H EADLINES
Soviet Immigrant Running for City Council
L O CAL
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
“I HAVE A QUESTION for
you,” Irina Goldstein asked.

“What does conservative mean
anymore, right? What does
conservative look like in 2019?”
Goldstein, 34, is betting that
the answer is a Soviet immi-
grant running for an at-large
Philadelphia City Council
seat as a Republican, one who
actively posts on social media
and describes the U.S. penal
system as “the new Jim Crow,”
all while maintaining strictly
conservative economic policies.

Goldstein left the former
Soviet Union with her par-
ents when she was 4, stopping
in Austria and Italy for close
to a year before settling in
Northeast Philadelphia. She
said she is deeply commit-
ted to stymieing socialism in
Irina Goldstein, in a still from her
upcoming campaign commercial
Photo provided
the United States.

“Th ey got rich, and we got
poor,” she says of her family’s
time in the U.S.S.R. “We had
equal amounts of nothing.”
Her father, a builder in
Ukraine, and her mother, a
radiology nurse, worked as a
day laborer and a hospice care
nurse, respectively, in the U.S.

Aft er testing out of high
school early, she attended
Community College
of Philadelphia before transferring
to Temple University. She had
a stint in the pharmaceutical
industry, but found it draining.

Before long, she decided that
she had bigger plans, and moved
on to the MBA program at Saint
Joseph’s. While she studied
part time, she started Gold Bull
Management, a fi nancial services
company. A few years later, she
started a fur coat company called
MOD+FURS. Even still, it felt like
something was missing.

Th at’s when some of her
more politically inclined friends
began to tell her she should con-
sider running for offi ce.

“I speak a lot of truth,” she
said, “and I never met a politi-
cian who spoke the truth.” But
her friends convinced her with
a comparison to one particular
Republican: President Trump.

Though at first evasive
on her stance on Trump (“I
respect the position of the pres-
ident of the United States”), she
eventually confesses: She sees
herself in him.

“What I don’t like about him
is actually what makes him
most eff ective,” she said. Like
him, she said, she’s a bulldozer.

Indeed, she displays a similar
capacity for taking advantage
of the news cycle and utilizing
social media. She rails against
the “radical, Marxist and
self-centered agenda” of city
Democrats on Twitter, and the
“delusional, nonsensical, child-
ish thinking and planning” of
their national counterparts.

Of her own longtime coun-
cilman, Bobby Henon, who
was recently hit with federal
charges of bribery, conspiracy
and fraud, she said: “You fi nd
out that the councilman from
Northeast Philadelphia, where
you grew up, where you and
your parents have paid taxes
for over 30 years, is not there to
advocate on your behalf!”
She’s similarly frustrated
with the Philadelphia GOP.

“I wasn’t met with fanfare,
I can tell you that,” she said of
her appeals for assistance.

“Any candidate that calls
and asks for assistance and
guidance, we’ve been happy to
give it, and we have given it to
Irina,” responded Christopher
Vogler, vice chair and execu-
tive director of the Republican
Party of Philadelphia.

Wherever she fi nds her sup-
port, Goldstein is ready for the
campaign. “I have the mouth of a sailor
and the heart of a servant,” she
said. “Where does this person
fi t in? Politics!” ●
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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