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Running for State Senate, Julia Salazar Attempts Progressive Primary Upset


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Julia Salazar, middle in black (photo: Salazar campaign website)


The Harlem apartment where Julia Salazar lived in 2013 while completing her undergraduate work at Columbia, where she majored in Middle Eastern Studies, was falling apart.

It was run “by a totally abusive management company, a neglectful landlord,” Salazar, 27, told Gotham Gazette. “They didn’t heat the building adequately in the winter, failed to make repairs that were really urgent. Some people had been waiting for well over a year for really serious stuff to just make our apartments liveable.”

It was, in a word, decrepit. So she organized. Salazar, 22 at the time, “looked on the city’s website” and discovered that the tenants could legally stage a rent strike “if done the right way.”

“I talked to my neighbors and my roommates and organized us to withhold our rent for three months. And it led to us going to housing court with the management company, and we won concessions from them,” Salazar said. The tenants did not have to pay back the rent they withheld during the strike, and necessary repairs were made, she said.

But the organizing had negative consequences, too. Most of the building’s units were not rent-stabilized, the management company raised rents “super-high,” and Salazar was displaced.

“What this represented to me was that this is a systemic problem and it demands a systemic solution,” she told Gotham Gazette. “Ultimately, it got me thinking: How do we systemically change these problems through policy?”

After additional years of organizing around issues of housing, economic, racial, and criminal justice, Salazar is now eyeing elected office. She is running to represent parts of northern Brooklyn in the New York State Senate, staging a primary challenge against incumbent Democratic state Senator Martin Malavè Dilan, who is running for his ninth two-year term and represents Senate District 18. The election is September 13.

Gotham Gazette spoke with Salazar at her campaign headquarters along a quiet road in Bushwick, near what seemed to be an industrial park, on Saturday afternoon. Outside the beige, one-story building was a folding table with ballot petition sheets, pamphlets on the candidate, and “Salazar for State Senate” pins; a chalkboard beckoned visitors, in Spanish and English, to enter and register to vote.

In a small room adjacent to the main campaign space, which was full of canvassing materials, maps of the district, and busy-seeming young adults, Salazar explained the path that led to her candidacy, an uphill battle against a long-time incumbent buoyed by new progressive energy and momentum behind candidates like her. A first-time candidate for office, Salazar paused before answering questions, and her answers did not appear canned, as if she’d already delivered them hundreds of times. She clearly articulated her motivation to run, largely staying away from attacks on Dilan.

Salazar is centering housing justice in her campaign to represent a district containing neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Greenpoint that, by some measures, have experienced the city’s most severe gentrification.

“In North Brooklyn, from Greenpoint to Cypress Hill, every inch of the district, people see the effects of lack of regulation in the housing market, the lack of affordable housing, and the failure to protect tenants. So, for me, it’s a very apparent issue,” she told Gotham Gazette.

So Salazar’s calling for universal rent control, which she says is attainable through a package of policies: expansion of the rent stabilization system throughout the state, capping the amount landlords can raise rent annually, and ending vacancy decontrol, vacancy bonuses, and improvement-induced rent increases, all technical mechanisms that allow landlords to raise rents.

She called it “egregious” that housing justice is not a more visible political issue, especially in North Brooklyn, where, she said, “a lot of community members have long been trying to pressure Senator Dilan to change his course on housing policy to end vacancy decontrol,” which allows landlords to charge market price, if it’s at least $2,000, for rent-controlled properties when their tenants leave. Dilan voted to institute vacancy decontrol in New York City while on the City Council in 1994, but has publicly expressed regret at his vote and has sponsored several unsuccessful repeal bills in the Senate, where, during most of his tenure, the Democrats have  been in the minority. Current rent laws will expire in 2019 and will be largely renegotiated on the state level from January to June of next year. Those crafting and negotiating the details of the legislation, including the governor, will be elected or reelected this fall.

On her campaign website, Salazar critiques her opponent as part of “the political machine in North Brooklyn,” and vowed, at a Monday cross-endorsement rally with gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, to “replace legislators in Albany who have failed to advocate for tenants.” A Dilan campaign spokesperson did not provide a comment for this story.

Thus far, at least, Salazar is running a largely positive campaign, with a focus on what she wants to see out of Albany. While at the endorsement rally in Bushwick’s Maria Hernandez Park, Nixon railed against Dilan and Governor Cuomo, her opponent, calling them both “corporate Democrats,” but Salazar did not mention Dilan by name in her prepared remarks.

Most of Salazar’s campaign platform makes maximalist, rather than incrementalist, demands. In addition to supporting universal rent control, she advocates for the elimination of cash bail, free tuition at CUNY and SUNY schools, and Medicare for All, and she’s rejected corporate donations. Salazar is a member and endorsee of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), the burgeoning left-wing organization that recently helped another one of its members, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeat Rep. Joe Crowley of Queens and the Bronx in a primary upset that sent shockwaves nationally. Salazar’s platform is rooted in her theory of change — she refuses to “make political concessions from the outset” — and, like Ocasio-Cortez and NYC-DSA, she articulates broad, concise visions.

Salazar told Gotham Gazette that “the language of universal rent control is kind of radical. The development lobby and for-profit real estate developers have so much power and are so entrenched in our political system in many ways that these demands seem out-of-reach for so many people, even housing advocates, but it’s policy that all tenants want. There’s still a gap in political imagination.”

Recent events have shown that the boundaries of the political imagination may prove weaker than is generally accepted. For instance, the stance to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcements was, until quite recently, the domain of the Democratic Party’s leftist fringe. Ocasio-Cortez was one of the first national political figures to hold that position, and, since her victory last month, “Abolish ICE” has become a mainstream Democratic position with stunning speed, endorsed within the past two weeks alone by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Salazar, for her part, would also like to see ICE abolished.

However, Salazar warned of ideas becoming diluted when they leave the Left and enter the mainstream, province of politicians and political expediency: “What really matters is that we want to make these ideas mainstream as long as we maintain the integrity of the idea,” she said. “We need to be explicit in these demands, as much as sometimes it’s tedious to talk about the technicalities of policy to people who don’t live and breathe politics and policy.”

Her politics are informed heavily by what she calls her “lived experience and class experience.” Salazar was born in Colombia in 1990 and moved as a baby to South Florida, where her mother raised her and her brother.

“She really struggled to support me and my brother financially,” Salazar said. “I started working when I was 14 in a grocery store, then through high school in the service industry, then as a domestic worker through college at Columbia.”

Entering Columbia in 2009 immediately after high school, Salazar found her first opportunities to become involved in social justice work, joining the Israel/Palestine activism scene as a member of J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace. The Ivy League school also exposed her, for the first time, to immense wealth, and was instrumental in developing her class consciousness and progressive politics. Salazar said that Columbia “is an institution with an immense amount of wealth, with a lot of people who had gone to private school, who had resources their entire lives that were shocking to me.”

After Columbia, which she did not graduate from, Salazar began grassroots organizing in New York City more heavily. She is currently a staff organizer in Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a partner in Communities United for Police Reform, and active as a member of NYC-DSA. Her work has often centered around police accountability — Salazar campaigned extensively for the passage of the Right to Know Act, a city legislative package providing protections for civilians and restrictions on police during encounters, and recently published an essay in Jacobin on sexual assault at the hands of NYPD officers.

She was engaged in extensive legislative advocacy, describing herself as “on the forefront” of the citywide push for the passage of the Right to Know Act and involved with state police accountability measures, as well. The experience shaped her views of the New York political system: “Driving buses of advocates up to Albany to demand special prosecutor legislation and ultimately, after going back to the same legislators over and over again, making what we know are common-sense demands, you get to the point where you just think, ‘We have to replace these people.’”

Salazar was in Nashua, New Hampshire with her union, the United Automobile Workers, for whom she organized during a contract dispute at Barnard College, on Election Day in 2016. They were there on a get-out-the-vote campaign, and, she said, “collectively, we all felt certain that Hillary Clinton would win. When the results came in, it was really, really devastating...My heart hasn’t stopped racing since that moment, basically.”

The election of Donald Trump was a clarifying moment for many on the Left, and it sparked a well-covered surge in progressive activism nationwide — the Democratic Socialists of America, for instance, gained over 1,000 members in the single day following the election. For many, like Ocasio-Cortez, Nixon, Salazar, and their supporters, there has been a reevaluation of what kind of Democrat is acceptable, and an interest in running primaries against those not deemed sufficiently progressive. In New York, this shift has also produced primary challengers to the eight state senators who formerly made up the Independent Democratic Conference, which formed a ruling coalition with Senate Republicans.

“The Trump Administration has motivated more people, myself included,” Salazar said, “to shift our focus to trying to effect change as much as we possibly can at the city and state level, where we have more control, where we can effect change in a practical sense and also do harm reduction in response to federal policies across the board.”

So when three friends from NYC-DSA approached her in the beginning of 2018 about running for the state Senate seat in District 18, Salazar took their urgings seriously.

“I really love being a community organizer and a labor organizer…at first I didn’t even consider it,” she said. “But after a while of deliberating and going back-and-forth, I committed to doing it.” She finalized her decision in March, and publicly announced her run in April.

Since then, Salazar has been mounting a campaign in North Brooklyn based on grassroots organizing principles. It’s composed of Salazar, three paid staff members, and “hundreds of volunteers,” she said. She emphasized her efforts to “meet community members and voters where they are, and have our ear to the ground” — one of her goals is to use “the campaign to amplify the organizing that’s already being done in the community,” especially around housing justice. DSA members have been showing up to the Bushwick campaign headquarters to sign up for canvassing shifts, and the organization has helped inform Salazar’s electoral strategy and path to victory.

The similarities to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are striking — both are Latina democratic socialist challengers of outer-borough Democratic incumbents — and many, including Nixon, have drawn comparisons between the two. In announcing its endorsement of Salazar, New York Communities for Change described her as “the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez pushed back against the direct comparison, writing that “[Julia Salazar] isn’t the next me, she’s the first HER.”

Salazar volunteered for Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and knows her personally from their time in NYC-DSA. In fact, the pair canvassed together several weeks before Ocasio-Cortez’s primary election, and Salazar’s staff members and volunteers helped with her get-out-the-vote drive.

With her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives nearly assured, Ocasio-Cortez has “definitely” played a role in the Salazar campaign, Salazar said. “A bunch of people from her campaign have already come out to canvas multiple times,” Salazar told Gotham Gazette, and the vocal, public support of her DSA-comrade-turned-national-figure has been welcomed gratefully. Also on Twitter Monday, Ocasio-Cortez urged her followers to “return the favor” to Salazar and “help her get on the ballot for September.” That tweet, to date, has been retweeted almost 4,500 times and received over 24,000 likes.

Ocasio-Cortez and Nixon cross-endorsed each other the day before the congressional primary, and Nixon appeared at Ocasio-Cortez’s victory party, where she told NY1 television that her campaign is of the same ilk. Nixon’s Monday event with Salazar struck the same theme. This time, the cross-endorsement comes a little more than two months before both women will be on the ballot, attempting to dethrone deeply entrenched incumbents. Beneath a cloudless sky and in 90-degree heat, Bushwick residents and members of New York Communities for Change, an activist organization backing both candidates, spoke of the issues facing their community — high rents, soaring cost of living, financial precarity — before Nixon and Salazar made their cases for themselves, each other, and their shared political vision.

“As true progressives,” Salazar said to the crowd of 30 gathered in a Brooklyn neighborhood with over half of its residents rent-burdened, an incarceration rate 1.5 times the city average, and the city’s third-highest uninsured rate, “we don’t operate from a position of scarcity, but from a position of abundance.”

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by Daniel Yadin for Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

Note: this article has been corrected to reflect that Salazar did not graduate from Columbia.

Bill to Create Prosecutorial Misconduct Commission Awaits Cuomo Decision


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Gov. Cuomo (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


Behind the veil of an unproductive state legislative session where, in its aftermath, the focus has been on what did not get done, one significant piece of legislation that made its way through both chambers and toward the governor’s desk is a bill to create a new, independent state commission tasked with investigating prosecutorial misconduct by district attorneys, including misconduct that could lead, and has led, to false convictions. If the controversial bill is signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat running for a third term this year, the commission would be the first of its kind in the nation.

The legislation passed the Republican-led state Senate 45 to 12 and the Democrat-dominated Assembly 98-46, with members of both parties on either side of the bill. The bill has been lauded by public defenders and criminal justice reform advocates, but has been excoriated by prosecutors, an association of which is calling it unconstitutional and threatening a lawsuit.

The commission would consist of three appointees from the state’s Chief Judge, currently Janet DiFiore, two by the Governor, two each by the Assembly Speaker, currently Carl Heastie, and the Senate Majority Leader, currently John Flanagan, and one each from the Assembly Minority Leader, currently Brian Kolb, and the Senate Minority Leader, currently Andrea Stewart-Cousins. According to the bill, the Governor’s appointees would have to consist of one public defender and one prosecutor, while the Chief Judge’s appointees must consist of one appellate judge and two judges from other jurisdictions. The rest of the appointees must be split evenly between prosecutors and defense attorneys.

The commission, which would oversee the state’s 62 district attorneys and their subordinates, would be given full subpoena power for prosecutors and witnesses, be able to request relevant documents, and would be able to conduct investigative hearings against prosecutors accused of misconduct. If wrongdoing is demonstrated, the commission can take several actions, such as a censure or even recommending that the prosecutor be removed from their post. The commission’s findings and recommendations would be compiled into an annual report to the Governor, Legislature, and Chief Judge.

False convictions, and subsequent exonerations, have become so commonplace in New York’s criminal justice system that some district attorney offices, such as that in Brooklyn, have set up whole units dedicated entirely to reviewing past convictions. As of December 2017, the Brooklyn DA’s Conviction Review Unit had requested exonerations for 24 wrongfully-convicted defendants.

“It’s a significant problem,” said Bill Gibney, director of the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Practice Special Litigation Unit. “The last time I looked, I think New York State was up in the top tier of numbers of wrongful convictions that have occurred. And with some regularity, prosecutorial misconduct is in the mix.” It is impossible to fully account for all wrongful convictions. However, the University of Michigan’s National Registry of Exonerations placed New York at number four in the country for exonerations in 2017.

The Registry recorded 13 exonerations in New York in 2017, for offenses including fraud, weapons possession or sale, sexual assault, and murder or attempted murder. Eleven of the 13 recorded exonerations involved “official misconduct” by individuals in positions of authority such as police officers or prosecutors.

One of them, Johnny Hincapie, served for 26 years before being exonerated for a 1991 subway killing. Several key witnesses had not been asked to provide testimony in the original case; when allowed to testify in 2015, they stated that Hincapie was not involved. Hincapie further claimed that he was coerced into a confession by a physically abusive detective.

The Registry has, as of June, counted 12 exonerations in New York State in 2018.

A 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Brady v. Maryland, established that prosecutors must turn over all potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. And last year, New York’s court system became the first in the country to require that prosecutors turn over all potentially exculpatory evidence to defendants, before trial. Nevertheless, New York’s discovery laws are poorly regarded by advocates and politicians alike; despite the precedents and rules, no timetables for turning over evidence or penalties for failing to do so exist. Discovery reform has repeatedly failed to advance in Albany despite widespread support.

“There have been so many major cases, murder cases, of people staying in jail for years and years and years, and with the availability of DNA evidence now, there’s been a lot of exonerations,” said Senator John DeFrancisco, a retiring Republican who was the bill’s primary sponsor in the Senate, in an interview on WQXR’s The Capitol Pressroom.

“And what happens is, people get exonerated, and in the course of that, when they show by DNA it’s not them, further investigation shows that evidence was withheld by prosecutors that should’ve been turned over by the law,” DeFrancisco told host Susan Arbetter. He noted that taxpayers end up on the hook for an unnecessary jail sentence and remuneration fees, while prosecutors get off scot-free.

“We’ve had the same thing for judges since the ‘70s,” he continued, referring to the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, established through two constitutional amendments in 1976 and 1978, which serves to investigate, reprimand, and/or discipline judges accused of misconduct. In an interview with Gotham Gazette, DeFrancisco noted that judges were “apoplectic” when the commission began, but it has been highly successful.

“After several years, after complaints were brought and it was shown how fair the commission was, right now it's second nature,” he said. “It’s changed the conduct of judges.”

Nevertheless, district attorneys are strongly against the proposed commission. “This legislation is a mistake and quite likely unconstitutional, and I urge the Governor to veto it,” Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon, a Democrat, told Gotham Gazette in an emailed statement. “As oversight already exists to address prosecutorial conduct, any attempt by the Legislature to impose additional measures will only tie the hands of prosecutors, and potentially threaten the safety of those we are sworn to protect.”

These existing oversight measures include “grievance committees,” subdivided by appellate division but sometimes with multiple committees per division. These committees investigate claims of misconduct by both prosecutors and defense attorneys, and can lead to censure or professional misconduct charges leveled against attorneys.

But the bill’s advocates say that the grievance committees are not enough. DeFrancisco and Legal Aid both told Gotham Gazette that the committees rarely, if ever, disciplined prosecutors. Legal Aid cited a study, from the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, a criminal justice reform think tank, which found that less than 2 percent of prosecutorial misconduct cases nationwide resulted in punishment. The same study noted 151 cases of misconduct in New York State, found by trial and appellate courts, with only 3 of those cases resulting in sanctions.

DeFrancisco, who has sponsored the bill for several sessions, said that he waited years for the state’s prosecutor association, District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, to provide him evidence of the grievance committees effectively policing prosecutors, but it failed to do so.

The Queens District Attorney’s office directed Gotham Gazette to a letter sent from DA Richard Brown to the New York Law Journal on June 22, in which he stated that both the New York State Commission on Statewide Attorney Discipline, chaired by former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, and the New York State Justice Task Force found that allegations of “rampant prosecutorial misconduct” were unfounded.

“Despite each of these findings, the legislature has elected to pass legislation that subjects prosecutors, alone among those who practice law, to a duplicative and intrusive process that is not only violative of the state constitution, but will surely cause delay to the progress of ongoing investigations and prosecutions, much to the detriment of all New Yorkers,” Brown wrote. He is also urging Cuomo, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and former attorney general, to veto the bill.

The district attorneys for the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan did not return requests for comment.

In a separate appearance on Capitol Pressroom, David Soares, the president-elect of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, raised both constitutional and content-based critiques of the legislation.

On constitutionality, the legislation allegedly circumvents a section of the state’s governing document allowing only the Governor, not the Legislature nor an independent commission, to remove district attorneys from office. He noted that the Commission on Judicial Conduct was established through constitutional amendments, not regular legislation -- such amendments must be passed by consecutive sessions of the Legislature, then the voters by popular referendum.

Soares also criticized the legislation as not requiring complainants to provide a sworn affidavit, “under the penalty of perjury,” and that most instances of “misconduct” were actually not intentional.

He added that if the legislation were to be signed by the governor, then DAASNY would sue the state to block its implementation. The governor’s office, in a statement to Gotham Gazette, did not address the potential lawsuit nor signal an intent to sign the bill or not.

“We believe there should be accountability for all officers of the court, and we will absolutely be reviewing this bill,” said Cuomo spokesperson Tyrone Stevens.

DeFrancisco told Gotham Gazette that he believes the governor will sign the bill. “I think he will sign it. The governor, I think, understands this history here.”

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by Ben Brachfeld, Gotham Gazette

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Democratic Candidates for Attorney General Plant Campaign Flags


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Tish James, Sean Patrick Maloney, Leecia Eve & Zephyr Teachout (l-r)


The race for attorney general has quickly become one of the most competitive and intriguing of the 2018 election cycle in New York. After Democrat Eric Schneiderman resigned in May following revelations that he had physically and emotionally abused intimate partners, the question immediately arose of who would replace him. With a regularly-scheduled election -- that Schneiderman was expected to win handily -- just months away, potential candidates had a short time to decide whether to run.

After some wrangling, four Democrats decided to throw their hats in the ring: Public Advocate Letitia James; U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney; Verizon executive Leecia Eve; and Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout. In the early legs of the campaign, each candidate has staked out a different profile and rationale for their run. By and large, they say they would continue much of the work started by Schneiderman and being continued by his replacement, Barbara Underwood, the former solicitor general who the state Legislature voted in as attorney general for the rest of the year and who declared she was not interested in running for election herself.

Schneiderman built a substantial national profile for himself, especially for a state official, through his lawsuits against the Trump administration on matters such as the Muslim travel ban, the rollback of net neutrality, and the rescission of EPA climate regulations. Fighting the federal government aside, much of the ongoing, essential work of the attorney general is in areas of consumer protection, tenant protection, anti-corruption, and prosecution of fraud. It also serves as the state’s chief legal officer in representing New York in legal matters when the state is sued.

Since the office was occupied by Eliot Spitzer, it has become a launching pad for gubernatorial hopefuls, like both Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, and a space for publicity-minded prosecutors to combat Wall Street, using New York’s comparatively strong anti-fraud statutes such as the 1921 Martin Act. Spitzer, Cuomo, and Schneiderman all turned the office into one with a large political profile, weighing in on policy matters of all kinds. Schneiderman was largely seen as the frontrunner to win the next Democratic nomination for governor after Cuomo’s departure. His political career now appears over.

After public opinion coalesced behind Underwood as Schneiderman’s logical replacement for the rest of the term, roughly ten potential Democratic candidates with interest in the position had to decide whether to launch a campaign ahead of the September primary and November general elections.

James entered the race with clear frontrunner status, receiving endorsements from the State Democratic Party, Governor Andrew Cuomo, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and many other figures, advocacy organizations, and labor unions. But the field was not cleared for her.

James, reelected for a second and final term as public advocate -- the first woman of color to hold a citywide elected office -- in November of last year, is facing serious competition from Teachout, who has a lengthy legal resume and ran for governor in 2014 and Congress in 2016; Maloney, an attorney who worked in the Bill Clinton administration; and Eve, a former aide to Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton when each was a U.S. senator, and to Gov. Cuomo.

Each of the four candidates has sought to define themselves in the early going of the primary, while other general election candidates await to see who is victorious in what promises to be an interesting and hard fought campaign. While James appears to be the early favorite, the race is also wide open, with each candidate possessing certain strengths and constituencies, and a lot still left to play out. The only poll of the race thus far, from Siena College on June 13, showed James leading the pack with 28 percent, Teachout with 18 percent, and Eve with 4 percent; the poll was conducted before Maloney officially entered the race, and 47 percent of those surveyed were unsure.

On Wednesday, Teachout publicly challenged her primary competitors to a series of six broadcast (television and radio) debates around the state. Eve appeared to accept the invitation in a tweet, writing, in part, “I look forward to engaging with my fellow candidates in as many debates as possible, in every region of NYS.”

A campaign spokesperson for James, Delaney Kempner, said, "Tish is prepared to debate anybody and everybody, and she will do that as soon as the Board of Elections certifies candidates." James is the only candidate of the four guaranteed a ballot spot given the support she received at the state convention -- the others must collect petition signatures to qualify.

Asked about the debate challenge, a spokesperson for Maloney said, “The Congressman is focused on reuniting separated immigrant families and stopping the Trump plan to reverse Roe v. Wade by stacking the Supreme Court. It seems premature and presumptuous to be demanding something before you even earn a spot on the ballot. Of course, he’ll eagerly debate at the appropriate time.”

A closer look at how each candidate is framing their attorney general candidacies in the early going:

Tish James
Schneiderman’s resignation opened up James’ dream position. While the public advocate had been eyeing a 2021 run for New York City mayor, her legal background, including work under Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, laid the groundwork for the possibility of an attorney general run at some point. The opportunity came earlier than anyone expected. Upon the vacancy, James was in the running to win legislative appointment, but a variety of factors led to Underwood taking the helm of the office and James running in the primary.

James quickly became the Democratic establishment choice, aligning herself with Cuomo and initially spurning her longtime allies and the governor’s longtime foes in the Working Families Party. The WFP decided to announce its support for both James and Teachout, with the hopes that it will give its general election ballot line to one of the two if either is victorious in the Democratic contest -- and James has expressed love for the WFP and optimism that it will all work out.

She’s promising to be “the people’s lawyer” and to continue her career-long fight for social justice. Her early campaign has shown signs of stress, though, with regard to the close relationship with Cuomo, and calls for the next attorney general to be an independent voice from the governor, especially on matters of government ethics.

After law school, James started her career at the Legal Aid Society, where she worked as a public defender. She became an assistant attorney general under Spitzer, where she said she fought consumer fraud and predatory lending. She has also served as Assembly counsel. James was elected to the New York City Council in 2003, then as public advocate in 2013. She would be the first woman (along with her opponents Teachout and Eve) and woman of color (along with Eve) to be elected attorney general, and the first woman of color to hold statewide elected office in New York.

As public advocate, James has been notably more litigious and legislative than her three predecessors in the office that provides its occupant much latitude to define priorities. She has sued the city to, among other things, block charter school colocation and to get air conditioning on school buses for students with disabilities, and she sued the Staten Island District Attorney to obtain testimony to the grand jury that declined to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner.

However, all three of those lawsuits, like several others during her tenure, were tossed by the courts, ruling that she had no standing to sue. James’ school bus suit had been allowed to go forward by a Manhattan Supreme Court judge in 2016, and she then won a settlement later that year for her two co-plaintiffs, children with disabilities who did not have access to air conditioned buses. However, the lawsuit to be tossed in 2017 by Manhattan Appellate Court.

James has also had her share of victories as public advocate. Ten pieces of legislation for which she was the primary sponsor have passed through the City Council and been signed by the mayor. Most notably, she championed the cause of prohibiting employers from asking questions about salary history, a move aimed at gender pay equity, which became law in May of 2017. She was also the primary advocate in government for making public school lunches free for all students, which came to fruition last September. Her office publishes an annual list of the “100 worst landlords” in the city, a practice started by her predecessor, Bill de Blasio.

She has also had some successful lawsuits, such as her suit against the city’s finance department over allegedly wrongfully kicking seniors off the rent freeze rolls; the suit was settled for $130,000, covering legal fees and damages for ten plaintiffs.

James has pushed body cameras for police officers and gun control; and she has voiced support for legalizing recreational marijuana, breaking with de Blasio and Cuomo in the process, though Cuomo appears on the verge of a similar stance. She has strong ties to labor unions and to advocacy groups. Notably, some of the progressive Democratic clubs and activists that are set on defeating Cuomo in this year’s primary are supporting James, even as she has allied herself with the governor.

On her campaign website, James lists her top priorities for the attorney general position as “protect consumers from abuse,” “be a strong voice for our children,” “protect our environment for future generations,” “enforce equal pay for equal work,” “defend civil rights for all,” and “protect NYers from the Trump administration’s unlawful actions.”

In an appearance on WQXR’s Capitol Pressroom, James said that she would focus her tenure on issues like consumer fraud and housing discrimination.

James also took a decidedly softer stance on the Joint Committee on Public Ethics (JCOPE), a state-level oversight body, than Teachout. James she said that while the organization has issues, she didn’t think that its executive director should resign without an investigation, as Teachout has called for. In response to calls for a new Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, which are being made by Teachout, as well as Cuomo opponents in the gubernatorial race, James also indicated she doesn’t see it as a priority. She has broadly promised, however, to fight corruption in government if elected attorney general.

Zephyr Teachout
Teachout, who unsuccessfully challenged Cuomo in 2014, is staking her bid for attorney general on four planks: “fighting Trump, taking on Albany corruption, fighting corporate scams and corporate monopolies, and spearheading the moral argument against mass incarceration.” She had been serving as the treasurer for the Cynthia Nixon campaign before resigning gto run for attorney general.

Of all the candidates on the Democratic side, Teachout has been the most critical of Schneiderman’s tenure, saying that he failed to adequately pursue corruption by Trump in both his businesses and government; in state government; and in the real estate and financial sectors.

In her launch video, Teachout notes two instances where she contacted Schneiderman’s office but achieved no results. The first was in 2014, when she asked him to use “the full power of his office” to investigate Cuomo’s shutting down of the anti-corruption Moreland Commission. The second was when, soon after the 2016 election, Teachout asked Schneiderman to join a lawsuit in federal court against Trump regarding the emoluments clause to the U.S. Constitution. Schneiderman did not join the suit. Teachout says that she will join the suit if she wins.

In referring to Schneiderman’s apparent inaction on the Moreland Commission, Teachout said that the state needs an “independent” attorney general, possibly a dig at James, who was endorsed by Cuomo and the State Democratic Party. Teachout also referred to herself as an “outsider” from the notorious political culture in Albany. She has long-called for major changes to state government ethics and campaign finance laws, as well as voting and election laws.

Teachout claims that the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in state government was never disbanded, though it was “shuttered” at the behest of Cuomo, when it was beginning to investigate donors close to the governor, according to reports. In a statement, Teachout said that she would restart the commission’s work as attorney general.

“The Executive Order 106 creating the Moreland Commission was never formally rescinded. That means that the Attorney General’s power and responsibility to investigate New York corruption persists.” She promised to “use those powers to take on corruption in NYS government.”

Teachout’s platform also includes a heavy emphasis on “trust-busting” and combating corporate mergers such as those of for-profit hospitals and others similar to the cable giant Spectrum. She further hopes to use the office to push criminal justice reforms such as eliminating cash bail and reform of New York’s discovery laws.

As the candidate seemingly furthest to the left, most critical of Cuomo, and least beholden to institutional forces, Teachout is attempting to ride a progressive wave that is fed up with the status quo. On Wednesday, Teachout highlighted that in May she had endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-avowed democratic socialist who pulled off a shocking upset of Rep. Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s congressional primary. Teachout emailed her supporters celebrating the win and pumping up her own campaign. Of Ocasio-Cortez she wrote, “Her win is a testament to what’s possible when you run a bold, progressive campaign that speaks directly to voters.” She added: “What’s more exciting? We’re next.”

Like with the calls for the head of JCOPE to resign and the debate challenge, Teachout is running an aggressive campaign that often forces her opponents to respond to her.

“I am running to be the next Attorney General of New York. I accept no corporate PAC money, and no LLC money,” Teachout tweeted on Thursday. “This is not complicated: No Attorney General should take money from corporations she is charged with overseeing & investigating & whose lawbreaking she may prosecute.”

Leecia Eve
Eve, a former candidate for lieutenant governor, advisor to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Cuomo administration official; and now a lobbyist for Verizon, has so far run a subdued attorney general campaign, though she says that that will soon change.

Eve formerly served in the Cuomo administration as general counsel to Empire State Development, the state’s main economic development organization. She told Gotham Gazette that, despite repeated ethical concerns within the state’s larger economic development apparatus, she was never aware of any corruption within ESD. She currently serves on the board of the Port Authority in a volunteer capacity.

Asked on Capitol Pressroom whether having worked for the governor diminished her independence, Eve said that she was not the candidate endorsed by the governor or the state Democratic Party. “I have not spoken to the governor about my race,” she said.

She said she would fight endemic corruption in the state as attorney general, and that convening another Moreland Commission should be “under serious consideration.” However, she demurred on harsh criticism of JCOPE or its embattled chair, Seth Agata, whom she has worked with. “Certainly in all my dealings with him,” she said, referring to her time serving in the Cuomo administration, “he conducted himself with integrity and honor.” On “Capitol Pressroom,” she implied that Teachout was “grabbing headlines” by calling for Agata to resign and criticizing JCOPE.

Like James, she would be the first woman of color to serve in statewide elected office. Asked on Capitol Pressroom by host Susan Arbetter whether it was important for New York’s “top law enforcement official” to be a woman of color, as laid out by activist groups like Black Lives Matter, Eve agreed that it matters, but implied that experience should not be discounted. Eve claims that she is the most qualified candidate running for the post.

In Washington, she worked for the law firm Covington and Burling, followed by a stint at Biden’s senatorial office, where she worked on the Violence Against Women Act and the controversial 1996 immigration bill. Afterwards, she served as counsel to New York Senator Hillary Clinton. She ran for lieutenant governor in 2006 but was passed over for the ticket with Eliot Spitzer, then the attorney general; she wistfully notes that if she, rather than David Paterson, had been selected, she would have become the governor given Spitzer’s resignation in disgrace.

Eve has won the endorsement of the Erie County Democratic Party, the local party organization for her hometown of Buffalo (she now lives in Manhattan). She applied for the legislative appointment, but withdrew her name in favor of appointing Underwood. She claims that she has seen the inside of a courtroom more than any other candidate, part of why she says she is the most qualified to serve as attorney general.

Eve told Gotham Gazette she will soon be transitioning to full-time campaigning, and told Gotham Gazette that she would continue Schneiderman’s lawsuit against the federal government over the rollback of net neutrality, despite her employment by telecommunications giant Verizon. Eve claimed that Verizon supports net neutrality, though the company publicly supported the FCC’s rollback of net neutrality rules and lobbied states not to pass their own net neutrality provisions.

“I am unequivocally, 1000 percent in support of net neutrality,” she said, noting that Verizon takes the position that companies should not engage in “throttling, blocking, or engaged in paid prioritization.” She said she would support the continuation of the lawsuit, but would extricate herself from the actual lawsuit. “What is most appropriate for me is to recuse myself from that process, but I would expect extraordinary lawyer of the Office of Attorney General to continue that work.”

Sean Patrick Maloney
Rep. Maloney, of Putnam County is running for attorney general while also running for reelection to Congress. He was not challenged in the congressional primary on Tuesday, and has said if he wins the AG primary in September, he will then remove himself from the general election ballot for the House. It is a curious, controversial move that has his Republican congressional opponent calling foul and some Democrats scratching their heads. It also has his legal team and other lawyers preparing for a possibly challenge to his ballot status.

Maloney ran for AG in 2006, coming in a distant third place in the primary, in a race won by Andrew Cuomo. Before that run and his subsequent successful congressional campaign, he worked for multiple Manhattan law firms, as well as in Albany and Washington.

As a candidate, Maloney has placed significant focus on combating the Trump administration on issues such as LGBTQ rights. Maloney, who is gay, said the issue is “personal for me and my family.”

Maloney also stated on Twitter that he is in favor of net neutrality, saying that its repeal “will only hurt New York families.” Further, he endorsed the legalization of marijuana.

In contrast to the more liberal James and Teachout, Maloney is more of a centrist, perhaps a necessity to represent a congressional district won by Donald Trump. He is a member of the “New Democrat Coalition,” which describes itself as “a solutions oriented coalition seeking to bridge the gap between left and right by challenging outmoded partisan approaches to governing.”

In an appearance on the Capitol Pressroom soon after announcing his campaign, he said he would continue a lawsuit against Exxon filed by Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and would also seek to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for the spread of opioids. On ICE in courtrooms, his answer was evasive. Maloney also boasted of having passed “30 bipartisan bills” in his congressional tenure on behalf of veterans, farmers, and trains, and that he played a significant role in stopping “Trumpcare” in Congress.

If elected attorney general, Maloney’s adversarialism toward Wall Street may not be as strong as James’ or Teachout’s would be. According to Public Citizen, Maloney has accepted almost $500,000 in donations from the financial sector over the course of his career. In May, he voted for a bill in Congress that significantly diminished the post-recession regulations on the financial sector.

Like his opponents, Maloney is taking a hard line on Trump. On Capitol Pressroom he said he is “playing defense” in Congress, but that he wishes to “get on offense” against Trump as attorney general.

“Changes to the #SupremeCourt mean our democratic values are under attack by this president and his goons that think we should roll back rights on minorities, women, and #LGBTQ people,” Maloney tweeted on Thursday. “We can’t let it stand. Fight back with me,” he added, with a link to his campaign website.

Maloney’s campaign declined an interview request from Gotham Gazette, citing a busy schedule in Washington, D.C.

The winner of the Democratic primary for attorney general will face Republican nominee Keith Wofford and other smaller party candidates in the general election.

***
by Ben Brachfeld, Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this article.



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