New York, New York

Donald Trump wants to make it like Sinatra. He wants to win the New York primary outright, to win it overall — obviously, for the sake of the presidential race above all. [He makes] a visit to his hometown of Queens.

It’s the biggest house on the street — red brick facade, six columns framing the entrance, as if it were a school. Here, Donald J. Trump was born 70 years ago, in Jamaica Estates, a prestigious neighborhood in the New York borough of Queens. Here begins the story of his rise to fame: From the son of a spendthrift builder to “The Donald,” a real estate mogul with a preference for water faucets made of real gold, a television star and the possible presidential candidate for the Republicans. On this Tuesday, New Yorkers vote, and Trump will probably win. The question is only by how much.

Of the annual 50 million visitors to New York, only a small portion make it to Queens. Manhattan is more dazzling, Brooklyn more hip — which made the blue Cadillac driven to work by Donald’s father Fred C. Trump stick out that much more. It would be the only extravagance that the restrained millionaire would allow.

Many people in the neighborhood have been influenced by Trump’s success as a businessman.

Fred C. Trump built his fortune as the architect for the less privileged. For the many working class families and veterans, he constructed low-cost apartment complexes with names such as Beach Haven or Garden Village, even though neither had much in the way of a beach or a garden; the gray boxes radiate the charm of Soviet apartment silos, from which many of his Eastern European tenants fled.

Fred’s parents, Donald’s grandparents, emigrated in 1885 from Germany, but because Fred Trump did not want to give up his Jewish renters, he told everyone he was Swedish; “Being German was a disadvantage at that time,” he apparently said later on. Already, Fred Trump had gladly bent the truth to his advantage, a quality that his son, who could move into the White House next winter, had gleaned from him. It wouldn’t be the only one.

There is a photo from 1973 that shows the two of them on the roof of an apartment in Queens, the young Donald Trump with the neglected hairstyle of a rich brat, the father in the nice jacket. And it looks as if the elder wants to say to the younger: “Look, son, everything here will belong to you someday,” but Queens and Brooklyn were not enough for Donald Trump. In his book, “The Art of the Deal,” he describes how even as a young boy, he looked upon the Manhattan skyline and thought to himself, “I want to be there.”

Around the end of the 1970s, Donald Trump was given a contract (thanks to his connections) to renovate an old hotel near Grand Central. Out of that, he made the Grand Hyatt; it was the beginning of his rise to fame. In the early 1980s, he built his Trump temple on Fifth Avenue, which housed illustrious residents such as the Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

When there was pushback from the public during the construction of one of his skyscrapers, due to the fact that he hired hundreds of illegal Polish laborers, he remembered a trick he learned from his father; he made up a media spokesperson persona by the name of John Barron, who Trump transformed into every time complications were threatening [progress]. (His youngest son is also called Barron, strangely enough.) His father had himself used a pseudonym in the past, always presenting himself as Mr. Green to angry callers.

The area around Trump’s place of birth in Queens has changed dramatically. Earlier, it was a place for the white middle class; today it is more diverse. Ethiopian restaurants sit next to Chinese supermarkets, with large parking lots for used car dealerships sprinkled in between, the best of which use tinsel for decoration.

Many people on the street have been influenced by Trump’s successes as businessman. “He has hotels all over the country and a wonderful family,” says Sunil Murthy, an Indian man who runs a mobile telephone store no less than 10 minutes away from Trump’s boyhood home. “He will create many jobs,” believes Chris Wieczorek, 22, son of Polish immigrants, who honor Trump “like a saint” and snub the socialist Bernie Sanders. “The super-rich of Wall Street finance all of the museums and theaters that New York is known for,” says Chris, who wants to “do something in banking” later in life. “They support hospitals and schools and donate millions to charities. But obviously, Sanders doesn’t say anything about that.”

One should not measure Trump by what he has achieved, and “not by his TV appearances,” says an elderly man in a flat cap who did not want to see his name in the newspaper, and a neighbor of the Trumps who actually knew old Fred. “Donald Trump is obsessed with work and success. He will get this country back on its feet.” The neighbor asks if I know Frank Sinatra’s song “New York, New York,” then he holds onto his garden fence and begins to sing softly: “Top of the list, king of the hill, A-number-one!” It is the hymn of this city, where no one sleeps, and it’s about “New York values” that are embodied by Donald Trump better than anyone.

Only Trump’s stance toward immigration irks the many passersby and neighboring residents; that’s not Queens, nor New York, says Trump’s neighbor with the cap. Sinatra’s hymn is actually first and foremost a hymn of immigration, a welcoming song for all those who have come here since 1624 seeking happiness — ever since a few Dutch sailors bought the island now called Manhattan from the Native Americans residing there for 60 gold coins. Whoever makes it in New York, according to Sinatra, son of an Italian immigrant, can obviously make it anywhere.

‘Maybe They Will Make Trump’s Home a Museum if He Becomes President’

In the New York primary, 95 delegates are on the line, who will eventually vote in a complicated process. If Trump can gather more than 50 percent of the votes in the state of New York and the 27 voting districts behind him, he will get all of the 95 delegate votes that he urgently needs to secure the nomination as presidential candidate before the Republican convention. It is expected that Trump will get the most votes in parts of Queens and Long Island, as well as in upstate districts. According to statisticians, Trump will perform better in regions with Catholic immigrants than in those with Protestant immigrants. The most reliable correlation, however, rests on education level: The lower it is, the more likely it is that that person will vote for Trump. Therefore, the wealthy real estate speculator concentrated on the rural areas outside of New York City and avoided Manhattan, where many people with a higher education live. Those are the voters of John Kasich, the only remaining moderate next to Trump and Ted Cruz, who is hoping for second place to emphasize himself as an alternative.

“If Trump performs well in New York, then the nomination is all but wrapped up for him,” says Trump’s neighbor in Queens. “He will win easily over Hillary Clinton.” Then, the tourists will come in droves: “Maybe they will make Trump’s house a museum if he becomes president.” The neighbor contemplates renting his parking spot or building a stand in front of his house that would sell souvenirs and T-shirts to earn some money. “I like the idea,” he says. That is apparently the spirit this country needs.