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In Conversation: Mayoral Candidate Bill De Blasio


Bill de Blasio Headshot

NEW YORK — Bill de Blasio, the public advocate and Democratic mayoral candidate, first got elected to city government in 2001. Well known within political circles but not yet a household name, he is seen as the liberal choice in the mayoral race, angling to represent the increasingly assertive influencers living in the outer boroughs, especially in the "new Brooklyn," where he resides with his family in Park Slope. In a recent interview, he spoke to the Gotham Gazette about the city's budget, the role of the private sector in public education and the need to reform the public housing agency.


GG: The Department of Education has received considerable financial and professional support from the private sector. What role should the private sector — either business people or companies — play in financing, shaping or steering the DOE and its policies?

DE BLASIO: One, I want to continue the charitable support we get obviously. Two, I've said, not to the private sector, per se, but to folks who've done well financially — I've proposed a tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers, those who make a $500k and more for five years — I think that will be a game changer in our schools. The money would go to early childhood and afterschool programs at the middle school level. I think that will profoundly improve our school system and the rest of the resources will be better utilized because we are building a stronger foundation.

But in terms of the role of the business community in schools, I'd like to intensify it, first at the high school level on down to the middle school level to the maximum extent possible, linking individual businesses and or sectors, tech sector, film, TV, media etc., to specific schools.

GG: How does that work?

DE BLASIO: I think one of the things that's happening is that a lot of young people, aren't being given a sense of a pathway, after school. A lot of folks are going to have trouble affording higher education or completing it, because of the cost. Right now, our school system, including our approach to career and tech education, really doesn't key into the current economy and where the jobs are going to be, in the economic future.

But, if you link, a specific business to a school, that comes with internships, mentoring possibilities, that really changes our approach, and certainly what young people get to see as possible for their future. So I want the business community deeply involved.

And, in terms of strategy, when it comes to career and technical education, we should be regularly sitting with leaders of the business community to figure out what skills we should be teaching to help prepare our workforce of the future.

GG: Throughout much of the budget process, the mayor's Office of Management and Budget has been criticized by some observers because of what they see as a lack of transparency. As mayor, what will you do to make the OMB be more accountable to both the public and elected officials.?

DE BLASIO: A lot of what we do with the budget process can only be described as primitive, it's based on a lot of secrecy, not allowing the public to know what the real revenue projections are, you know, playing games with that.

I don't even need to go into the problem of member items in the City Council, which I've called for abolition of, the way that the budget process keys in on the mayor offering the Council, a very small amount of the budget, and using that as a tool of political control, how the Council speaker uses that same small allotment to control the members as opposed to actually having a larger public debate on our budgetary priorities and where the real money is.

The Council is arguing over that small amount of funding they get to work with. That is less than one percent of the overall budget. The big questions are, what are we doing with our major choices, like education, affordable housing, health care? Those are things we put a huge amount of money in.

I want to move us to a more mature, more transparent, more publicly involving approach, somewhat like what you see at the Congressional level. And I think the public needs to have a role from the beginning.

GG: I have to ask this. There's been some press and a lot of talk, in particular the mayor himself, about what some are calling New York's coming fiscal cliff. Some have put the figure owed at around $7.8 billion, and one of you is going to inherit that. Unions in the city haven't gotten any new raises in over four years [Editor's Note: Clarifies that there have been no new raises. Union members have received incremental salary increases under old contracts]. How do you foresee handling that?

DE BLASIO: Look, I have confidence that we can work our way through it. I think everyone knows they're going to have to make compromises in this process. The Bloomberg approach had two features that I think we really need to move away from. One was the irresponsibility of not dealing with the contracts as they came up. As mayor, well, I'm watching the Bloomberg example carefully to know what not to do. You have to deal with these things in real time. It's like any household budget, when you let stuff build and build it becomes insurmountable. But, two, is the mayor has often used his bully pulpit to attack municipal labor. And, interestingly, that has correlated with his inability to get realistic agreements including some of the productivity changes we need because the attacks have just hardened the position of municipal labor.

GG: So, as mayor, how would you engage municipal unions on this issue?

DE BLASIO: What I plan to do is sit at the table with union leaders and say look, here's our financial reality. We want to try and do that which we can for you. We can only do that with what we have and we can't surpass the resources we have — we are legally obliged to balance our budget. So, what I will ask of every union, is show me every kind of savings, every kind of productivity improvement, and tell me your priorities. And then I'll tell you what I have to work with. I'll tell you the different policies we can work together on to improve working conditions, etc. And we'll come to some kind of balance point.

And I'm convinced, even if it means, if it takes several years to resolve all the outstanding issues, and stretch out some of the payments, so we can afford them, we'll get through it.

But we'll only get through it if there's a cooperative atmosphere, and if we treat labor leaders like they're mature people, who know how to handle a difficult situation, certainly the experience in the 1970's fiscal crisis suggests that when treated as partners labor can be fair and balanced in their approach.

GG: On to real estate and climate change. In light of the widely held assumption that our sea levels are rising, what will be your specific approach to waterfront development. How will you work with the real estate community on construction issues related to climate change? Some say developers could stand to lose with stronger restrictions — then again, could they stand to profit from smarter building science?

DE BLASIO: I think more the latter. Look, I'm going to borrow a couple of pieces from Bloomberg, then an important piece from Cuomo. I think Bloomberg is right, we are a coastal city and we should not assume otherwise. There's climate change, we have rising sea levels and we're going to face greater challenges than before, but, that does not mean a retreat, it means changing how we build.

I think it's fair to say, even taking the extraordinary example of Sandy — and Sandy really was a quote unquote perfect storm — when you look at all the things that sort of happened simultaneously to make it have the impact it had, had we had in place the kind of building codes the mayor is proposing now, such as generators weren't in the basement, we would have had a very different outcomes.

So I don't think we have to retreat, but we have to build very differently. I think that will afford perfectly good opportunities to the real estate industry to continue to profit. They're doing very well right now. Values in this city are extraordinarily high and the appeal of this city is extraordinarily high and I don't think that's going to change.

I think the governor made the point that some of the low lying areas, even areas that are below sea level such as a few areas on Staten Island, we have to incentivize people to move from areas that are no longer sustainable for the long term. I think we have to see how far we can go with the incentivization, and hopefully get that to work. But, that's a fairly small number of areas. But even the Rockaways, which was hit so hard — I agree with the mayor's focus in his plans, for example, [for] dune restoration and wetlands restoration. These are approaches that have been working around the world.

But even in the real life example of the Rockaways during Sandy, some areas that had built up the dunes, did quite well; other areas, of course, were hit very hard. I'm optimistic we have of the tools and, thank God, we have a lot of the federal funding, not everything, but a lot, and we will find a way to make the right adjustments and continue to be a successful coastal city.

GG: This year, news came out that the city’s Housing Authority had yet to spend nearly $1 billion in federal money despite a backlog of complaints from residents seeking repairs and a growing waiting list of applicants. In June, NYCHA announced that it would cut back on services and lay off staff due to $205 million in budget cuts resulting from the federal sequestration. How do you make NYCHA more accountable to taxpayers and residents? And what would your administration do to address the agency’s ongoing budget problems?

DE BLASIO: To the first point, just about affordable housing in general, there's an affordability crisis in this city and it cannot be solved with business as usual. The Bloomberg administration was often very lenient to the real estate industry. And, when you look at the final figures on the Bloomberg years, and the affordable housing they created or preserved verses that which was lost because of loss of Mitchell Lama units, rent regulated units, we really didn't end up with much of a net of affordable housing.

So, the plan I put forward, 200,000 units, is based on a much more aggressive approach by the public sector towards the real estate industry demanding that affordable housing be a part of every major development and be required, mandatory inclusionary zoning. And a series of other steps, investing pension fund dollars etc.

The big point, I want to make, is that we have to change a lot of our approach to housing or a huge number of people will not be able to live here. We will not be an economically diverse city. And we have to continue to be an economically diverse city.

GG: And public housing?

DE BLASIO: The current Bloomberg plan I do not support because I think it was rushed, as so many other things the mayor has done lately. I don't think it makes clear to public housing residents that we will disallow privatization, I think residents worry its a first step towards privatization of public housing units, which would be fundamentally destructive and unacceptable. It didn't involve community members properly in the process and doesn't offer guarantees in terms of employment or where any resources from development will go to people in the surrounding areas.

I think its an ill conceived project that has to be stopped. I think the next mayor needs to look at the whole question of any available NYCHA land very differently, and start with the residents and what will benefit the residents of NYCHA and start with some of these huge repair backlogs.

GG: What about that billion dollars?

DE BLASIO: The billion dollars that has not been spent effectively is a huge problem but the bigger problem, in my opinion is that there's been a history of inefficiency at NYCHA and poor labor management relations. A lot was not done, with even the money we've had.

As public advocate, the number one complaint that I got, is from public housing residents calling about serious repairs, they needed health and safety oriented repairs, and not being able to get them, even after years of being on a wait list.

That showed me, and we've researched this extensively, that NYCHA is simply not professionally managed. And we have to go back and do some serious restructuring, not just at the board level, but on the whole managerial approach and the labor relations.

Beyond that, we have to find a way to change the federal government involvement which used to be much, much greater in NYCHA, that's going to take time, but it's something I believe ultimately can be achieved because of the importance of New York City to the future of the nation's economy.

So a lot of different pieces, but it starts with much deeper reorganization of NYCHA to make more efficient use of the money we have now.

Quinn Goes On The Attack


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“Talk is cheap,” Democratic mayoral candidate Christine Quinn said today during what was billed as a major speech. “Voters will decide based on actions. The greatest indication of what someone will be able to achieve can be found in what they’ve already accomplished. The record speaks for itself.”

The speech, delivered at the East Harlem Center for Asthma, was noteworthy for Quinn’s attacks on rivals and her emphatic support of the nearby East 91st Street waste transfer station.

In an attempt to create contrasts between her and the other Democrats up to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Quinn said she was the only candidate with a record on the city budget as well as on the issues that New Yorkers need to grapple with the most: affordable housing, education reform, unemployment and income inequality.

“A record of results, and a vision for the future — that’s what I’ve been out here talking about for the last six months, and it’s what I’ll be talking about all the way to November,” Quinn said. “That’s what we need from the next mayor. Not just empty promises, silly press stunts, or nonstop criticism, but a real plan on how to deliver for New Yorkers.”

Quinn rarely mentioned public safety — which months ago seemed to be the dividing line between candidates — nor did she mention the paid sick leave legislation she allowed to a vote this spring after years of holding it back.

She was artfully vague in her attacks against her rivals, but managed to use choice words against them.

She said she offers comprehensive solutions to lead, not “4-year-old position papers dusted off for a comeback attempt,” an assumed jab at former Congressman Anthony Weiner, but applicable to most of the primary’s headliners.

While not known for being coy, Quinn launched her primary attack on former comptroller and 2009 Democratic candidate Bill Thompson without invoking his name but rather the issue of the East 91st Street marine transfer station.

Quinn hailed the site as the cornerstone of the city’s waste management plan, which was introduced in 2006. The 91st Street site was developed as a means to reduce pollution and traffic in neighborhoods already home to any of the 58 transfer sites, all but one in the outer boroughs.

“Some of my opponents in this race continue to pander to residents of the Upper East Side — or side with their lobbyist donors,” Quinn said in a thinly veiled reference to Thompson. “Some say they would take 91st Street out of the plan altogether, even though doing so would require opening up the entire plan, subjecting it to community and environmental review, requiring approval from the Council and from Albany all over again.”

After Quinn’s speech today, Thompson’s campaign responded in equal measure.

“Speaker Quinn has sided with rich Manhattan interests at the expense of the working people of the city,” the statement said. “But her attacks today won’t solve the challenges facing working New Yorkers.”

Like Quinn, Public Advocate and Democratic rival Bill de Blasio has come out in favor of the transfer site. That, however, didn’t stop de Blasio’s campaign manager Bill Hyers from laying out a less favorable record for Quinn.

“Speaker Quinn’s accomplishments include giving Mayor Bloomberg a third term, proposing to shower big developers with a billion dollar giveaway and blocking key progressive legislation for years to placate big business,” Hyers wrote. “This election is not a contrast in getting things done — it’s about who you are fighting for.”

Even former Councilman Sal Albanese went after Quinn’s record, which he called “nothing to write home about” and that her campaign has accepted more than $1.5 million from real estate developers.

“We’ve seen Christine Quinn’s New York: term limits overturned, hospitals and schools closed, and legislation watered down,” he wrote. “As the city grew more unaffordable for regular New Yorkers, she rolled out the red carpet for plutocrats. Now, they are repaying her loyalty.”

Quinn tried to preemptively fight back against criticism in her speech.

“I don’t worry about labels,” she said. “I don’t worry about fitting into a narrative. I’m not concerned with making it easy to describe me in 140 characters or less.”

Instead, Quinn used a long, non-tweet-length comparison to describe herself and her possible four-year stint as the city’s next mayor.

“You know, my wife Kim and I are huge Bruce Springsteen fans,” Quinn said. “And I think about something Jon Stewart said while honoring Bruce at the Kennedy Center last year. He said, ‘Whenever I see Bruce Springsteen do anything, he empties his tank every time.’

“And if I’m lucky enough to become our next mayor, that’s how I’ll spend every day: Delivering results for New Yorkers. Holding nothing back. Emptying my tank.”

Mayoral Candidates Atwitter Over Puerto Rican Day Parade


Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among tens of thousands of New Yorkers marching in yesterday's Puerto Rican Day Parade, as were many of the candidates who hope to replace him in Januray.

Many of the mayoral hopefuls took to the Twittersphere to show their committment the Latino community.

One of the candidates left more to the imagination.

While another marched in the parade not as a candidate but as an elected figure.

And despite being one of Twitter's most infamous tweeters, at least one candidate relied on media to capture his moment.

Se Puede? Latino Political Power In The 2013 Mayoral Race


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NEW YORK — On a recent Sunday in April, state Sen. Gustavo Rivera and Democratic mayoral nominee Christine Quinn were standing in front of a Bronx bodega when they were approached by a father and his 10-year-old son.

The father, Javier Perez, knew the senator from his work in the neighborhood — and his son had even gone up to Albany to rally against school budget cuts. But Perez didn't know who Quinn was until Rivera told him.

"I want to introduce you to the next mayor," Rivera said to Perez in Spanish as the father then shook hands with Quinn, who was surrounded by her supporters carrying signs.

Perez praised Rivera's work in the Bronx and said he trusted the state senator's judgment. Seeing Quinn walk side-to-side with the Bronx leader convinced Perez that she would also look out for his and his family's needs.

"Very much so, of course." Perez said in Spanish. "She's a good candidate."

Quinn’s endorsement from Rivera was the opening salvo in what has become a string of endorsements from Latino politicians and community leaders north of the Harlem River. Last week, Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, endorsed former Comptroller Bill Thompson as the candidate to replace Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has the support of Bronx Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda, and former Congressman Anthony Weiner wooed onlookers during this past weekend’s Puerto Rican Day Parade. In fact, all the candidates — Republican and Democratic — were out with flags and campaign signs down Fifth Avenue yesterday.

Related: Mayoral Candidates Atwitter Over Puerto Rican Day Parade

The city’s Latinos are an increasingly important voting bloc, accounting for almost 30 percent of registered voters. Mayoral candidates, and Democratic candidates vying for their party’s nomination in particular, know this — just as they know that they need the influence of political leaders in the Bronx to sway Latinos in their favor.

At least two candidates have already declared that the Latino vote is vital for their campaigns if they stand any chance of making it to City Hall. Democratic upstart Erick Salgado and independent candidate Adolfo Carrión are two Latino candidates who think they can break through to what may be their most natural base.

Their challenge is the same one that their fellow rivals face: how do they drive a divided Latino electorate to the primary, much less the general election without a clearly defined, signature issue the way immigration has been on the national level.

Without that singular issue, Latino leaders are divided on who they think can best address their community’s needs, making their endorsements all the more important as a means to turn out the vote.

"What you have now is a very disorganized, fragmented kind of political situation," Angelo Falcón of the National Institute for Latino Policy. "There seems to be no real coordination or strategic thinking about the role of the Latino vote."

A STILL-GROWING, DIVERSE BLOC

It's nearly impossible to separate the story of Latinos' political power from the Bronx's story. In 2010, the borough became the first to boast more than half of the population to identify as Latino or Hispanic.

The 2010 Census counted almost 1.4 million Bronxites. Of those, 740,000 are Latino — a 15 percent jump from just ten years earlier. Most of those residents — as well as registered voters — are Puerto Rican and Dominican, although of Central and Southern American immigrants are a growing percentage of the population.

On a national level, if talking heads and pollsters are to be believed, Latinos were integral to the 2012 election. Both the presidential campaigns vied desperately for votes from one of the fastest growing minority groups across the country.

The Republican Party's inability to attract what it argued was a natural political base fascinated pollsters and politicians alike. Ultimately, Latinos went for Obama. Exit polls from the Pew Research Center found that Latinos favored the Democrat over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, 71 to 27 percent.

But Latinos certainly didn't vote in numbers proportionate to their size.

Census figures show that while Latinos represent almost 11 percent of voters during the presidential election, only about half of the currently eligible 23.7 million Latinos turned out in 2012. Among the five boroughs, the Bronx had the second lowest turnout for the presidential election. Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens each brought out over 450,000 votes for Obama, compared to the Bronx's 339,211.

Last year, the city's Campaign Finance Board released a report evaluating data from the local Board of Elections and the Census that found turnout in the Bronx was lower than in Manhattan and Staten Island.

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The report, titled "Who Votes? Voter Turnout in New York City," also reported that — unsurprisingly — areas across the city with larger numbers of naturalized citizens and low educational attainment showed up to the poll in lower numbers, as did voters younger than 30.

"What motivated the Latinos on a national level was a fear of the Republican party," Falcón said. "Here in New York, I'm not sure that there's going to be any major motivator."

However, Juan Cartagena, president of LatinoJustice PRLDEF seems the glimmer of a motivating issue.

"This is the first time that I can remember when police strategies are front and center of an election," he said. Cartagena specified that while NYPD's relationship with minority communities has often come up during elections, an "endemic and systemic practice" like stop-and-frisk has not.

In May, a Quinnipiac poll showed that 58 percent of Latinos asked disapprove of the controversial police tactic, compared to 38 who support it. Still, 54 percent of Latino respondents said that they approve of Mayor Bloomberg’s job as mayor.

Still, Cartagena argued that policing might become a galvanizing wild-card issue for undecided Latinos.

A NUMBERS GAME

The goal, as it is with any endorsement, is to draw the endorser's base into the political campaign, in which case early polling shows Quinn with a decent lead among Latino voters.

A separate Quinnipiac poll that reported a high number of undecided registered Democrats also revealed that that 25 percent of the Latino respondents said that they would vote for Quinn. A subsequent Marist College poll gave her a 35 percent favorability rating with Latinos.

After Sen. Rivera announced his endorsement for Quinn, the Council speaker told the Gotham Gazette that she recognized the Latino electorate's political heft. Quinn added that her campaign sees a great deal of diversity from within the community that calls for aggressive outreach.

"We're trying to spend as much time as we can in those communities," Quinn said, and that she understands the responsibility of making an impression on her political endorsers' constituents.

But endorsements don’t always play out in the poll. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner is rated by Latinos as their second pick in Quinnipiac’s poll, and has no formal endorsements — Latino or otherwise.

Qunnipiac also reported that it's not much better for Carrión. The only major poll that has measured Carrión's chances, it said that less than 6 percent of respondents would definitely vote for the Independence candidate, compared to the 60 percent said that they were unlikely to or would definitely not vote for him.

Soon after, Salgado was identified recently by a Marist College poll as least-known candidate with three out of five respondents either not knowing him or being unable to rate him.

The Republican ticket doesn't fare much better with Latinos. Only 10 percent of respondents said that they would vote for Lhota over any Democratic candidate.

And while Latinos have a historical inclination towards the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party's loyalty to them is less clear. Falcon argued that Democrats are taking Latino voters for granted.

"Look at Carrión — he has to run as an independent, and Salgado's not really a serious Democratic Party candidate," said Angelo Falcón of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

"I think that's a reflection of the irony that Latinos have been the most loyal to the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party has not been responsive to the Latino community."

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HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

Diversity of opinion is a hallmark in any political race, but Falcón said that the city's Latino leadership is more diffuse — even fractured — on its mayoral preferences now than it has been in previous races.

Falcón said that one would think the political leaders would see the value in combining their political clout, not unlike they have in the past. Falcón referred to Latino voters' relative cohesiveness on display during Fernando Ferrer's 2001 failed mayoral campaign.

Ferrer went from Bronx borough president to the first leading Latino mayoral candidate in 2001. Ferrer, who is of Puerto Rican descent, beat out most of his fellow challengers in the Democratic primary to in the unsuccessful bid to replace then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Ferrer declined to be interviewed for this story due to his current position as acting MTA chief after Republican candidate Lhota entered the race.

A 2001 report from the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York revealed that Latino neighborhoods in the Bronx and parts of northern Manhattan not only went heavily for Ferrer in the Democratic primary, but also turned out in higher numbers.

It wasn't enough. Ferrer ultimately lost the ticket to Mark Green, who then eventually lost to then-Republican candidate Michael Bloomberg by two percentage points.

When Ferrer ran again in 2005, he secured the Democratic ballot line in the general election after Anthony Weiner dropped out of the primary. Despite massive institutional support, Ferrer lost again to Bloomberg.

Ferrer's second loss, this time by almost 20 percentage points, has since been blamed on a number of factors, including headlines about police violence, Bloomberg's $78 million in campaign spending and a fractured Democratic party.

But in the face of those variables, the Bronx still had Ferrer's back. It was the only borough Ferrer won, almost 60 percent to Bloomberg's 40 percent. Citywide, eight in 10 Latino New Yorkers supported Ferrer, even if Latinos turned out in low numbers.

"Ferrer had the opportunity to play the role of a Latino pioneer," Falcón said, adding that legitimate Latino candidates since Ferrer have been few and far between. "Everybody seems to be all over the place and maybe they haven't developed the kind of machinery to be successful for running."

Even non-Latino candidates with strong campaign machinery struggle with Latino turnout. It was low for Ferrer in 2005, and again in 2009 when Bill Thompson ran as the Democratic candidate against Bloomberg's bid for a third term. Still, despite the close margin — Bloomberg's 50.7 percent to Thompson's 46.3 percent — Thompson did sweep the minority vote.

Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz, Jr. stood with Thompson in 2009, and did so again this year, standing with the former comptroller in front of City Hall four months before the Democratic primary. Surrounded by Thompson's supporters, Díaz said it was important for Latino leaders to speak out early in the race.

"It's incumbent upon me and some of the elections in the Bronx to make sure that we have the Latino community vote in bigger numbers than ever," Díaz said.

When a Spanish-language reporter asked him why he wouldn't endorse either of the Latino candidates in the race, Díaz doubled down on his alliance with Thompson.

"The reality is that this is my candidate, and I'll support him without fear," he said in Spanish. "Especially when you're comparing him with other candidates who are Latino."

AN HEIR APPARENT

In many ways, Adolfo Carrión's career exemplifies the rise of a Latino politician in New York.

The Manhattan-born, Bronx-raised Carrión was brought up in an observant Protestant family. With a bachelor's degree from downtown Manhattan's King's College and a master's from Hunter College, Carrión focused his educational energies on urban city planning.

He eventually serving as a community board manager and one term on City Council before his eye turned to the Bronx borough presidency, taking over the seat from Ferrer.

After two terms in the office, Carrión left the Bronx for Washington D.C., presiding over the Office of Urban Affairs and later as a regional director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Carrión remained a Democrat all throughout his time in the Bronx and Washington D.C. That changed when he announced his candidacy for mayor in 2012. Running on the Independence Party ticket, Carrión said he wants to be the city's first Latino mayor.

"My job between now and November is to convince my community that I want to be a mayor for all New Yorkers but, by God, I understand the historic opportunity we have," he said.

Carrión describes himself as a socially liberal yet fiscally conservative independent, which he figures falls in line with both many Latinos and New Yorkers at large.

It's not an unreasonable conclusion, given the last three terms of the candidate that bested Ferrer. Bloomberg, a former Democrat himself, aligned with the Republican Party in his first campaign. Bloomberg also handily defeated the first ever Latino Bronx borough president, Herman Badillo, for the GOP's nod in 2001.

Carrión — who has so-far raised about $1 million with about half still in the bank — breaks away from the mayor on a few issues, most notably stop-and-frisk. If elected mayor, he said that he'd tweak the controversial program. Otherwise, Carrión doesn't seem to mind comparisons to Bloomberg, especially if it indicates a streak of independence among Latinos.

"I think that they respect the fact that he calls it as he sees it," he said. "That's the genius that I see in the electorate. People have been voting out of their comfort zones for some time."

The ease with which voters are electing people outside of party loyalty, Carrión added, applies just as much to Latinos in 2013. His campaign knows it, and is trying to make the case that Latinos can jump to the Independence Party ballot line.

The Independence Party is a mainstay of New York City politics, helping a then-Republican-backed Bloomberg secure a second spot on the 2001 ballot. The city's rule on fusion voting lets candidates appear on the ballot more than once and still have the aggregate between lines go towards their total vote counts, which Carrión will also try to repeat.

Earlier this year, Carrión tried to get the support from GOP county leaders that he would have needed to get a ballot line, being that he's not a registered Republican. He failed to do so, but he's taken it in stride and said he's focused his energies on turning out Latinos to the polls.

The move didn’t settle well with many of his fellow colleagues, including two his borough presidency predecessors Badillo and Diaz. And the candidate’s campaign has also been marred by accusations of unethical, pay-for-play behavior during his time as borough president, charges that Carrión has denied as "pure fabrication."

Carrión is only looking forward.

"In 2009, we had a turnout of less than 30 percent," Carrión said as he did the math. "So total voters were about 1.78 million. Of that, 16 percent were Hispanic. So we're punching below our weight right now."

Carrión continued to add up his prospects, saying that he's banking on 125,000 votes from independents and about 75 percent of the Latino vote to take the mayor's race. To that end, his campaign has made some effort to reach out specifically to Latinos. The same week that Carrión spent an extended weekend in Puerto Rico meeting with local leaders, he released his first campaign web ad.

Titled "Waking the Sleeping Giant," the minute-long ad cuts between stock video and clips of Carrión on the campaign. Releasing both an English and Spanish version, the videos have been watched more than 9,000 times.

"People always ask me what will it mean to be New York's first Latino mayor," Carrión reads in a voice-over. "My response is always the same: If I'm elected mayor it means we have awakened the sleeping giant — hemos despertado al gigante dormido."

But observers say Carrión hasn’t been able to stir much of anything. Cartagena noted that Carrión has so far acted like a non-entity in the race.

"He'll only start taking votes if he becomes more physical in the race," Cartagena said. "The sooner he does it, the better for him."

The fact that Erick Salgado, who Cartagena predicts will play little to no role in the election, seems to be getting just as much if not more media attention than Carrión should worry the former borough president.

"That speaks more about Carrión's campaign than about Salgado," he said.

MINISTER FOR MAYOR

Erick Salgado has never served in political office, and he thinks it's his ace-in-the-hole.

Salgado often makes it a point to declare himself as the only candidate who isn't a career politician. A reverend by trade, he lives with his wife and children in Staten Island and operates two primarily Latino churches in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. That said, he's also still a Bronxite.

Born in the borough to Puerto Rican parents, Salgado's family moved back to the Caribbean when he began to suffer from asthma as a child. He returned to the city in his late teens, focusing his studies on theological work. Salgado eventually opened the doors to two Latino churches in Brooklyn, and has taken his messaging to the airwaves, eventually purchasing a radio frequency for his ministry.

If Carrión is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, Salgado is in some ways his ideological opposite.

Despite a few odd answers to questions about what he would do on certain issues as mayor, such as increasing access to firearms for women as a way to decrease domestic violence, Salgado has come out in favor of hiring more police, providing undocumented immigrants with a municipal ID card and increasing financial support for programs that help immigrants, who he often calls the city's "most vulnerable."

During his debut appearance on a televised mayoral forum on NY1, Salgado also floated the idea of Rudy Giuliani as his potential police commissioner. The only Latino on stage at the time, he also told the audience about how he was randomly stopped — but not frisked — a few weeks before.

"Nothing good comes from stop-and-frisk when you're Latino," Salgado said in Spanish before the live audience laughed when moderator Errol Louis offered him sympathy.

Those laughs don't faze Salgado. He takes the laughs about his thick accent and unconventional politics as a Democratic candidate in stride, perfectly aware that some people aren't taking his campaign seriously.

"When we finish up fixing the city," he said in Spanish during a recent fundraiser in the Bronx, "they are going to love my accent."

However, one of his platform issues seems to have caught the attention of at least one rival.

When Bill de Blasio pushed the idea of a municipal ID card in a mid-May Daily News editorial, Salgado sent out a press release thanking his rivals for backing his idea, even if they didn’t give him credit, before questioning their motives.

"As elected officials they had the opportunity to introduce legislation that would create these cards long before campaign season," he wrote. "Could this just be a tactic to get the Hispanic vote?"

As far as his own targeting of the Hispanic vote, Salgado is bucking the conventional wisdom. Salgado refused to believe that Latinos are as liberal as the recent polls paint them to be. He thinks that the Latino community is as traditional as some Republican pundits allege, and that a less intrusive government combined with the preservation of family is just what New York City needs.

His opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage, though, has helped him find his base. When introducing the candidate to a crowd of Latino ministers at a campaign event, Sen. Rubén Díaz, Sr. — Salgado’s most ardent political ally — made it clear why they should donate to the campaign.

"He is only one who will bring Christianity to City Hall," Díaz shouted over applause as the candidate walked through the crowd. Díaz went on to tell the crowd that the Latino voters were key to Salgado's campaign, but that a growing coalition of conservative voters behind Salgado was already in the works.

In addition to help from Díaz's faith-based machine, Salgado has a fan in fellow Bensonhurst radio host Gregory Davidzon. Widely regarded in political circles as a leading voice for South Brooklyn's Russian and Jewish communities, Davidzon has praised Salgado's faith-driven initiatives on air, helping connect the candidate to the borough's Orthodox and religious leaders.

The candidate has channeled more than $50,000 in campaign funds to Davidzon and his radio station for advertising, office space and campaign consultations. Overall, Salgado’s latest campaign filing show that he managed to raise more than $200,000, but has an outstanding balance of almost $35,000.

Salgado’s conservative credentials resurfaced again during a mayoral forum hosted by the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition in early June. The candidate defended the Orthodox community from government intervention on religious practices.

"They are marching here every year in the New York gay pride parade, they're marching over here, trying to band together," Salgado said tangentially, but to the crowd's applause.

When deBlasio — a favorite among progressive circles — said that he would defend both LGBT and Orthodox communities, a handful of Orthodox audience members responded by chanting "shame."

Even so, Salgado said that his conservative beliefs don't make him any less of a candidate for the Democratic ticket.

"I'm a Democrat," Salgado said, "and I'm still standing for most of what Democrats stand for."

NEOYORQUINOS SPEAK

The Latino electorate can be as ideological diverse any other, but both Carrión and Salgado admit that any likelihood of either of them becoming mayor hinges on Latino voters turning out the vote. And it might be for naught if the last three elections since are any indication.

New Census figures revealed in May that fewer Latinos actually voted in 2012 than in the last presidential election. While Obama did win with the wide margin of Latino votes, the Census attributed a spike in registration to expected population growth.

Getting them out to vote may mean connecting with Latinos on the issues. And, for the most part, the issues that matter to them are what matter to just about everyone else.

Back on West Fordham Road, Billy Gonzalez stood in front of his deli store's counter. Gonzalez said that whoever replaces Mayor Bloomberg needs to focus on bringing jobs to the neighborhood.

After operating the deli for 15 years, Gonzalez said that he's seen neighbors who used to come as regular customers ask for food. While Gonzalez said that he does what he can for those who ask, he wants to see them do the same thing: "help the people."

As a small business owner, he said he's not worried about things like paid sick leave or the city's Health Department overreaching with its policies. Gonzalez said that one thing above all else can help fellow New Yorkers get ahead.

"Education is the number one thing in life," Gonzalez said. "I have six kids, and they're all in public school."

Marisol Ventura has lived in New York since 1985. Having gone through bout of unemployment and homelessness, recently finding a room in an apartment off of Creston Avenue and a factory job to help pay her $450 in monthly rent.

"I wish I had money only so that I don't have to ask for it from the city," Ventura said, before asking that the city prioritize help for the poorest New Yorkers.

"And my struggle isn't just mine,” she said. “Others are in much worse shape.”

She emphasized the need for affordable housing and well-paying jobs that help people get off social programs, and how the challenges in front of the Latino community aren’t so different from anybody else.

"The Hispanic family is the same as the American family," Ventura said.

Lessons of 1977: Will Quinn Be The Next Ed Koch or Bella Abzug?


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NEW YORK — Once again in 2013, the leading candidate for mayor is a woman: Christine Quinn as Bella Abzug was in 1977.

Quinn has become one of the most powerful woman politicians in the city through her role as City Council speaker. Abzug was a lieutenant to US House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Both had roots in community organizing.

While supporters of both acknowledge they are very different politicians for very different times, once again the most negative articles in the press are about the woman frontrunner.

Abzug was cast in the media as shrill, strident and loud — with one reporter calling her the “Muhammad Ali of feminist politicians” — and portrayed, at least once, as a witch on a broomstick in a cartoon.

While the New York Times has done some soft features on Quinn — showing her at her weekend home with her wife, Kim Catullo, and exchanging ideas with Holland Taylor who is playing Texas woman trailblazer Ann Richards on stage — in March it ran a front-page report on the trouble she has controlling her temper and how she has used her power as speaker to punish Council members who do not accede to her wishes. Some of her supporters have called the story a hit job.

In the first part of our look back at the 1977 race — and what lessons may be drawn from it for this year’s race — we showed how the specific social backdrop of that year shaped a tumultuous field of contenders, while the New York Post as a newly conservative voice in the city worked successfully to shape the outcome. In the end, though, predicting the race before the primary was a gamble.

In this part, we look in particular at Quinn as the frontrunner in the Democratic field, which was complicated in recent days with the entry of former Congressman Anthony Weiner. We also look at the LGBT vote then and now; the Post’s diminished role in the election; the gender gap; and race and the mayoralty.

As Quinn seeks to become the first woman mayor, Quinn owes a debt to Abzug who was the first serious woman candidate to run. But Quinn has governed and run her campaign more as what Ed Koch pitched himself as in 1977 — a “liberal with sanity.” And she surely does not want to end up as Abzug did: fourth in a crowded field.

And with no one issue as yet proving transformative in the race, the 2013 election outcome may prove to be even more unpredictable than the race in 1977.

QUINN AND KOCH

While Quinn is an out lesbian and has been endorsed by national gay rights organizations, Koch’s sexuality was a topic of rumors and innuendo throughout his political career — including the infamous “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo” poster campaign run by Cuomo supporters in conservative districts.

A lifelong bachelor, Koch did his best during the 1977 campaign to imply that he was heterosexual, making sure to be photographed holding hands with former Miss America Bess Myerson.

Once in his mayoralty he told an interviewer that he was heterosexual, a proclamation that made the front page of Newsday and was derided by his critics, especially by ACT UP, the then-radical direct action organization that was working to call attention to the plight of people with HIV/AIDS.

Thereafter, Koch resolutely refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation and when confronted with evidence of his homosexuality by the makers of the documentary “Outrage!” walked off the set spewing a barnyard epithet. At his death, even his closest gay friend acknowledged it would have been better if Koch had come out about who he was.

Quinn so identifies with Koch that she led a successful campaign in the City Council to rename the Queensborough Bridge for him—over the objections of some Queens Council Members such as Peter Vallone, Jr., who said they wouldn’t even think of renaming the Brooklyn Bridge.

Koch endorsed Quinn for mayor back in December 2011, telling The New York Times: “I believe that she is center-left, which is what I am. Of all the candidates, Christine is the best able to follow in the steps of Mayor Bloomberg and myself.”

When Koch did pass away earlier this year, Quinn said: “I can remember seeing him on TV when I was a little girl and thinking to myself, ‘If I could ever meet him it would be a dream come true.’ Years later when I was working at the Anti-Violence Project, I was in the midst of a very public battle with City Hall. Mayor Koch called me out of the blue. I had never spoken to him in my life. He told me, ‘You’re doing the right thing. Don’t back down, and call me if I can do anything.’”

“New Yorkers want Daddy as their mayor,” my co-host on “Gay USA,” Ann Northrop, has hypothesized. “They just want someone to take care of them so they don’t have to —and tell them what to do and to give the illusion of strength against everything they fear.”

That may explain some of the tolerance New Yorkers have for zealous policing, like stop-and-frisk that has only now become a serious political issue.

(It may also be why, even this late in the race, there is unabated interest in some quarters for Ray Kelly for mayor — who gets high marks for his performance as police commissioner but is a virtual unknown on the many other issues a mayor has to deal with.)

But it is unclear yet who is wearing the pants in this race — Quinn or one of her opponents — or if the tough stance this year will be about who will keep order or who will restore some balance to the city’s treatment of the middle class and poor.

Allen Roskoff, a gay activist who has been involved in city politics since the era of Mayor John Lindsay and is now president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, a left-leaning citywide LGBT outfit, derides Quinn as “the Abe Beame” of this race. “She has effectively been deputy mayor for the last eight years and people want change,” he said.

Mike Morey, spokesman for the Quinn campaign, told the Gotham Gazette that Quinn sees herself as someone in the mold of both Abzug and Koch.

"The passion and fire of Bella Abzug and the everyman common-sense of Ed Koch have both had strong and lasting influences on Christine Quinn's approach to public service," Morey wrote in an email. "She believes in telling the truth, standing by principle, and pushing hard to get things done and she believes that's what New Yorkers want in a mayor."

Quinn has also dedicated a good part of her campaign to trying to distance herself from the mayor she has worked closely with, while not alienating the voters who approve of him.

In particular, she has backed legislation that would create an inspector general for the police department — an idea Bloomberg has decried — and made more pro-union education proposals, such as making school closings a “last resort”--that have been attacked by Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, Dennis Walcott.

Much is different this year, however. Quinn did indeed give Bloomberg the opportunity for a third term in 2009 by extending term limits for him — and herself and her fellow Council members.

But Bloomberg is not nearly as unpopular as Beame was nor has he presided over the same kind of catastrophes as Beame, unless you are looking at how unaffordable the city has become for the middle class and poor — themes being hammered by several of Quinn’s opponents.

Indeed, Quinn herself says “middle class” as often as she can while campaigning. Anthony Weiner got in the race last week touting his middle-class roots and was quickly attacked by Bill De Blasio, the public advocate who also hopes to mayor, for living on Park Avenue now. After 12 years of being ruled by the wealthiest person in the city, the candidates all seem to be banking on the populace wanting someone more like them to govern now.

THE LGBT VOTE THEN AND NOW

While both Koch and Abzug had represented liberal Manhattan Congressional districts and were the lead sponsors of the federal gay rights bill, Abzug was seen as the darling of gay and lesbian voters in 1977.

When a national blow was dealt to gay rights in June of that year with the overturning of a gay rights ordinance in a Miami referendum, thousands of shocked and angry demonstrators in New York marched to Abzug’s home in Greenwich Village as if asking mama to make it better.

Koch appeared at a raucous gay rally in the Village the night of that setback amidst boos for politicians, but his refusal to be dissuaded by that impressed me enough as a 23-year old activist to vote for him that year.

(By 1989, Koch was such a target of anger for AIDS activists that he was shouted down by hundreds of them when he tried to dedicate Stonewall Place in the Village.)

Koch also worked behind the scenes for the gay vote, becoming one of the first major politicians to court the emerging constituency. At that time, most gay and lesbian New Yorkers were not living openly in the workplace and may have identified with Koch’s approach to his sexuality.

This year, Quinn — out, proud, and married to attorney Kim Catullo — enjoys the support of most LGBT groups and donors including the national Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, but she also is supported by many of the rank-and-file LGBT voters who are looking for the validation of an out lesbian winning such a high office.

The rest of the Democratic candidates also have strong records on LGBT rights.

Albanese cast a critical vote for the 1986 gay rights bill from his conservative Bay Ridge district. Thompson and Liu used the comptroller’s shareholder power to get corporations to adopt non-discrimination policies. Weiner championed LGBT rights in Congress. And de Blasio has a solid record of support and the distinction of having married a woman who was once a leading lesbian writer, Chirlane McCray.

None of the candidates for the Republican nomination profess to be anything but pro-LGBT rights, though George McDonald and Joe Lhota marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade that most all Democrats have been boycotting since it excludes Irish LGBT contingents.

THE GENDER GAP

Quinn is holding on to some major feminist support, including from Abzug’s daughter Liz and former Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, a liberal lion who was a protégé of Bobby Kennedy, once a special assistant to Lindsay and now hosts “Eldridge & Co.” on CUNY-TV.

Gloria Steinem held out on Quinn until she let the sick leave bill onto the floor of the Council, albeit in a watered-down form after a three-year hold up.

“I wish it could have been faster,” Steinem told The New York Times, while praising Quinn as someone who “has lived a life that allows her to understand the lives of most New Yorkers.”

But Steinem added, “I wish Bella Abzug had been mayor.”

Her daughter, Liz Abzug, said that a Times story on Quinn’s temper reminds her of some of the negative press coverage that her mother Bella endured in 1977, also as “the one woman in the race.”

Veteran Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, who has endorsed Quinn, said: “I thought that the Times front-page piece on Chris [about her temper] had an underlying element of sexism for sure. I am always entertained by young women reporters who say there isn’t sexism. I do think there was an element of it. There are a number of men in office who yell and who threaten and I just found it mind-boggling the level of uneven application of scrutiny.”

Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, who served as Bella Abzug’s press spokesman in Congress, said he was concerned that Quinn was facing the same treatment as Abzug.

“I have never seen so many assaults so concentrated on [Abzug] by so many people in the establishment, including the newspapers,” he said. “The Post would do anything they could to beat her down and make her seem responsible for the Son of Sam, the riots in Brooklyn and the blackout.”

He said Koch attacked her for her “leniency” and belief in a right to strike and the death penalty.

“She and Mario did not believe in a life for a life, and were excoriated for it,” Holzer said. “She went from 36 percent to 16 percent. I’m not ready to play the historian’s role, but I do see Christine Quinn enduring an unfair expectation of having to be everything to everybody and the men and straight candidates are not” burdened with those expectation.

Which brings us to the gender gap, a term, Liz Abzug said, that wasn’t used or polled for until her mother wrote a book about it in 1983.

“Before that,” she said, “the differences in the way women voted was not a discussion point.” Now, the gap between how women and men vote is regularly polled for and marked differences have emerged. The 2012 presidential election saw the biggest national gender gap in history, with Barack Obama winning women by 12 percent and Romney winning men by 8 percent. Obama won the war for women, successfully tarring the national Republican Party as conducting a war on women.

To Liz Abzug, a lot has changed since her mother ran.

“I think a woman — as we’ve seen in many cities — can be a person who is strong enough to break down the violence in an environment,” she said. “I don’t know if it is a better atmosphere for a woman. We’ve seen women in key positions as opposed to ’77 — Speaker of the House, mayoralties in cities big like Houston and small — presidencies internationally. It is more accepted that women can govern from strength, toughness, passion — and heart — and still be commander-in-chief. It is just less of an issue.”

Still, we’ve never had a woman mayor. Carol Bellamy ran on the Liberal line against Ed Koch in 1985, and got beaten badly; former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger was the Democratic nominee in 1997 against Rudy Giuliani and got bested by a 12-point margin. We have had a woman comptroller, Liz Holtzman, Bellamy as Council president, and Betsy Gotbaum as public advocate.

While early polls showed no gender gap for Quinn, the April 15-18 Quinnipiac poll had her leading with 31 percent of women and 24 percent of men with Anthony Weiner polling at 12 percent of women and 20 percent of men, a gap most would attribute to his fame for sending erotic pictures of himself to women strangers. A gap had emerged.

But by the May 22 Quinnipiac poll, Quinn had less of a gap with 23 percent men for her and 26 percent of women, while Thompson fared better with men by six points (14-8 percent) and Weiner with men by four (17-13 percent). John Liu, who faded to 6 percent overall in the current poll has the support of twice as many women (8 percent) as men (4 percent).

THE NEW YORK POST

While Koch would tell you that Rupert Murdoch made him mayor along with his campaign manager David Garth, it is unclear if Murdoch’s New York Post still has that kind of power even though it has already attacked Quinn, labeling her as “Mayor Dracula” based on a vampish New York magazine cover.

One headline says she is going for the “the Bella donna look” in what may have supposed to have been a reference to Bela Lugosi who played Dracula in the 1930s, but also summoned up the memory of Bella Abzug.

The paper has also gone after de Blasio for revelations that his wife had been a lesbian and Liu for the misdeeds of his aides. And they never tire of making front-page Weiner sex jokes.

In 1977, the Post aggressively went after Abzug over her pro-labor stances. According to historian Chris McNicle, Abzug sealed her fate when she backed the right of police and firefighters to strike just days before the city was blacked out and riots terrified whole neighborhoods. “That was bad politics in a city preoccupied with law and order,” McNicle wrote in “To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City.”

It is hard to tell yet who Murdoch or the rest of the city’s more establishment sectors (real estate and finance) want for mayor, but they have ways of letting their thoughts be known through attacks in the media and by where they spread their donations.

A big difference this year is that Murdoch is losing his grip on his media empire due to scandals in Britain.

And money will play less of a role with most of the candidates in the campaign finance system that matches the donations they get 6-to-1 but limits their spending at each stage of the race. No one but billionaire John Catsimatidas is self-financing.

So far the biggest independent expenditures have come from left-leaning labor and animal rights activists www.NYCityisNot4Sale.com doing their best to define Quinn in a negative way before she can run ads defining herself. The strategy has echoes in the way independent supporters of Obama painted Romney as an out-of-touch vulture capitalist while Romney was tied up fighting for the Republican nomination last year and unable to free up the funds to answer those attacks.

RACE AND THE MAYORALTY

While we did get a one-term black mayor in David Dinkins at a time of great racial unrest in 1989 after what was perceived as an era of racial polarization under Koch, Dinkins lost to Giuliani in 1993 partly because Dinkins was seen as not being able to control the racial unrest in Crown Heights that year.

We have never had a Latino mayor, despite Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer coming close to winning the Democratic nomination in 2001 against Mark Green, who went on to lose a squeaker to Bloomberg in the chaotic aftermath of 9-11. Ferrer came back to win the Democratic nomination in 2005, but lost to Bloomberg big.

The people of color in this year’s race are Thompson, who came within 4.4 points of knocking off Bloomberg in 2009 despite being up against another $100 million Bloomberg campaign; and Liu, who despite the shadow of convictions of some of his top campaign aides, has a solid base in Asian communities and deep ties to other communities of color and labor. (Thompson also enjoys close ties to the city’s Orthodox Jewish community.) And there is Carrion, who left the Democratic Party and sees a path to victory as a Republican and as the Independence Party nominee where the current Quinnipiac poll has him pulling 12 percent on that line—obviously not enough to win but more than enough to be a factor in the fall.

So far, the biggest racial issue in the contest is where the candidates stand on the stopping and frisking of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers each year, most of them youth of color. Positions vary from Liu, who wants it banned, to Lhota who wants it maintained with the others on a scale in between.

AN UPREDICTABLE RACE

Veteran Times reporter Sam Roberts wrote last week about how the current mayoral race puts him in mind not just of the 1977 contest, but the one in 1973 when there was no incumbent, calling them all “heavily contested” and “unpredictable.”

While this year Anthony Weiner has gotten in two years after a scandal, Roberts noted that, in 1973, Congressman Mario Biaggi was the frontrunner until it was revealed that he had taken the Fifth Amendment in a corruption trial. That let Beame get into a runoff with Badillo who undid himself by referring to Beame as “a malicious little man” — the kind of misstep in a long campaign that can derail one’s prospects.

Roberts wrote that Beame was supposed to sit out the 1977 race after presiding over the fiscal crisis and endorse Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, an African American. And he credits Gov. Hugh Carey with getting Cuomo the Liberal line to the great consternation of Beame.

Political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told the Times regarding this year’s race: “Now we have everybody splitting in a non-ideological environment, and that means anything can happen.”

The biggest lesson from 1977 is that this 2013 race, with all its permutations and combinations, is indeed impossible to predict. A large field makes it harder for voters to focus on what their choice is. And New York City polls have a history of being notoriously wrong.

The primaries are especially unpredictable, but on the Democratic side — unless Quinn or a rival pulls down 40 percent — it will be followed by a one-on-one runoff. The polls currently have her vanquishing her chief rivals in such a runoff, but it is early and the electorate has not focused on the alternatives.

If 1977 is an indicator, no matter who is on what line, the voters of New York City in the end won’t be looking at party affiliation but at the two candidates who have proved themselves most viable and choosing between them.

Right now, the relatively unknown Lhota loses 13 to 61 percent against “the Democratic candidate” according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. But let’s remember that the eventual 1977 winner, Ed Koch, was at about 4 percent in the polls at this stage. And, in 2001, Mike Bloomberg, the eventual winner, was polling at about 25 percent in the early stages.

And the candidates are mostly arguing about policing (the merits of stop-and-frisk), education (keep mayoral control or share governance more), affordable and public housing, and term limits (right or wrong to have extended them).

It may be that the issue that will define the candidates for the voters may not have come to the fore.

Andy Humm is the co-host of the weekly Gay USA cable TV show, a contributor to Gay City News, and a former city Human Rights commissioner.

Loyal Election Machine Could Help Disgraced Politician Win A Council Seat


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NEW YORK — With Vito Lopez having unceremoniously resigned from the state Assembly where he once lorded over the powerful housing committee, the career politician has turned his attention to getting elected to the City Council. And he just might succeed.

That’s because the two other candidates in the race for the 34th district — one of whom is being backed by Council Speaker Christine Quinn — could end up appealing to the same pool of voters, potentially splitting them and handing Lopez a victory.

Perhaps more importantly, the disgraced former assemblyman, who is accused of sexually harassing several women, will undoubtedly call on his deep, established base of neighborhood support in the district to get out the vote on Election Day.

“He’s a wonderful man, a wonderful politician,” said Lalo Burgos, 73, who lives in the district and runs a barbershop near Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick. And he said Lopez takes care of residents. "That’s all that matters.”

John Mollenkopf, a professor at the Center for Urban Research of the CUNY Graduate Center, said that community support could make all the difference for Lopez.

"He runs an old-fashioned type of operation that’s very much based on loyalty," Mollenkopf said. "This will be a test of that loyalty.”

It also doesn’t take many votes to win in a Council primary: Diana Reyna, the term-limited Councilwoman who holds the seat, won in 2009 when there was no mayoral race, with 3,865 votes.

Last week’s release of an embarrassing state ethics report detailing allegations of Lopez’s misbehavior with female staffers led the 71-year-old legislator to announce his retirement at the end of the legislative session in June while also proclaiming his innocence.

The announcement was met with cries for an immediate resignation and movement within the Assembly to push him out of office.

Lopez then sped up his timeline. By Monday morning, his nameplate was taken from his office door and his Assembly web page was taken offline.

A second investigation, led by Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan as a special prosecutor, could find no basis for bringing criminal charges against Lopez. It did, however, call into question Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s role in a secret taxpayer-funded settlement for two of Lopez’s former staffers.

“I have maintained my innocence throughout this matter and I believe no criminal investigation should ever have been conducted,” Lopez said in his statement on May 17 announcing his resignation at the end of June before he was faced with the possibility of expulsion and resigned on Monday.

He said that he would focus on the Council race. “I expect to run a vigorous campaign on the issues facing the citizens of my community and hope to continue to serve them as a member of the City Council,” he said. “I believe that the voters of the community should decide who should represent them.”

Lopez and his representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story.

The longtime politician’s deep ties to the Bushwick, Ridgewood and Williamsburg neighborhoods are rooted in his years as chair of the Assembly’s housing committee, through which he steered state money to his district for low-income housing and a popular senior center he created.

Founded in 1973, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, was one of the main beneficiaries of the money that Lopez made sure flowed from Albany to his district.

“He’s got a base of support through his social services that’s going to vote for him no matter what,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College.

And that, Muzzio says, could make the difference in how much the sexual harassment scandal plays into the Council race.

“In the ‘should’ world, this should kill him," Muzzio said. "But the ‘is’ world is another story.”

Muzzio said a split between the other two candidates could hand Lopez the spot on the Democratic ticket, tantamount to election in November. “It’s politics 101. If you want to win — split the competition,” Muzzio said.

Lopez lost some of his support when news leaked last year that Lopez had been accused of sexual harassment by several former female employees. Lopez, who had represented the 53rd Assembly District since 1984, was censured and stripped of his housing committee chairmanship — the very seat of power which he used to funnel funding to his constituents.

He also lost his seat as the Kings County Democratic Party chair, which he took over in 2006 from disgraced former Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., after he was convicted of taking illegal campaign contributions.

Well before the ethics commission report was released, anti-Lopez protesters gathered on a soggy April afternoon around the corner from a posh Williamsburg restaurant on the water.

Organized by local members of the National Organization for Women and a progressive Democratic club, the New Kings Democrats, 20 or so protesters shouted from the sidewalk as cars drove in for Lopez’s first fundraiser for the Council race.

“It’s outrageous that someone who’s been accused of sexual harassment has the chutzpah to run for City Council,” said Lincoln Restler, a New Kings Democrats member and former Brooklyn district leader. Created in 2008, the reform club has spent years organizing against Lopez and endorsing candidates to subvert his influence across the borough.

One of those candidates is Antonio Reynoso, who is also a member of the New Kings Democrats. But he’ll also have to face Tommy Torres, 40, in the district’s Democratic primary.

Reynoso is the chief of staff to the 34th district's term-limited Councilwoman Diana Reyna, a former top aide to Lopez turned bitter foe. The 30-year-old Brooklyn native grew up in Williamsburg’s South Side before leaving for college upstate.

By the time Reynoso came back to Brooklyn, he knew he wanted to be in politics even if he didn’t know where to start. He said he went out one day with two resumes: one for Reyna and one for Lopez.

Lopez’s office was closed that day; Reyna hired him. “God steered me in the right direction,” Reynoso said.

Reynoso makes no effort to hide his disdain for Lopez, especially in the wake of last week’s report. “He should resign immediately and step away from serving public office,” he said. “There’s no remorse. There’s no realistic understanding of what he’s done. And that’s the biggest crime.”

Reynoso isn’t the only one upset by Lopez’s bid for City Council, and he’s already received powerful backing for his run. Speaker Christine Quinn launched a “Women for Reynoso” campaign, naming Reynoso as the only viable option for the 34th District.

“We must ensure that Vito Lopez never sets foot in City Hall,” Quinn said in a statement.

Reynoso has also been endorsed by another Democratic progressive in the mayoral race, Bill de Blasio, and has gained the support of major unions — which Muzzio said will be a key factor in the race. To beat Vito, he said, “You need organizational muscle.”

To date, Reynoso has raised around $86,000 for the race. While Lopez has managed to net approximately $38,000 for his City Council run, The New York Post has already reported that Lopez might be able to roll over some of the more than $1 million he has in state campaign coffers.

Meanwhile, Torres, the third candidate for the Council seat, has raised close to $23,000. A public school teacher and athletic coach, Torres grew up in Cooper Park Houses, one of Greenpoint’s public housing developments.

Torres stayed in the borough for college, going to St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights on a baseball scholarship. He followed that up with a master’s degree in education from Mercy College in Westchester County, which Torres said wouldn’t have been possible without the city’s public education program.

“I took advantage of the public schools,” said Torres over the phone after coaching a baseball game. “I came back to continue the good work.”

For either Reynoso or Torres to come out on top, they need to beat Vito’s ongoing popularity around the district. Throughout Bushwick, Lopez’s current constituents still say that they care more about his generosity than the allegations against him.

Caesar Bettencourt, 72, stood near a stoop along St. Nicholas Avenue as he defended Lopez.

“I think certain people are trying to make trouble for him,” said Bettencourt, a regular at the local senior center. “I think it’s all a setup. It’s politics.”

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in a NYCity News Service multimedia project entitled "Bushwick Beyond the Brand," which examines continuing changes in the neighborhood as the Bloomberg era comes to an end.

Two Pivotal Elections: What The 1977 Mayoral Race Can Tell Us About 2013


Bella Abzug For Mayor button

NEW YORK — Seven Democrats want their party’s nomination for mayor and the frontrunner is a woman who would be the first of her sex to lead City Hall. Two Democratic candidates of color may eat into each other’s bases. Credible candidates on the Republican side have a good shot at a win. Minor party designations could play a major role come November. The New York Post is angling to have a big say in who gets elected.

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The 2013 mayoral race? No, the 1977 free-for-all — the last big, multi-candidate election for mayor where almost nothing was predictable.

A look back at the contest that marked a shape-shift in the city over 35 years ago demonstrates how much has changed in both our politics and our social and economic make-up since then.

But to Kenneth Sherrill, professor of political science at Hunter College and was elected Democratic District Leader in 1977, it is the voters who have changed most of all.

“A lot of the voters of that election are dead, the city is much less white, the make-up of white ethnics has changed, there was no Asian American vote then, and the immigrant population wasn’t what it is now,” he said. “Today there isn’t the bankruptcy or crime that there was then, so the inferences about what, for instance, the African American or Jewish vote would do now are very different.”

A TUMULTUOUS TIME IN POLITICS

The year 1977 was a tumultuous and pivotal one in New York City politics.

It was best remembered for a steaming hot July blackout that was followed by looting and arson, the “Son of Sam” murders that had the city on edge, the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s transformation of the once-liberal New York Post into a sensationalistic rightwing Brit-style tabloid, and the first Yankees World Series win under owner George Steinbrenner.

The Bronx was burning — figuratively and literally — and the city was still simmering from Republican Gerald Ford initial denial of a bailout two years earlier.

The year 2013 is no less pivotal and tumultuous for the city’s politics.

The longtime incumbent mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who was not supposed to have a third term and got one after changing the term limits law with the help of the City Council and Speaker Christine Quinn, is about to depart after overseeing a prosperous period of growth and development — at least for those at the top — that had the business elites cheering.

As his term winds down, the mayor is warning against a return to “the bad old days,” trying to answer the rising indignation of a coalition of progressives, people of color and civil rights advocates who have called attention to what they say have been overly aggressive police tactics during Bloomberg’s tenure, such as stop-and-frisk and the surveillance of Muslims.

Even without the public debate over police tactics, there would be enough to shape the mayoral election: school reform and whether to continue mayoral control; rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy and responding to future disasters; and the erosion of the city’s middle class and the inequality gap that has widened over the past decade.

1977: A Stellar Field Of Candidates

In 1977, despite presiding over the city’s economic meltdown, Democratic Mayor Abraham Beame — who had the added liability of having been the comptroller when the city’s books were coming apart at the seams — ran for re-election.

In addition to Beame on the Democratic side, two liberal Manhattan Congress members jumped in — the relatively unknown Ed Koch and the famous Bella Abzug, who was coming off a razor-thin primary loss in 1976 to Daniel Patrick Moynihan for the Democratic nomination for US Senate.

Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton also got in the race — the first black with a credible shot at becoming mayor — but so did Herman Badillo, a Congressman from the Bronx who had served as Bronx borough president and was the first Latino with a serious chance of winning the top spot in City Hall.

The longest-shot Democrat in 1977 was the former chair of the City Club of New York, Joel Harnett, who got on the primary ballot but would only go on to garner 1 percent of the vote.

And last but by no means least there was Mario Cuomo, Gov. Hugh Carey’s secretary of state, whose claim to fame then was mediating a dispute for Mayor John Lindsay over a public housing project planned for upper middle class Forest Hills.

It was Carey, one of the architects of the bailout for the city, who pushed Cuomo to run for mayor.

There was a Republican primary in 1977, too, with liberal state Sen. Roy Goodman of the Upper East Side, heir to the Ex-Lax fortune, squaring off with popular conservative radio talk show host Barry Farber.

Minor parties played a key role in 1977 as they very well may this year. Farber lost the Republican nomination to Goodman but had the Conservative Party line. And Cuomo won the Liberal Party line.

The conventional wisdom made Abzug, who died in 1998, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination — based on her name recognition and strong showing for US Senate — and all the talk was about who in the crowded field would end up in the runoff with her after the initial primary vote.

Legendary journalist Doug Ireland, who is still writing today, managed Abzug’s Senate campaign but tried to discourage her from running for mayor and to instead try again for Congress, which he said he felt was more suited to her talents.

“I told her she wasn’t prepared and it would kill her chances for future office,” he said. “It Stassen-ized her,” he said, referring to Harold Stassen, a wartime Minnesota governor who ran for the Republican nomination nine times starting in 1948.

Abzug lost two subsequent U.S. House races on Manhattan’s East Side in 1978 and in Westchester in 1986. She also tried to get her old West Side seat back in 1992 when Ted Weiss died, but was beaten in a party convention by Jerry Nadler, who still holds the seat today.

A Violent Summer Shaped the 1977 Race

The 1977 race was very much a creature of external events, primarily the “Son of Sam” murders that had begun the previous year, with most victims young lovers in parked cars, and the arson and the chaotic aftermath of the July 13 blackout.

As Sewell Chan of the Times wrote on the 30th anniversary of the blackout: “1,000 fires were reported, 1,600 stores were damaged in looting and rioting and 3,700 people were arrested. Neighborhoods from East Harlem to Bushwick were devastated. The authorities later estimated that the total cost of the blackout exceeded $300 million.”

While these events by themselves might not have been enough to turn voters away from the more liberal candidates — particularly Abzug — the sensationalizing of these events by the New York Post under its new owner Mudoch were.

As Jack Doyle wrote in “Murdoch NY Deals: 1976-77,” the Post blackout headline was “24 HOURS OF TERROR.” He quotes Pete Hamill of the Daily News writing, “Something vaguely sickening is happening to that newspaper, and it is spreading through the city’s psychic life like a stain.”

When Murdoch decided to endorse Ed Koch, he was running at about 4 percent in the polls and was a virtual unknown citywide.

While Koch might have been the bachelor congressman from Greenwich Village — and was gaybaited by some in the Cuomo camp with “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo” posters in conservative precincts — Murdoch picked up on him as one of the only pro-death penalty Democrats who was willing to take up the banner of “law and order.”

“There are many reasons why Mr. Koch became the next mayor,” wrote Joyce Purnick, a reporter for the Post during that election, in a story a few years ago in the New York Times, “but I will always believe that the blackout separated him from the pack.”

Koch also hired legendary political consultant David Garth, who had guided John Lindsay to re-election in 1969 and went on to make Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg mayors. Garth's famous winning ad slogan for Koch was: "After eight years of charisma and four years of the clubhouse, why not try competence?” -- digs at both Lindsay and Beame respectively. In 2010, the NY Times wrote, "Just by signing on with Mr. Koch, Mr. Garth had conferred instant credibility on his fledgling campaign. 'Without him,' Mr. Koch said, 'I would never have been mayor.'"

Koch was also helped by an innovation taken for granted now — overnight polling. The Fix reported in an article titled "Ed Koch, polling pioneer" that polling data in 1977 had to be filtered through university computers, a process that took days. Garth hired Mark Penn, then still a college student, and his pal Doug Schoen, to do their polling, and Penn built his own computer to be able to process their polling data immediately — such as testing Koch's famous slogan for impact.

While Abzug is generally regarded as the most liberal candidate in the race — Ireland calls her “the first radical elected to Congress since Vito Marcantonio” (the East Harlem Communist elected as a Republican to the House in 1934), Badillo was also running to the left as “a champion of the poor,” Ireland said, “and then he went on to work for Koch and Giuliani who were declared enemies of the poor."

To help Koch, the Post focused its negative coverage on Abzug and Cuomo.

About two weeks before the primary, a Times/CBS News poll had Beame and Abzug at 17 percent each, Cuomo at 14 percent, Koch with 12 percent, Sutton with 9 percent, and Badillo with 7 percent. It was anybody’s ballgame.

When the votes were counted on Sept. 8, 1977, Koch led the pack with 19.81 percent followed by Cuomo, who had the Times’ endorsement, with 18.74 percent, putting them in the runoff triggered by no one getting 40 percent.

In third was Beame with 17.98 percent and early frontrunner Abzug finished out of the money with 16.56 percent. Sutton got 14.42 percent, Badillo 10.97 percent, and Harnett 1.53 percent.

Koch beat Cuomo in the runoff for the Democratic nod 55 to 45 percent, and Cuomo ran hard on the Liberal line in the general election losing 50 to 41 percent with Goodman the Republican and Farber the Conservative getting 4 percent each.

How did Koch win?

“One, I lost the black vote because they came and asked for a deal — a commitment for a black vice mayor,” Mario Cuomo told the Gotham Gazette. “I didn’t think that such a deal was a good idea. Badillo asked for same thing. I told him no. Meade Esposito, the Democratic boss in Brooklyn, asked for a deal and I said no. That was the Koch victory. Nothing illegal or terrible for them asking for it, I just wasn’t comfortable in giving it.”

Koch did make those deals to get elected, but they didn’t work out for him in the long run. He appointed Basil Paterson, a Harlem leader and father of former Gov. David Paterson, and Badillo as deputy mayors. But neither lasted much longer than a year — Paterson becoming secretary of state under Carey and Badillo quitting in a dispute with him over his failure to deliver for the South Bronx. The deals with boss Esposito, Queens boss Donald Manes and Bronx boss Stanley Friedman didn’t catch up with Koch until his third corruption-scarred term.

Role of Minor Parties

Barry Farber, still a conservative radio talk show host, said there was one big difference between 1977 and 2013: “There was a meaningful Liberal Party and a meaningful Conservative Party in ’77.”

Indeed, though Farber ended up with 4 percent in the general election in 1977, “there was a scenario for me to win on the Conservative line and doing an insurgency on the Republican line if the Democrats had lived up to their habits and nominated the leftmost candidate” — Abzug.

In Farber’s view, he was preempted by conservative Democrats.

“Ed Koch took the biggest broad jump in history and adopted the social welfare policy of Genghis Khan. He didn’t edge toward right. He came out as though there had never been a leftist,” he said. “Cuomo was considered the second most conservative and he finished second. Beame, the incumbent, was the third most conservative” and he finished third with Bella fourth.

The Liberal Party hasn’t enjoyed automatic ballot status since Andrew Cuomo had their line for governor in 2002 and then refused to campaign and opposed the Democratic nominee Carl McCall, having already dropped out of the Democratic primary.

But this year, the Liberals, which were the key to Rudy Giuliani’s two mayoral wins, have given their line to grocery store chain billionaire John Catsimatidis who wants to be the next Bloomberg.

The Working Families Party, which supplanted the Liberals, has yet to designate a candidate and may be unable to settle on one in the crowded primary given their complex, consensus-building nomination process.

The Independence Party, which gave Bloomberg the minor party help he needed to become mayor three times, has designated former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion as their nominee.

Carrion and Catsimatidis along with former Giuliani Deptuy Mayor and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joe Lhota and homeless advocate George McDonald are running for the Republican nomination with Lhota the early favorite — though no poll has come out since his labeling of Port Authority police as “mall cops” got a lot of pushback from his base and he had to apologize.

The Conservative Party, long led by Mike Long, has not yet made a pick, but will before the September primary.

Carrion doesn’t want his nomination, but the others in the Republican primary do and Long will pick one of them (despite some of their socially liberal positions) because he fears the leading Democrats “would really take the city backwards a lot of years,” he told Crain’s. 

2013 a Different Time

What has changed since 1977? To Bill Lynch, it is the voters who have changed.

“The difference is the voters have changed drastically,” said Bill Lynch, a Harlem-based political consultant who managed David Dinkins’ mayoral campaigns and served as his deputy mayor. People of color — once called “minorities” — have became the majority.

But the city has also become what Bloomberg calls “a luxury product,” which in recent years has attracted the people of means who fled urban America in the 1970s but have returned to New York City en masse, driving real estate to stratospheric levels while the market still languishes in most parts of the country.

“One lesson of 1977,” said Sherrill, “is that once you have a certain number of candidates, it is impossible to go over 40 percent, and it is hard to predict who will be the top two. The other lesson given who ended up in the runoff is never to underestimate anybody. There were some people who predicted Koch-Abzug, but nobody predicted Koch-Cuomo.”

This year, the Democratic field is as crowded as it was in 1977 and gaming out who will be the top two in the expected runoff following September’s primary is anybody’s guess. Three seem to be vying for most liberal — Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, and former City Council Member Sal Albanese — while former Comptroller and 2009 Democratic candidate Bill Thompson has moved toward the center.

Quinn is to Thompson’s right, though even she is tacking left with proposals to oversee the police department more closely after she agreed to back a bill that would impose an independent monitor over the NYPD, and finally giving in on a paid sick leave bill — albeit in a much watered-down version.

If former Congressman Anthony Weiner jumps in — and he comes in second to Quinn in recent polls — he would fit somewhere between the left candidates and Thompson.

Sherrill said that for all the help Koch got from the Post, the election came down to a message that resonated with voters. And, so far, he said he had not heard a message from any of the 2013 candidates that resonates.

“You go to the boroughs outside Manhattan and you hear about an unresponsive government that took care of the affluent on Wall Street and did not help them,” Sherrill said. “I think a candidate who makes an appeal to frustrated working-class people that he or she will stand up for against the relatively well off who saw a much more rapid recovery can do very well in the parts of the city that were devastated and haven’t bounced back. With the rising inequality, there is a strong sense that no one is looking out for ‘people like me.’ I would not be surprised to hear Anthony Weiner take that up. I would not be surprised if the election turned on personality and style more than the issues. I think an angry candidate can do very well, I’m afraid.”

Andy Humm is the co-host of the weekly Gay USA cable TV show, a contributor to Gay City News, and a former city Human Rights commissioner.

UPDATE: This version is updated with more information on Koch's 1977 campaign.

Scandal! Confessions! Weiner! An Elections Roundup


weiner-pensive 

NEW YORK — City Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral frontrunner Christine Quinn confessed to her struggles with bulimia and alcoholism. Ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner appeared to hire a campaign manager for his own bid to be the next mayor. And the latest embarrassment to public integrity in Albany leached into one City Council race.

That and much more — from campaign finance filings to a cameo appearance of former Sen. Al D'Amato — made this week a busy one in the race for City Hall.

VITO LOPEZ — FROM THE ASSEMBLY TO CITY HALL?

Assemblyman Vito Lopez, facing mounting calls to leave office after being accused of sexually harassing several members of his staff, said earlier today that he will leave his seat in Albany at the end of the legislative session in June to focus on his bid for the 34th City Council District.

"Because the citizens of my district voted me back into office last November by an overwhelming majority, I feel obligated to serve out this session of the Assembly," he said in his statement.

But Lopez may be forced to focus on the Council race sooner than that: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has faced criticism over his handling of the Lopez matter, said he will move to expel the aging politician from the chamber. And Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that Lopez “should not spend another day in office.” 

A special prosecutor said Wednesday that he had found no reason to bring criminal charges against Lopez — at least in Brooklyn — for his unwanted advances on female staff on various occasions.

Lopez, in his statement announcing his resignation, said he was "gratified" by the special prosecutor's decision and added that he had maintained his innocence "throughout this matter" and believed no criminal investigation was warranted.

But on the same day the prosecutor announced his decision, the state's Legislative Ethics Committee released a Joint Commission on Public Ethics report on the sexual harassment complaints brought against Lopez by staffers.

In the days since JCOPE released its report, politicians have called for his resignation, including Frank Seddio, who replaced Lopez as chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

In a statement late today, Seddio also said Lopez should reconsider running for Council.

"He best serves the Bushwick and Ridgewood neighborhoods he's worked so hard to build up by stepping back from political life completely," Seddio said. "He should not let personal ambition stand in the way of their continued progress."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn also found the idea of Lopez running for Council distasteful, telling reporters just as much yesterday.

“Because to allow Vito Lopez, after what he did in the state capital, to be allowed into this building to potentially in the name of representing New Yorkers conduct himself in such a horrible way would be an outrage," Quinn said.

That won't stop Lopez from trying, who wrote that the decision on who represents the 34th District, covering the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick and Williamsburg, should be left to the voters.

"I expect to run a vigorous campaign on the issues facing the citizens of my community and hope to continue to serve them as a member of the City Council," he wrote.

A BIG LABOR FORUM

Without saying a word, Comptroller John Liu was met with raucous applause and scattered boos at a mayoral forum organized by the city's largest public employee union last night.

Despite being one of three candidates to arrive late at the District Council 37 mayoral forum yesterday, Liu cued up the audience for even louder cheers when he touched on stop-and-frisk and education reform. DC 37 represents a variety of public sector employees.

While the embattled comptroller didn't have to put much effort to rile up the more than 300 attendees, he sealed the deal when he invoked the federal investigation into his campaign's fundraising tactics.

"Look, they can throw everything and the kitchen sink at me," Liu said as the audience erupted one last time, repeating a line he's used often — before adding: "And I'll be ready for the stove."

Liu was one of five Democratic candidates to show up at the forum, albeit late. Public Advocate Bill and former Comptroller Bill Thompson eventually joined fellow Democrats Erick Salgado and Sal Albanese.

Made up of mostly DC 37 members, the audience was anything but shy as it pushed back against anything that displeased it, including Albanese's defense of mayoral control of schools.

Albanese, a former school teacher and Council member, also tried to lob his usual criticism about how his fellow candidates receive donations from real estate developers. The line was tepidly received by the audience, which reacted much more strongly to de Blasio's defense of public workers and his unabashed attacks on the mayoral race's absent frontrunner.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn was slated to attend the forum yesterday, but canceled at the last minute due to other commitments. Her absence irked the union members, who booed and bristled at the mention of her name. De Blasio added fuel to the flame when he revived his attack on Quinn for her support of 2008's term limit extension.

De Blasio continued to link Quinn to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who de Blasio also accused of "union busting with a velvet glove," and compared to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Whenever DC 37 decides to endorse a mayoral candidate, its executive board will have to mull over three candidates that it already supported in 2009: Bill Thompson's unsuccessful mayoral bid, as well as Liu and de Blasio for their respective offices.

DC 37 might be closer to picking a candidate after last night, but de Blasio doesn’t have to wait any longer for some support from big labor. Late today, the New York Times reported that he picked up the endorsement from SEIU 1199, city’s largest healthcare union.

SHOW US THE MONEY

While the rest of candidates wait for big-ticket union endorsements, they continued to rake in donations as the September primaries get closer.

DNAinfo reported on Tuesday that Thompson led the pack in fundraising totals with $600,000 earned between March 12 and May 11. Fellow Democrat Quinn came in close with $510,000 in the same period, but was out-raised by Republican candidate Joe Lhota's $558,000 in donations.

Both de Blasio and Liu raised less than half of what Thompson reportedly brought in: the public advocate reportedly raised $240,000, and Liu with $104,231.

Meanwhile, rumored mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner reported no campaign contributions. Even so, the former Congressman has more than $4 million on hand and other signs are beginning to point to his official candidacy for mayor.

WILL HE OR WON'T HE?

Politico reported this week that Weiner was bringing in campaign manager Danny Kedem to help revive his political brand.

Kedem previously worked on the failed campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Michael Grimm from his Staten Island congressional seat, and as a field organizer for Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Kedem couldn't be reached to confirm.

Weiner, who also allegedly hired an unnamed press secretary, was most recently spotted near his childhood home in Park Slope with his wife and a film crew, supposedly making what's assumed to be a campaign video.

A CAMEO APPEARANCE

Republican Senator Al D’Amato made a surprise appearance in the mayoral race when he mocked Quinn after confessed to The New York Times that she previously suffered from alcoholism and an eating disorder.

D’Amato took to NY1’s Road to City Hall and called Quinn a "political hack" for trying to "soften her image."

Quinn’s campaign responded with a force that it hadn’t previously shown, sending out an email yesterday that directly linked D’Amato’s comments to Thompson’s campaign.

The former comptroller tried to build some distance between him and D’Amato’s comments, calling Quinn’s revelation "touching" and "inspiring."

Seemingly unconvinced, the Quinn campaign sent out an email to supproters lambasting Thompson for his alliance with D’Amato, who has been one of his strongest allies.

"The last thing Democrats are looking for in a mayor of New York is someone who is 'proud' to have Al D’Amato’s support," the email said.

That same afternoon, Thompson’s campaign emailed its supporters to launch Women for Thompson with a letter signed by State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and former Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.

"This election is about real leadership on the issues women — and all New Yorkers — care about," the women wrote letter said. "For us, the choice is simple. Bill Thompson is the only candidate with the experience and temperament to get things done."

Expansion Of Voting Rights To Immigrants May Not Hold Up Under Legal Scrutiny


hands-voting

NEW YORK — What would likely be the nation's largest expansion of voting rights to immigrants under a proposed city law may not hold up under an expected deluge of legal scrutiny.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrant New Yorkers could be added to the voter rolls if city lawmakers approve the bill that would extend to them the same right to cast ballots in local elections as citizens.

The bill, which has been re-introduced into the City Council amid a national debate on immigration policy, got its first official hearing yesterday.

"Voting rights legislation is American legislation," said Queens Councilman Daniel Dromm, who first sponsored the bill in 2010 and is backing it once again.

He called the bill an opportunity to enfranchise an estimated 850,000 documented and tax-paying immigrants in the city that otherwise have little say in how the city operates.

"We should be the leader on this," Dromm said in an interview before the hearing. "We should set the tone for the rest of the nation."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is largely seen as immigrant-friendly and has backed other Council immigration reforms even when they strained relations with federal authorities, has questioned the bill's legality and has said he would veto it.

"Mayor Bloomberg believes voting is the most important right we are granted as citizens and you should have to go through the process of becoming a citizen and declaring allegiance to this country before being given that right," Bloomberg spokeswoman Evelyn Erskine wrote. "That being said, this bill violates the State constitution and the administration does not support it."

Dromm has secured 34 sponsors for the non-citizen voting bill — more than enough to beat a mayoral veto.

But Bloomberg is not alone in his skepticism over the legality of the bill. Scholars, too, are taking a hard look at the proposal, and some don't think it can survive court challenge.

Political science professor Stanley Renshon, of the City University of New York, has written extensively on the movement for non-citizen voting, including proposals for New York City. But he said the bill before the Council is "questionable."

Every state in the U.S. has laws on the book that prohibits documented immigrants from voting in state and national elections, Renshon argued. As such, he said that the legal precedent allows for the reasonable conclusion that voting rights are intrinsically tied to citizenship.

He said, however, that the courts haven't had many opportunities to explicitly rule on non-citizen voting rights on a local level. In his writings for the Center for Immigration Studies, Renshon cited judicial precedent that "states have the power to impose reasonable citizenship, age and residency requirements on the availability of the ballot," at least according to the U.S. Supreme's Court take on the 1969 case Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15.

Morris Kramer of Nassau County filed suit against his local school district for barring him from voting in local school district elections. Kramer had no children and did not own or rent property because he lived with his parents.

Regardless, the Supreme Court found at the time that New York State and its education law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The majority said that Kramer met what it considered to be prerequisites for voting rights, including citizenship.

The president of the city's Board of Election, Frederic Umane, also questioned whether such a law would be constitutional during a hearing of the commissioners on April 30, as well as the costs that would have to be borne by the BOE to create new voter registration forms, institute new training for poll workers and printing of new materials. However, Umane said at the meeting of the board's commissioners that they should "take no position on the law," except to underscore the costs associated with expanding voter rolls.

Non-citizen voting isn't foreign to the United States. From its founding up until the 1920s when citizenship requirements became widespread, nearly two dozen states and federal territories and local jurisdictions granted immigrants the right to vote. A 1996 federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. 

However, as recently as 2002, the city allowed documented immigrants with children in the city's public schools could vote in their community school board elections. Chicago still offers the same right to non-citizen parents, and have since the late 1980s.

And a number of small towns in Maryland and some jurisdictions in Massachusetts already offer non-citizen voting rights, and various countries offer the same albeit with range of restrictions and requirements.

Dromm and supporters of the bill couch their argument for the legislation on the same grounds that other groups do when it comes to voting rights: those who pay taxes deserve proper representation.

The bill is primarily aimed at those documented immigrants who intend to stay in New York for the long term, Dromm said, and is limited to local elections. Even if City Council Speaker Christine Quinn lets the bill go to a vote this year, the bill wouldn't be implemented in time for the 2013 elections.

Dromm said the bill would largely benefit green card and student visa holders, but its language only requires that qualified immigrant voters spend at least six months in the country before they can vote.

In May 2011, Baruch Survey Research conducted a survey about immigrants and immigration issues, during which pollsters found that a plurality of respondents had no issue with non-citizen voting.

The study found that half of the more than 1,200 adults asked would favor a law that granted voting rights to non-citizens who have lived in the city for five or more years. Of those responses, Baruch found that 67 percent of New Yorkers aged between 18 and 29 supported non-citizen voting rights, compared to 31 percent of support from New Yorkers older than 65.

The numbers are indicative of a larger debate happening on a national level, a discourse that Dromm said he thinks helped bring about the attention and support that his bill began to receive lately. He has been able to capitalize on Congress mulling over a bipartisan effort for immigration reform and the show of force from immigrant and minority communities for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign.

"All those things combined helped make it possible to bring the bill back to City Council," admitted Dromm, who as chair of the Council's immigration committee has championed many immigration-friendly bills. They have included legislation that brought a citywide halt to deportations resulting from cooperation from the city's Department of Corrections and Police Department.

Advocates who are backing Dromm seem unsurprisingly unfazed by the legal argument against the bill.

Among the groups standing up for the bill's legitimacy are the New York Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road NY, the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrants' Rights and the Working Family's Party.

Attorney Jerry Vattamala of the the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund said he is confident that the Council's bill is on firm legal ground.

Vattamala said the state constitution gives authority to local governments to pass laws that best suit their own needs by way of the home rule, including granting non-citizens voting rights in local elections.

"Generally speaking, the New York State constitution gives wide authority to local jurisdictions to determine how they elect their representatives," Vattamala said.

He added that the state doesn't expressly limit voting rights to non-citizens. If the city were to adopt the bill into its charter, he said, the home rule would force the state to cede to city law.

More to the point, Vatamalla said he sees the bill as a way to incorporate immigrant communities that factor into government operations without legitimate representation in the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

"Our experience is that elected officials salivate at these areas," Valamatta said, calling neighborhoods with high non-citizen residents political fillers. "They pump up the numbers in your district and yet you don't have to be responsive to them."

Valamatta also said that this bill can politically legitimize immigrant communities, including Queens' growing Asian community. "We'd like to have all leaders on board, because New York City really is a city of immigrants," he said.

It's the same message being circulated by the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights, of which Queens College professor Ron Hayduk is a co-founder. Author of the 2006 book "Democracy For All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States," Hayduk said he is confident that documented immigrants would exercise a newfound ability to vote.

But he acknowledged that non-citizen voting right is not a panacea to low voter turnouts, adding that the bill's goal is larger than increasing overall voter engagement. New candidates and new voters will bring about new debates and lines of conflict that all New Yorkers should welcome, Hayduk said.

"It could really invigorate the city's political dynamic in ways that we've never seen," he said.

Superstorm Sandy Shapes Discussion At Mayoral Forum


Several candidates for mayor in 2013

NEW YORK — The hard-earned lessons of Superstorm Sandy shaped a mayoral forum yesterday where candidates fielded questions on waterfront development, expanding ferry service and creating a new agency to oversee the city's vast coastline.

While there was little consensus on a range of topics, most of the candidates agreed that ferry service and renewed infrastructure investments were critical to the future of a working, sustainable waterfront.

The forum was held on a boat moored off of Pier 40 in lower Manhattan for a conference organized by the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. Six candidates were asked to respond to a policy proposals put forward by the alliance that touches on everything from docks to land use, as well as questions that were submitted by the public. Chris Ward, the former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, hosted the forum.

Unsurprisingly, the discussion kept turning back to Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.

"Make no mistake," said Democratic candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, "you get to say once, 'It was an unprecedented storm.' You don't get to do that again."

RELATED: WHAT FUTURE FOR THE CITY'S WATERFRONT? 

Quinn has long described Sandy reconstruction efforts as the single "most important infrastructure project of our time," also telling the audience that she has worked to be a waterfront speaker and would be a waterfront mayor.

She said that the first mass transit service to come back after Hurricane Sandy hit in October was the East River Ferry, which came about during her time as speaker. Quinn, like many of the other candidates, said that her long-term vision is to incorporate cross-borough ferries into the existing mass transit system that includes subways and buses, partially funded by city subsidies not unlike the East River Ferry.

"That's how mass transit works," she said. "It's about the greater good of the city."

field mayoralforum04092013 crowdabove

Most of the candidates also said that they saw expanded ferry service as an answer to the city's growing population, a problem that Comptroller John Liu said most cities would love to have. He, along with fellow Democrats Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former Comptroller Bill Thompson praised Mayor Michael Bloomberg's work on a blueprint for the city’s long-term sustainability, PlaNYC 2030, and recognized the future mayor's role in further sustainable development.

Thompson also repeated his call for the creation of a deputy mayor for infrastructure, who he said would focus on overseeing a comprehensive plan and timetable for development projects, including those related to Sandy recovery and others that may be in the path of future storms.

"The challenges of Lower Manhattan aren't the same challenges in Staten Island, aren't the same challenges in the Rockaways," he said. "That deputy mayor for infrastructure has to coordinate that, has to work in conjunction with the mayor to assume that leadership role."

Thompson was the only Democratic candidate to plainly advocate the creation of a new seat at the new mayor's table. Liu and Quinn both dismissed the idea of a new city agency devoted specifically to the city's waterfronts. Both said such an agency would duplicate responsibilities already given existing agencies affected by Sandy, such as the city's Housing, Education or Homeless Services departments.

Supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, a Republican, called the idea of either a waterfront department or czar a great idea in unspecific terms. But only former Bronx Borough President and Independence Party nominee Adolfo Carrión declared a waterfront-devoted agency to be a smart solution.

"I know that bureaucracy is a bad word," he said, referring to such a department as a “sledgehammer” to be use for waterfront development.

A former regional director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Barack Obama administration, Carrión said that the next mayor needs to works across the various levels of government to secure investment in the city's transportation infrastructure.

"I think, without risk of offending too many people, we're kind of dysfunctional in this region," Carrión said, adding that the job of the mayor is to educate the State Legislature about the city's economic force as it doles out federal money for development.

De Blasio also emphasized the idea of a stronger relationship between levels of government, specifically pointing to the mayor's relationship with Washington D.C., and calling the current dynamic unsustainable.

De Blasio, who served as a regional director for HUD under President Bill Clinton, said that the next mayor needs to use his or her bully pulpit to spotlight infrastructure issues on a national stage, not unlike how Bloomberg has dealt with gun control and climate change.

"If you can do Mayors for Gun Control,” he said, referring to Bloomberg’s effort to organize mayors across the country to fight for more limits on guns, “you can do mayors for infrastructure investment."

Part of the public advocate's argument for responsible development, he said, is economic realism. He invoked said pragmatism in response to a question about the ongoing Brooklyn Bridge Park project. The proposed development plan for the park's expansion received criticism from a number of elected representatives and residents who opposed the inclusion of private housing development as a means to pay for the park.

"The purists who were concerned about private investment," de Blasio said, "their concern could have led to no park for all those people who needed it."

The balance between public need and private investment came up again when Liu promoted the idea of mandatory inclusionary zoning for waterfront properties. The comptroller disagreed with de Blasio on the development of luxury housing at the park. However, Liu said he sees great value in public projects subsidized by private investments.

Those types of projects, Liu said, should require that any new construction offer affordable housing for residents with low to moderate incomes.

"I want to emphasize that we're talking about public-private partnerships," Liu said, with a heavy emphasis on the former. “Not,” he continued, “where the privates get all the increase in the economic value."

Economic value of the city's waterfronts was just as important to Catsimatidis, who said he was the only candidate with actual investment in waterfront development, having recently purchased a petroleum terminal along Long Island's northern shore. He added that he’s the only candidate to create hundred of thousands of jobs.

The lone Republican to speak at the forum — organizers said former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Joe Lhota was unable to attend — Catsimatidis said that he sees waterfront development and ferry expansions as a means to bring about new jobs. In turn, he said they would be boosted by one of his main economic development proposals: bringing back the World's Fair.

Catsimatidis also suggested introducing a bond issue to for capital expenditures, especially for the waterfronts. He speculated that raising an extra $100 billion dollars — a concept that appeared to take moderator Ward by surprise.

"I remember when I built my first store, I said i'm going to raise $50,000 to remodel it," Catsimatidis said. "People thought it was fantasy. No; you have a vision and you do it."

The Democratic candidates also recognized the potential jobs that waterfront development could bring the city, both in term of tourism and port activity. For her part, Quinn recognized the city has historically counted on waterways for economic growth and should do so again.

"We owe the 21st century immigrants the same opportunities that my relatives had when they came here and worked on the docks on the Westside," Quinn said. "They'll be different jobs, but they can be waterfront jobs that are sustaining families and helping them move into the middle class."

___

Images by Emily Field. 



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