Mom of slain Army vet seeks GOP nod to topple Rep. Jamaal Bowman
The mom of a slain Army veteran announced she has switched her allegiance to the Republican Party in a bid for Congress after slamming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for giving her son’s killer “slaps on the wrist” while railing against the Democrats’ soft on crime policies.
Madeline Brame had become a crime victims advocate after her son, Hason Correa, a 35-year-old married father of three and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, was fatally beaten and stabbed during a scuffle outside a Harlem apartment building in 2018.
The “lifelong Democrat” said she was initially confident that her her son’s murderers would be “brought to justice.”
“I was reassured by the District Attorney that everyone involved in Hason’s killing would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and was confident in what he said, until Alvin Bragg succeeded him,” she said Wednesday.
“Mr. Bragg set forth in attempting to give slaps on the wrist to all of my son’s killers. I fought him tooth and nail with everything I had, not because I was a well-connected investment banker, or someone with powerful friends in high places, but because I was Hason’s mother, grandmother to his children, and while nothing I do can ever bring him back I was not going to let Bragg or anyone else let my son’s killers walk.
Brame fumed in a statement Wednesday posted on twitter, “Mr. Bragg set forth in attempting to give slaps on the wrist to all of my son’s killers.
“After forty years, I am proud to say that I am now a Republican. The current Democrat Party has abandoned the value, and dignity of work in favor of promoting the policies of despair and dependency on the government,” she said..
Four siblings — Christopher, James and Mary Saunders, along with brother, Travis Stewart — were arrested by police and charged with murder and gang assault of Hason Brame in the fatal incident.
The case lingered in court until 2022 when Avin Bragg was elected and took over as DA.
The Post reached out to Bragg’s office for comment.
James Saunders pleaded guilty to gang assault and second-degree murder and was given a sentence of 20 years to life in prison — lower than the maximum sentence of 25 years to life.
Christopher was convicted of gang assault after a trial and was sentenced to 20 years to life, while Travis Stewart and Mary Saunders pleaded guilty to just gang assault. Stewart was sentenced to seven years in prison and Mary Saunders was released on the 14 months she had already spent at Rikers Island.
Madeline Brame announced a bid to topple progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the 16th Congressional District covering portions of Westchester County and The Bronx.
Brame said the Democratic Party has swung too far to the left on criminal justice and other issues, particularly slamming the soft on crime state cashless bail law.
“But it is not just bail reform that is tearing our communities apart, the Democrat Party has been taken over by extremists who do not care about working-class families and middle-class families. For the current leadership of the Democrat Party, the ideals of family, faith, and community are beneath contempt,” Brame said.
Her run against Bowman — a member of the lefty “Squad” along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — comes as a surprise.
The only campaign paperwork filed with the Federal Elections Commission said she’s running in the Fifth Congressional District in Queens-Nassau against Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks.
Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal, was first elected in 2020 after upsetting veteran Rep. Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary. He was easily re-elected two years ago in the overwhelmingly Demoratic district.
Bowman had no immediate comment.
