal city, Strimling said in an interview with Jewish Insider.

Though it created a housing crisis for officials in the municipality that The New York Times described as one of the “oldest and whitest states in the country,” Strimling and others welcomed them.

In April, when President Trump tweeted that he was considering sending immigrants to sanctuary cities, Strimling tweeted in response, “If Trump wants to send more immigrants our way, I say, ‘Welcome Home!’”

Asylees who arrived in June were given temporary shelter at the Expo Center, a city-owned basketball arena. “The city’s response made me so proud that I was a member of this community, let alone the mayor,” Strimling told JI. “I went to the shelter every night and talked to the families, made sure they were safe. “It gave me great joy to be down there every day.”

About half of the unexpected African asylees have settled in Portland, with the rest having been set up with housing in surrounding communities, said the mayor.

His city is “without question the most diverse in the state,” Strimling told JI, and he expects the 2020 census to reveal that 15 to 20 percent of its residents are people of color – a major shift from 20 years ago.

Now, three weeks from Portland’s mayoral election, Strimling hopes voters will elect him to a second term. Despite having three challengers, including one who interned for Strimling’s last campaign, “we are feeling cautiously optimistic” about winning, he told JI.

Strimling, who will turn 52 this week, was born and raised in New York City and was an acting student at Julliard when he decided to take a left — or northern — turn and move to a farm owned by his mother’s best friend, near Maine’s Acadia National Park. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Maine and a Master’s degree in education at Harvard before going to Washington to work as a legislative aide. He returned to the Pine Tree State to run a congressional campaign.

….Antisemitism has not been an overt issue in his race for a second term, he said, but there have been more subtly worded attacks, including a July article about donors to his campaign in the local Portland Press-Herald, which highlighted the contributor with the most overtly “Jewish” name.

In addition, there have been some anti-immigrant and anti-Strimling signs posted around Portland, he said.

“I get a lot of ‘go back to NY’ — code for ‘New York values,’ you know what that can mean,” Strimling told JI. “But overtly antisemitic stuff, where they’re really identifying my ethnicity, I haven’t gotten that.”