City Hall - June 22, 2009

New HPD Commissioner Rafael Cestero, right, explains his vision (Page 11), Bill Thompson, Sr. and Jr. reflect on Father’s Day (Page 18) and

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June 22, 2009

Considering

Quinn The speaker prepares to manage the returning Council while keeping her citywide ambitions alive

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Vol. 4, No. 1

Dan Cantor, left, gives the WFP’s take on Albany and the 2009 elections (Page 23).

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CITY HALL

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JUNE 22, 2009

Forethought

More NIMBY Attitudes, More Bad Precedents

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

This brand of codified, encouraged NIMBYism is completely antithetical to how a serious deliberative body should go about its job.

If a project is worthless on its merits, Council members should, after careful consideration, vote it down, even if the “home” member approved the plan. That is why, after all, they were elected—to be stewards of this city, not sheep more interested in preserving comity in the Council chambers than taking care of the city.

In the case of the Dock Street Project, the issue was whether or not views of the Brooklyn Bridge outweigh a community’s need for affordable housing and for more middle school classroom space. Both arguments have their points. If only Council members had not been afraid or unwilling or uninterested to weigh in on either side, the city might have featured an arguably much needed debate on these issues.

No one doubts why legislators are given some latitude to determine the merits of the development projects in their home neighborhoods. They are the ones most knowledgeable about a project’s effect on local communities, they hear residents’ complaints the loudest, they are the ones ultimately responsible to local voters to improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods.

And surely the rest of the Council is too inundated with work to fully suss out the merits of all of the myriad development projects going on around the city.

But still, members seem too eager to pass off using their critical faculties in lieu of voting lockstep with their colleagues on major development projects. The truth, of course, is that the effects of most developments are not limited to the blocks around the site, but that in this organic, intertwined city, each project affects everyone in some way, no matter how far away we vote from where the shovels are actually going in the ground. If there is less affordable housing in DUMBO, the laws of cause and effect (and supply and demand) teach that there will be less affordable housing units in Ditmas Park and less in neighborhoods from Dyker Heights to Douglaston. And so on, through the various reverberations and ripples.

The city has gone down the road of this kind of balkanization before, to disastrous consequences. In the late 1960s, the Bundy Plan called for the creation of decentralized school boards that were mostly independent from the rest of the city. The result was a series of teacher strikes, and resentments that lingered for decades.

More recently, this issue came to a full boil during the Sonny Carson street naming controversy, when Council Member Charles Barron, who frequently does not defer to his colleagues on many local decisions, cleverly flipped the argument around and said that the deference given to Council members on zoning and land use decisions should also be applied for the relatively uncontroversial act of naming a street.

Surely, neighborhood concerns should be given a weight, even a disproportionate weight when the city undertakes massive new plans. But these cannot be the only concerns.

To let them become so risks turning the city into a collection of mini-fiefdoms where no one has the courage to sacrifice anything so that the city can better meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Even in the midst of a recession, serious planning and zoning decisions will continue to come before the Council in the months and weeks ahead. Legislators have a responsibility to take a passionate interest in each one, and approve—or disapprove—of each on the merits. For a Council that voted itself an extension of time in office on the basis of its insisted expertise, this should be a pretty basic one to live up to in the years ahead.

erhaps to lighten the mood in announcing the somber final budget deal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a few subtle digs at the legislators in Albany and the mess they have created in state government.

At each, Council members behind him shared a hearty guffaw.

But the Council has its own history of straying from best practices.

Take, for example, the extraordinary action this month when the Council voted to approve a 17-story tower next to the Brooklyn Bridge that David Yassky, whose district the development would be in, voted against.

What was really extraordinary, however, was that it was in fact extraordinary at all.

City Council members are given wide deference to give the thumbsup or thumbs down on projects in their home districts, with their 50 colleagues generally nodding along in passive agreement.

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Editor’s Note Editor’s Note: This issue marks the third birthday of City Hall. Little did any of us know when the first issue hit the streets in June 2006 quite what a rollicking ride the New York political scene would be over these three years, but we had our suspicions. Our thanks go first of all to our readers, and to all those who have participated at every step along the way so far. We have our plans for the future, but want to know your suggestions too, so keep them coming by emailing us at the email addresses below or editor@cityhallnews.com.

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JUNE 22, 2009

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Comptroller Candidates Convene To Count Their Differences

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

City Hall hosts first candidate debate of the season

BY JULIE SOBEL he four candidates for New York City comptroller faced off on June 16 at the CUNY Graduate Center at an event sponsored by City Hall.

Questions came from City Hall editor Edward-Isaac Dovere, Michael Scotto of NY1 and the candidates themselves.

The debate between Council Members Melinda Katz (D-Queens), John Liu (DQueens), David Weprin (D-Queens) and David Yassky (D-Brooklyn) started off politely, but soon became contentious as the candidates sparred over policy, the slush fund scandal and each other’s political ambitions.

Each candidate opened by emphasizing certain aspects of their agendas that set them apart.

Katz explained that one of her priorities was investing some pension money in companies that do business in New York City. Liu suggested he would look closely at the Department of Education’s financial operations, and use the comptroller position to gain more control over schools and reform mayoral control. Weprin stressed the need for the comptroller to be more accessible to people living in New York City—while there is currently a Manhattan office, he vowed to open offices in the outer boroughs, as well as an uptown Manhattan office. Yassky talked about eliminating wasteful bureaucratic spending and using that money to create jobs.

Although there was agreement that the pension system is bankrupting New York, along with much of the country, Yassky was the only candidate open to the possibility of creating a union-unfriendly fifth tier.

“I don’t think you take anything off the table,” he said. “I’m not a George Bush

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that says ‘Read my lips, no new taxes.’”

Candidates also debated ideas concerning responsible investment of pension funds.

Asked about changes they would propose in light of the pay-to-play scandal at the state level, the four had nuanced opinions on the role of placement agents in investment of the city’s $80 billion pension fund. Liu and Yassky distanced themselves from Comptroller William Thompson’s (D) current ban on placement agencies.

Weprin called for greater transparency and said there was no reason for placement agents, insisting that instead they should be licensed professionals working within companies. Yassky modified that position, noting that funds managing $1 billion or more in assets do not need placement agents, but small investment funds should still be able to use them to gain the attention of the pension funds.

Katz said if they were allowed again, she would bring them in-house, but that given the current crisis, a ban is appropriate.

Liu disagreed, calling the ban a “kneejerk reaction,” and contended that there is a role for placement agents, but only if coupled with much greater disclosure

and transparency.

The four discussed how they might use the comptroller’s office to bring about changes in both the private and public sectors.

Yassky stressed that he would use the comptroller job to push companies to reduce energy consumption and would also invest 5 percent of investments funds in green technology. Katz said she has submitted testimony the previous week to the Securities and Exchange Commission about changing the rules to increase the effectiveness of shareholder activism. Liu agreed they should leverage pension investments to effect change in the company’s structure, from human resources practices to executive compensation. Weprin underscored that he would look to divest from companies with significant holdings in countries like Iran and Sudan. He also suggested New York could partner with other states to increase its influence in spurring change.

Katz was the sole candidate to advocate for prioritizing investment in New York City businesses. She also talked about investing small amounts in distressed businesses, a position that carried potentially greater reward but also greater risk.

Liu strongly disagreed with the proposal, saying that “those are among the most aggressive, risky investments that anybody can make.”

Tension mounted when the discussion turned to politics.

Weprin was asked about his role as finance committee chair during the slush fund scandal. He said that while he generally was deep into the intricacies of the budget, the process was too big for one person to oversee everything.

“No one individual can be involved in every aspect,” he said. “I would say I’m very much involved, as much as you can be as one individual, with a $60 billion budget and thousands and thousands of not-for-profits that are funded.”

Liu was asked about his political ambitions and whether he saw the comptroller’s office as a stepping-stone to running for mayor. He answered that he did not, though Weprin later noted, to applause, that Liu had been running for public advocate until he recently switched races.

That came amid a heated exchange between Liu and Yassky, with Liu accusing his opponent of serial campaigning.

“As far as ambition and stepping-stones and things like that, David, you’ve got to admit this is like the fifth office you’ve run for in a number of years,” said Liu. “The fifth office you’ve run for.”

Yassky shot back that he had only run for three offices, and had merely talked about running for Brooklyn District Attorney.

Weprin reminded Yassky that he had in fact held a fundraiser in support of the Brooklyn DA bid.

“I know you had a fundraiser because I was there,” said Weprin. “I was supporting you.”

Katz refrained from wading into that political fray. Pointing out that she was the only female in the race and that most teachers are women, Katz asked if she could put the three men in “detention.”

The candidates also argued over the term-limit extension, which Katz and Yassky had supported.

Liu called the extension “an abysmal assault on democracy.”

A Quinnipiac poll that came out the day after the debate showed Liu leading the race with 19 percent, Katz with 13 percent, Yassky with 10 percent and Weprin with 5 percent. Fifty percent of New York City voters remained undecided. jsobel@cityhallnews.com

YOU’RE INVITED: Public Advocate Debate, July 9

Three Candidates To Attend, Green Will Not Commit, Citing Looming Deadlines On July 9, City Hall will host a debate of the Democratic candidates for public advocate. The event will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center, much like a similar debate held for the comptroller candidates June 16. Mark Green, the former public advocate, has declined the invitation, even though his opponents Bill deBlasio, Eric Gioia and Norman Siegel have all committed to attend. Green cited

a need to focus on deadlines for petitioning and fundraising, in which he has been trailing. Meanwhile, the other three candidates, all facing similar deadlines, will take the stage to discuss and debate their own vision for the city’s second highest office. The invitation to Green remains open and the paper and its sponsors sincerely hope that the candidate can find the time to attend the event.

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JUNE 22, 2009

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County Action, North Korean Politics And Ethnic Clashes Define Race For Liu Seat

BY CHRIS BRAGG hen John Choe entered the Council race to replace Council Member John Liu (DQueens) a few weeks ago, there were two immediate opposite reactions.

The Queens Democratic Party jumped at the chance to endorse Liu’s longtime chief of staff, even though Choe had declared his candidacy only a day before the county’s endorsement meeting.

At the same time, a faction of the Korean-American population in the Flushing district strongly denounced him, even though Choe appears to have a good shot at becoming the first KoreanAmerican elected to the Council.

The county support for Choe is easy to explain: he has the backing of the popular Liu, and Rep. Joseph Crowley (DQueens/Bronx), the Queens County chair.

Similarly, Choe said that the promise of county support was one of the main factors in his decision to finally go public with his candidacy.

The big controversy, though, is not over this political maneuvering, but over a foreign policy issue half a world away.

In 1999, Choe founded a group called Nodutdol, whose stated aim is the reunification of North and South Korea. Some in Flushing, however, have labeled Choe a Communist sympathizer, since the group has arranged numerous trips to North Korea for members, and because the group’s website has featured glowing accounts of North Korea and its communist dictator.

In a district where the Falun Gong has for years protested Liu at every turn for what they believe are the councilman’s own alleged Communist leanings, Choe said similar forces are now marshalling

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STATEN older, white population and ISLAND newer immigrants. With the county endorsement, and a forthcoming endorsement from Liu, Choe appears well positioned to do that.

Even if Choe did have the full support of the Korean-American community, he would still have to bridge the demographic divides. The district is roughly 10 percent Korean-American, 20 percent ChineseAmerican, 15 percent Hispanic and 37 percent Caucasian.

There are also two Chinese-Americans in the race: Yen Chou, a former staffer for Council Member David Weprin (DQueens) and James Wu, a political strategist. Chou is leading the race in fundraising with over $210,000, much of it culled from Chinese-American businesses.

But what is really important about that figure, she said, is what she believes it demonstrates about her resonance in the community.

“Money is not really the point,” Chou said. “It shows that the people respect you.”

In an effort to unify the voting bloc, Chou has also recently been calling on Wu in the Chinese press to drop out

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support against him among KoreanAmericans.

John Hong, of the Korean American Association of Flushing, said Koreans are likely to instead support S.J. Jung, a community organizer, who has also received the backing of the Working Families Party and 32 BJ. Hong said he did not know what to think about Choe.

“I have heard the rumors about North Korea,” Hong said. “I don’t know if they are true. But I have heard them.”

Choe, however dismissed the whole controversy as irrelevant to his candidacy.

“I’m not running for secretary of state—I’m running to represent the 20th district in the City Council,” Choe said.

Some outsiders are also getting involved. Former Council Member Julia Harrison, who is white and preceded Liu on the Council, has been strongly expressing her concerns about Choe’s candidacy.

“I am very concerned about the perception in the community that the North Korean government has a spokesperson,” said Harrison.

But Harrison has been divisive herself.

In 1996, for instance, she referred to the new immigrants in the neighborhood as “colonizers” and prompted a 2,000-person protest in front of City Hall. She later apologized. But that comment helped convince Liu to run against Harrison in 1997 (he lost) and again in 2001, when he won and became the first Asian-American elected to the Council.

Harrison had at one point discussed trying to make a political comeback this year but opted out of the race.

Choe, who was college classmates with Liu, said he also got involved in politics to bridge the divide between the

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John Choe, a late entry to the race to replace Council Member John Liu, has quickly become a lightning rod.

of the race, Wu said. He has declined.

Two white candidates—Isaac Sasson, head of the Holly Civic Association, and Constantine Kavadas—are also running.

Sasson is considered a dark horse with strong roots in the area who could win if the vote splinters on ethic lines.

Should that occur, it would set up a general election scenario in which Republican candidate Peter Koo, a wealthy Chinese-American businessman who lost a race to State Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Queens) last year, could be running against a white candidate. This would force voters to choose between ethnic allegiances and party affiliation, potentially giving the GOP a chance to pick up the seat.

Many believe that after Liu’s political ascension, the Korean-American community in Flushing is now ready to elect one of its own, with money pouring into the race from around the country and first-generation immigrants giving way to a more politically sophisticated second generation.

Yet the political lines in the area remain blurred for now, as is evident in the history of the local Assembly seat, which has gone to four different people in the last four elections.

Assembly Member Grace Meng (DQueens), who is Chinese-American, was able to beat the county party-backed candidate Ellen Young in 2008 by forming a coalition with Harrison and former Assembly candidate Terence Park, who is Korean-American.

Meng said the winner of the Council race would likely have to follow a similar strategy.

“You have to be able to build coalitions, whether you’re Korean or another ethnicity,” she said. “Just because you’re Korean-American doesn’t mean you can just stay focused on that community. You have to make other communities realize that you understand their problems and that you have been there for them in the past.” cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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JUNE 22, 2009

Linking Gains To Funding, Teachers Forecast Doom Pushback begins to DOE demand to keep up standards amid budget crisis

BY AMY LIEBERMAN ew York City public schools have made big strides in test scores in recent years, but some educators are now worrying that those gains could be lost as the school budgets are slashed while the city tries to close a massive budget deficit.

Before the City Council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg reached a budget agreement earlier this month, the teachers’ union had been projecting that the average school would lose as much as $250,000 next year, as the Department of Education wrestled with a $452 million budget gap.

Those numbers are now in flux as principles submit their annual budgets, with the DOE still sizing up how much it will lose. Though the final budget deal will likely ease the cuts somewhat, city schools still face cuts of up to $380 million.

“Any cuts of this magnitude right now will almost certainly hamper the academic momentum the New York City public school system has mounted, as reflected in recent test scores,” said United Federation of Teachers spokesperson Ron Davis. “We want to see steady improvement over the course of the next few years, and backing off on education funding now could bring that rate of progress to an abrupt halt.”

Per-pupil spending has increased by over $5,000 to more than $16,000 since 2002, according to a Department of Education spokesperson. There seem to be results to claim: 85 percent of fourthgraders and 71 percent of eighth-graders exceeded state standards in math testing this year, a 32.9-percent and 41.5-percent increase from the 2002 tests, respectively.

English scores were up as well, with nearly 69 percent of fourth-graders and 57 percent of eighth-graders surpassing state standards on the exam this year—a respective 22.4- and 27.5-percent increase from 2002’s ELA test scores.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

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Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn shook on a $59.4 billion budget, but city schools wonder how they will bear the brunt of a $380 million cut.

Though curbed education funding does not automatically equate poorer student performances, April Humphrey, of the Campaign for Better Schools, says it is “naïve to not expect to see these cuts having a negative impact in terms of educational achievement.”

Upper East Side elementary Central Park East II, for example, is settling its approximate $70,000 loss by dropping a full-time math support staff member.

Principal Naomi Smith says students will continue to benefit from a strong math program, but that “it will be a little harder to meet their needs.”

P.S. 10, in Park Slope, expects to slash $400,000 from its budget, eliminating afterschool programs and extra staff support.

With 25 percent of the elementary school’s pupils having special needs, principal Laura Scott says she does not know “how we are going to support our strugglers.”

P.S. 10’s test scores rose this year, with

78 percent of its fourth-graders placing at or above grade level on the English exams, an 11-point jump from last year’s 67 percent.

Nearly 94 percent of students performed as

before?” Scott said. “We had 18 teachers before working after school with our kids. You subtract that, and we just don’t know what is going to happen.”

The DOE, though, says that schools should be able to maintain—and improve—performance rates on state tests, pointing to schools that have already experienced cuts over the past 18 months and nonetheless seen consistent rises in test scores.

“Every indicator that we have right now suggests that schools are continuing to make progress—and we are going to provide a lot of support to schools so they are able to do that in the future,” said DOE spokesperson Andrew Jacob.

Schools that have already felt a pinch may be most affected by any further cuts. At Francis Lewis High School in Bayside, students consistently score high on state tests, even though classrooms are overcrowded and some of them are held in trailers scattered about the campus.

Arthur Goldstein, an English as a Second Language teacher there, has been teaching without access to a computer or a white board for the past seven years.

But the current situation, he fears, may be the school’s tipping point.

“We had 18 teachers before working after school with our kids. You subtract that, and we just don’t know what is going to happen,” said P.S. 10 Principal Laura Scott. well on the math tests, marking a 2-percent increase from the 2008 results.

Scott partially credits her students’ success to help they receive in small settings outside the classroom and worries about how the school can continue to show improvement.

“How can we continue to keep those scores high, now that we won’t be able to offer the support services that we have

“We’re a great school, a great everything, but if they keep overcrowding us, we will break,” Goldstein said. “Our progress will reverse and it will be entirely the fault of this administration, which treats us like something they wiped from the bottom of their shoe. We cannot sustain this forever.”

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JUNE 22, 2009

In Sotomayor’s Record, A Major Legal Legacy Already At Home Before getting Supreme Court nod, already shaping New York on guns, cars, prisons

BY JAMES MCDONALD n her 18 years on the federal bench in Manhattan, Sonia Sotomayor had ample opportunity to carve her impression into the state’s legal landscape. And in a number of cases concerning New York law, she did just that.

The importance of any one federal appeals court judge is easy to underestimate. But the sheer number of cases involved tell the story—this year, the Supreme Court will decide 65 cases, contrasted to Sotomayor’s Second Circuit, which will review more than Before Sonia Sotomayor impressed Barack Obama, she had already left 2,000 cases from New York alone. Circuit a strong imprint on state law. judges are strikingly more powerful Outside of the Second Amendment, within their jurisdictions, unlike Supreme Cuomo, did not even involve a gun, but, Court justices, which decides too few rather, Port Washington resident James Sotomayor’s record on individual rights cases for any one justice to have a strong Maloney’s nunchucks. Maloney, a martial- in New York reveals an advocate for the legal impact on a state. The discrepancy arts expert, had been arrested in 2000 individual citizen aggrieved by state and in workload translates into a disparity in for possessing them, and although the municipal bureaucracy.

In 2002, Sotomayor wrote a lengthy influence—so while her likely elevation to charges were dismissed, Maloney filed the Supreme Court positions Sotomayor a federal lawsuit hoping to eliminate opinion mapping out the numerous to shape law and policy nationally, it several provisions of the Penal Law as in constitutional violations present in the NYPD’s practice of seizing, and too often means she will have much less direct violation of the Second Amendment. keeping, the automobiles of DUIinfluence on her home state. arrestees.

Sotomayor’s most important While her likely elevation to New York City had (and still act for New York may be her has) a policy to impound vehicles vote last January to uphold the Supreme Court positions of people arrested for driving Section 265 of the state’s Penal Sonia Sotomayor to shape law under the influence of alcohol.

Law, which criminalizes the and policy nationally, it means The city keeps some of these cars, possession of machine guns, she will have much less direct hoping to gain ownership through assault rifles and other deadly civil forfeiture. Unfortunately for weapons.

Last summer’s influence on her home state. the owners who want their cars decision by the Supreme Court The Second Circuit’s decision to toss returned, forfeiture proceedings often striking down Washington, D.C.’s guncontrol statute for infringing individual Maloney’s suit was short and to the take several years to conclude, preventing rights under the Second Amendment led point: the Second Amendment does not even those who eventually win their cars to questions about whether most state apply against the states. The court said back from using them in the interim. Most gun-control laws remain constitutional. because nunchucks are frequently used frustrating for vehicle owners was that In January, Sotomayor and two of her by muggers and street gangs and are the city had no procedures to promptly colleagues upheld New York’s law, finding “designed primarily as a weapon [with] no challenge impoundment.

All this changed with Sotomayor’s the Legislature retains the right to impose purpose other than to maim or, in some instances, kill,” the Legislature could act opinion in Krimstock v. Kelly, a class “reasonable” regulations. action against the city by a group of The gun-control case, Maloney v. to preserve public safety.

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CITY HALL aggrieved drivers. When President Obama lauded Sotomayor for her “practical understanding of how the law works in the everyday lives of the American people,” he may well have had cases like Krimstock in mind. Sotomayor took a realistic look at the implications of the city’s seizure policy, writing that motor vehicles are “for some, the means to earn a livelihood” and, for many, their “most valuable possession.”

She quoted famed Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to link a person’s car with his liberty: “My equal right to drive an automobile may be only a claim to use of property, but it concerns my personal freedom as well.”

With these important interests at play, Sotomayor concluded that a citizen must be given the opportunity to immediately challenge the city’s impoundment.

Similar thinking was evident in her approach to New York’s prison system.

In the 1993 case of Campos v. Coughlin, then-District Judge Sotomayor blocked the Department of Correctional Services from instituting a new policy that permitted prisoners to wear “traditional” religious symbols like crucifixes but required members of other religions to seek “certification of religious adherence” and special permission before adorning themselves. Siding with followers of Santeria who filed the lawsuit, Sotomayor mixed personal feelings with her legal conclusions: “I am sympathetic to plaintiffs’ claims, and question the apparent bias prominent throughout the directive toward ‘traditional’ Catholic and Christian religious symbols.”

In other words, in holding that the Free Exercise Clause trumped the Department’s asserted interest of prison security, Sotomayor concluded, “The Constitution does not countenance such unabashed bias.”

In her two decades on the bench, just as important as Sotomayor’s race and gender seems to have been a life spent within the boundaries of the MTA. In that light, her views on controlling deadly weapons, affording a speedy remedy to those irked with the NYPD and protecting religious minorities are not too far from just about any average city resident.

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In Challenging Stewart, Little Respect For His Record

BY JULIE SOBEL he voice of H-Diggy, the dreadlocked host from Whatz Up TV, rang out over the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!

Are you ready to rummmmmble?”

So began the Saturday afternoon political debate in South Brooklyn featuring embattled Council Member Kendall Stewart (D-Brooklyn) and the host of candidates aiming to relieve him of his seat.

Buffeted by a wave of discontent in his heavily Caribbean district—including his aides’ implication in the slush fund scandal, charges of disengagement with the district and frustration with his vote to extend term limits—Stewart is facing five opponents this year: Jumaane Williams, Dexter McKenzie, Erlene King, Rodrick Daley and Sam Taitt.

With the district hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, the economy and affordable housing are looming large as issues in the campaign. Stewart has faced criticism for his second job as a landlord.

His opponents accuse him of being a delinquent property owner and making controversial comments about HaitianAmericans living in his buildings.

Daley, a schoolteacher, focused his attacks on Stewart’s record as a landlord as opposed to his record as a Council member. A week prior to the debate, when asked whether housing issues would play a role in the race, Daley said yes.

“Of him being a slumlord?” Daley asked.

“Yeah, that’s going to come up.”

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who has raked in endorsements from the Working Families Party, 32BJ, the UAW and the New York Hotel Workers Union. Assembly Member James Brennan (D-Brooklyn) is backing Williams as well.

“When we have reached out with him for assistance on issues, [Stewart has] not been very responsive,” said Neal Kwatra, political director for the Hotel Workers Union. “For us, actions speak louder than words.”

The WFP felt Williams fit in strongly with their goal of promoting a slate of community organizers for Council seats, according to spokesperson Bryan Collinsworth. Williams worked as an affordable housing organizer before launching his Council campaign.

“I think the reason we like Jumaane is because he’s very in touch with that community and understands the needs,” he added.

For all the attacks against him, Stewart stands firm, ticking off dismissals to each one of the charges his opponents raise.

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Stewart’s opponents came from a variety of backgrounds.

Two opponents, Williams and King, have experience working for tenants’ rights. McKenzie is a doctor and Taitt is a professor. None have run for elected office before.

Stewart said that his opponents were planning their campaigns on the assumption that he would not be able to run for re-election.

“There were supposed to be term limits,” he said. “Some of them felt, ‘Well, may as well stay in and get the practice for the next four years.’”

Williams countered that perception.

“I think he’s very vulnerable, which is why I think he’s having so many challengers,” he said. “He hasn’t been a very good Council member. In understanding the issues, in responding to the issues, in bringing resources back to the community, he’s been ineffective.”

King, the only woman in the race and a longtime housing activist in the community, has challenged Stewart twice before. She lamented the current conditions in the district, saying residents are severely underserved, and the housing situation and schools in particular have deteriorated on Stewart’s watch.

“He has just sat there and done nothing in the district,” she said. “I can’t even sleep, thinking of it.”

In such a crowded race, the concern is how to avoid splitting the anti-Stewart vote. Several powerful interest groups in the district are hoping to address that by unifying their support behind Williams,

JUNE 22, 2009

Kendall Stewart, far right, defended himself against opponents’ charges at the “Rumble in Da Hood” debate.

The WFP backing Williams, for example, is a sham with racist undertones, Stewart said.

“Working Family, I think, is a fraud,” he said, claiming the organization is going after anyone who voted to extend term limits while endorsing the “white people who made it happen.”

“The fact is, term limits is a detriment to black people,” said Stewart.

He later repeated that sentiment at the “Rumble in Da Hood” debate, where the audience and the four black challengers he shared the stage with seemed incredulous at his defense of his vote.

Stewart defended his record, saying schools and after-school programs have improved during his time in office. With him as chair of the Council’s Immigration Committee, he noted, his office helps more immigrants than any other Council office, and highlighted his record fighting to protect immigrant rights and seniors.

Throughout the debate, Stewart repeatedly justified the need for a third term by contending that it would take any of his opponents at least two years to figure out how to navigate the complex halls of municipal government. He argued that his eight years of experience were important in steering necessary resources to the district.

Stewart was also asked about his involvement in the Council slush fund scandal, in which two of his staffers, including his chief of staff, were arrested on charges of embezzling taxpayer dollars.

He was even grilled on his lack of support for naming a street after reggae legend Bob Marley.

“You don’t understand how politics works,” said Stewart to the audience, to angry yelps from the crowd.

“Show a little respect for Dr. Stewart,” H-Diggy said when the interruptions from the crowd reached an especially loud pitch. “Just a little, that’s all.” jsobel@cityhallnews.com

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JUNE 22, 2009

Who’s The Boss?

Old Headaches And New Ones For New Bronx Head Rivera, Baez and, more than ever, Espada pose challenges for Heastie

BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS arl Heastie says he is determined to look forward. Never mind that pesky matter about whether or not he is the legal chair of the Bronx Democratic Party that many people have forgotten is still wending its way through the courts.

Never mind the allegations of corruption that permeate his party’s ranks. Heastie’s organization has to focus on getting all its candidates elected in the fall as it tries to rise above last year’s chaos.

“I’m looking to move forward,” Heastie said, sitting in his office at the party’s new headquarters in the East Bronx. “I really don’t care to discuss what happened last year.”

The four-room office suite itself was a blank slate, practically devoid of any desks or computers. Except for a couple of electoral maps, the walls are bare.

But last year’s battle for control continues to cause problems. The party is still struggling to rebuild after what several legislators say was a period of irresponsible leadership under José Rivera, one that sapped the party’s resources and morale. The leadership fight has driven away several supporters and big-dollar political donors, creating difficulties in paying debts left over from Rivera’s time as chair. As of January, the party reported just $100 in its bank account.

“The party was a paper tiger,” said one Assembly member who now sits on the party’s executive committee.

“There was no ‘there’ there.”

A taciturn four-term member of the Assembly who moonlights as a business ethics professor at Monroe College, Heastie is an African-American in charge of an organization that has traditionally been headed by Latino and Jewish officials.

But that is not the biggest challenge, with a list of embattled and controversial elected officials from his borough almost too long to list.

Among the spicier: Council Member Larry Seabrook is facing accusations of steering taxpayer money to either non-existent nonprofits or groups that are managed by his close relatives. A family member of Council Member Maria del Carmen Arroyo and Assembly Member Carmen Arroyo was recently arrested for embezzling $200,000 from a nonprofit group. Maria Baez is dodging complaints about chronic absenteeism, while facing tough questions about payments made to a Bronx nonprofit after the city initially turned down its request for funds.

ANDREW SCHWARTZ/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY M. CHEESEEMAN

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Many are now pushing harder than ever to find ways to take him out in 2010 or before.

But Espada still has powerful friends in the Bronx.

A politician who has always operated outside the traditional party structure, he relies on a strong network of volunteers and donors related to his health clinic nonprofits and tenant groups. This could make him a difficult challenge for the party. “[Espada] has his own base that works, that collects his petitions, raises his money,” Ruiz said. “He doesn’t have to do what the county chairman tells him. Nobody has the clout to go after him.”

Some in the party expressed reluctance in focusing too much attention and resources on going after Espada. But others seemed to think the troublemaker could be a ripe target in 2010.

“Espada has never been a person you can count on,” said Assembly Member Michael Benjamin, a strong Heastie ally.

Finding someone to challenge him next year “would be part of our mission,” Benjamin added.

But for now, the party is focusing most of its efforts on beating Maria Baez, a Rivera loyalist whom many party insiders deemed beyond redemption. The party endorsed one of several challengers to Baez, Fernando Cabrera, the founder and pastor of New Life Church, passing over Yesenia Polanco, chief-of-staff to Council Member Annabel Palma, and several others in the process. Some

With even the slightest misstep, some speculate, the Rebel-led coalition could be vulnerable to a resurgent Rivera revolution.

“Sometimes there are more FBI agents than elected officials in the Bronx,” said former State Sen. Israel Ruiz.

And then there is State Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr. The question of what to do with Espada has flummoxed many in the Bronx party ever since he first won a return to office, even before his dramatic role in the State Senate coup. Once he did, those tensions ran ever higher, with many Democrats in the borough enraged by what they saw as a shameless grab for power.

speculate Cabrera was chosen because he is part of the network of pastors and religious supporters of State Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr., who, since the leadership changeover and the election of his son as borough president, has increased his power in the county organization.

Getting rid of Baez has become the first real test for the party’s new leaders. She will be the first incumbent the organization has sought to remove. If they succeed, Heastie will undoubtedly be seen as a much more significant player.

“It would be a major coup,” said one lawmaker.

The action will not end on Election Day. Once the races are won, Heastie will have the Council speaker vote and distribution of Council committee chairmanships ahead of him, pitting him against the powerful and more seasoned machines in Queens and Brooklyn.

One major question will be what to do with Joel Rivera, whom the organization endorsed as an olive branch, essentially clearing the primary field for him. But Heastie may not take as much of an interest in keeping the younger Rivera as Council majority leader as José Rivera did during his own days leading the party.

In other words, the path ahead for the new Bronx boss is full of a thousand potential pitfalls. And with even the slightest misstep, some speculate, the Rebelled coalition could be vulnerable to a resurgent Rivera revolution.

Heastie, ever imperturbable, said he is not worried.

“You’re never going to get 100 percent of people agreeing on one thing,” he said. ahawkins@cityhallnews.com

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JUNE 22, 2009

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Cestero Steps Into The Housing Mess, Swinging Hard At one of the worst moments for city housing, new HPD commissioner charts new path

BY SAL GENTILE

history of the city’s housing market.

“It was clear that some soul-searching had gone on with him personally before he took the job,” said one person who attended a going-away party for Donovan in February, where the topic of Cestero’s internal struggle came up. “It was his job for the taking, and once it was, he really mulled it over for a while before jumping in.”

Cestero obtained some assurances from the administration before agreeing to go through with the selection process. Foremost among them, he said, was a promise not to shrink away from the administration’s very public commitments to affordable housing, such as a plan to create or preserve as many as 165,000 units by 2014.

“I was very clear with them and with everybody during this process,” he said.

“If they were looking for somebody to dismantle the New Housing Marketplace plan because budget’s tight and times are rough, don’t hire me, because I put the thing together.”

The perception, at the time of his selection, was that the mayor was looking for a safe choice, someone to shepherd his and Donovan’s plans through the housing crisis. Bloomberg was also gearing up to seek a third term, and many thought he would want to avoid any radical and potentially controversial changes.

“It’s an election year,” said one official who has lived through several administrations.

“Don’t necessarily expect that you’re going to try and ramp up major new programs.”

But the first several months of Cestero’s tenure have been all about pushing back on those expectations, and about moving past Donovan’s legacy. He insisted that

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ne of the first things Rafael Cestero did in March as the city’s new housing commissioner was tour the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s ninestory headquarters at 100 Gold Street, introducing himself to as many mid-level staffers as he could.

Then, he fired Luiz Aragon, a top deputy to Cestero’s predecessor, Shaun Donovan.

Aragon had a tendency to berate staff and abuse subordinates, and was universally disliked within the agency.

Firing him helped Cestero win favor with the rank-and-file, as morale began to sag due to budget cutbacks and market turmoil, and when many at HPD were unsure what kind of commissioner they would get. (“It was sort of like, ding dong, the witch is dead,” said one insider of Aragon’s firing. “Rafael won huge dedication points from worker-bee people.”)

The two moves may seem at odds. One was an overture to the agency’s 3,000strong army of code enforcers, legal Housing Commissioner Rafael Cestero has already distinguished aides, managers and engineers. The other himself as a different personality with a different management style was a show of force. and different agenda than his predecessor, Shaun Donovan.

But both were an indication of the their buildings threaten foreclosure and had a reputation of wanting to please kind of housing commissioner Cestero possible eviction, by offering government everyone. intends to be.

That willingness to assert himself incentives for banks to modify loans. And “The most important thing is to just be he will shift the focus of the New Housing has already shown up in Cestero’s early very direct with people, and to let them Marketplace Plan from development to stewardship of HPD. In addition to know what’s going on, and that the decisions preservation, which was not nearly as firing Aragon, he is drawing up plans you’re making are the decisions you have to to reorganize the agency’s nearly 3,000 high a priority for Donovan. make, not that you relish or enjoy making— Those who have interacted with employees. and that the decisions that you expect them He is also not afraid to poach staff Cestero say the differences extend to make are the same,” he said, sitting in a beyond policy, and have just as much to from elsewhere within the administration, conference room on the fifth floor of the do with varying management styles even when the moves cause considerable department’s headquarters. turmoil. He is currently wooing Douglas and personalities.

“It’s never easy to sit down “Some people have said, “You’d meet Shaun and he would Apple, the general manager of the New with your managers and say, sort of take over the room. He was York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), ‘Look, we’re going to have to ‘Well, he’s buddies with Shaun, change the way we’re doing and they put the plan together, very charming. Shaun always felt to become his top deputy, according to to me like he was trying to make a people familiar with the conversations. business.’” and he’s just going to sort of personal connection to everyone he NYCHA is facing crippling budget deficits Like many who were care-take,’” said new Housing was talking to,” said one advocate and a tanking economy, and losing one of approached by the who has dealt with both of them. the authority’s key players can only make Bloomberg administration Commissioner Rafael Cestero.

“With Shaun it was always like, sort things worse. about replacing Donovan, “I am not here to care-take.”

But Cestero is busy executing a bigger of, bigger than the room.” who left in January to Donovan was a wonk with a flair for and broader vision. He knows there is become President Obama’s Secretary of this was the very mission he had signed the political, a charismatic grand-scale unease within and without HPD’s ranks, Housing and Urban Development, Cestero up for when agreeing to take the job.

“Some people have said, ‘Well, he’s urban planner who worked as a policy and he knows he faces unprecedented was initially unsure if he wanted the job.

Joining the administration meant buddies with Shaun, and they put the researcher between stints in Washington challenges. Which is why he is less interested in charming the many audienceuprooting his wife and children from New plan together, and he’s just going to sort and New York.

Cestero, on the other hand, has spent seekers who come his way than he is in Jersey, leaving a senior position at one of of care-take,’” he said. “I am not here to the preeminent housing organizations care-take. Secretary Donovan is a friend almost his entire career in nonprofits, reshaping one of the city’s most historic in the country and trying to step into and was an amazing HPD commissioner. and specifically at Enterprise. He has and influential agencies.

“Budget’s tough, the economy’s tough, the shoes of an outgoing housing But there are things that we need to do opened offices and spearheaded projects commissioner whom housing experts differently, despite all of that. And he in the gritty corridors of Baltimore and developers are having a difficult time, Rochester. He has a definitively regular- banks are having a difficult time. But invariably describe as “charming” and knows that. And I know that.”

Cestero is already preparing major guy attitude that helps him connect both we’re not taking a step backward,” he said. “brilliant.”

And, on top of all that, Cestero—who new initiatives for a summer rollout. to the advocates and developers who “We’re going to identify the opportunities served under Donovan for three years— He will unveil a program meant to stem want access to him. People who know that exist within the market. And we’re would be taking the reins of HPD amid the tide of “predatory equity,” in which both men say Cestero is much more going to seize them.” one of the most tumultuous periods in the developers who have overleveraged straightforward than Donovan, who sgentile@cityhallnews.com

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JUNE 22, 2009

CITY HALL

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Considering Qu The speaker prepares to manage the returning Council while keeping her citywide ambitions alive

ackson Heights, the annual Gay Pride Parade. Grand Marshall Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/ Queens) marches in front, trailed by a rainbow-colored sign bearing his name. A little ways behind walks Comptroller Bill Thompson (D), dressed in khaki pants and a polo shirt, his arms held aloft in a perma-wave while volunteers pass out campaign literature.

Wedged between the two come dozens of Council members and their aides and Facebook friends, dancing to disco songs.

And at the head of the rolling party is Council Speaker Christine Quinn (DManhattan), the unmistakable belle of this ball. Every few feet an impromptu

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announcer runs through the names of all the Council members marching, every few feet calling out, “And the first openly gay speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn! Please call your Senator and tell them you want marriage equality now!”

All along 37th Avenue, parade-goers, gay and straight, but mostly gay, wave and scream out Quinn’s name as she passes. Fathers hoist their daughters on their shoulders to get a better look at her. Couples call her over to mug for photographs. A man dressed in a sequin Statue of Liberty outfit with a tablet that reads “Stonewall” bows at her feet.

“There is Christine Quinn,” calls out the official parade emcee, a heavily made-

up drag queen. “And doesn’t she look fabulous? Love the shoes. Fashionable but sensible.”

Quinn could have been marching at the head of this parade under a set of very different circumstances. What if, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) first mentioned to her that he wanted to overturn the city’s term-limit law, she had said no?

Sure, the mayor would have probably stewed for a bit. But he might have eventually come around in support of his otherwise erstwhile ally, showering her with resources, assuring people that she was the best-qualified person to follow up on his legacy.

She would have been the only woman

By David Freedlander

in the race, the only one who resided in the borough that for the last 50 years has sent every mayor but one to Gracie Mansion. Sure, she would be dogged by questions over the slush fund scandal, but by the time the race got in gear, that would have been as distant as Allan Jennings was when Gifford Miller ran for mayor in 2005. Plus, Quinn would be running for mayor while at the center of the major civil rights struggle of the day, with all the free, fawning media that would follow.

But she said yes.

And so, at the end of the parade, Quinn is off in her black S.U.V. back to Chelsea to kick-off her surprisingly feisty fourth campaign for her Council seat.

There, at a small campaign office on

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www.cityhallnews.com too, regaling supporters of his daughter with his minute historical knowledge of New York’s Catholic parishes.

Everybody wants a word with him.

“Well, you never get what you want,” he says with a shrug to one woman who engages him in small talk. “I thought I’d be urinating in Gracie Mansion by now.”

“Wait four years,” she reassures him.

In the years ahead, Council Speaker Christine Quinn will be pulled in many different directions— sometimes all at once.

the seventh floor of a former recording studio off Sixth Avenue, volunteers munch on vegetable sticks and sip soda out of plastic cups while signing up for petitioning slots on butcher paper taped to the wall.

There is no mention by Quinn or by any of her supporters that she is the speaker.

“Christine Quinn,” the campaign literature declares with noticeable understatement, “Our Councilmember” delivering “results for our neighborhood.” “The Village” is listed four times. Only the NARAL endorsement mentions her title.

A bald, beefy member of Quinn’s security detail, one of the several who have been following her around nonstop since she pulled off her somewhat dark-horse win for speaker three-and-ahalf years ago, stands against the wall, seemingly unsure of what to do with himself.

Quinn’s 82-year-old father Larry is there

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ILLUSTRATION BY FRANK HARRIS/WWW.FRANKHARRIS.COM

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his is Christine Quinn’s life right now.

All the expected benefits, collected from four years of building a relationship of unprecedented closeness with the mayor meant to position her as his natural successor, sit frozen, just like the $3 million sitting in her suspended account at the Campaign Finance Board. And now that she is likely to win re-election to the Council and as speaker, her members are staying close, wary of trifling with the woman who most expect will remain in power even as they grow restless: they are desperate to see her start cashing in her almost endless supply of chits from the administration, beginning to tear their hair out that she will not.

All the while, the citywide campaign she was to be running stays with her, like an itchy phantom limb. There she is at Washington Square Park for the turning on of the fountain after a nearly five-year fight that brought an only-in-the West Village level of acrimony to the park renovation. (“I’m going to be brief because it’s not good to stand in the way of the fountain,” she says during her opening remarks. “After all of the meetings, all of the arguing, all of the throwing of chairs—I’m kidding, but I’m not really kidding—but it was all worth it.”) There she is at the Stonewall Democratic Club reception at Tavern on the Green, working the room with a flurry of kisses and talking about the gay marriage lobbying effort up in Albany. (“All right,” one gay official says, going to greet the speaker. “I’m off to meet my queen.”) And there she is outside at Brooklyn Bridge Park in a steady drizzle to receive a ceremonial watering can from the park’s boosters. (“Thank you all for honoring your speaker, my speaker, the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn!” says a typically boisterous Domenic Recchia (D-Brooklyn) during his introduction.)

The biggest item on the Quinn ’09 tour is her lobbying on behalf of marriage equality. Twice she has met with recalcitrant senators in Albany, in addition to a district visit in Long Island. The effort takes Quinn back to her roots as an AIDS activist and tenants rights advocate, the work she did for years before getting into politics.

“It’s grassroots, it’s direct conversation, it’s trying to make something a priority for someone that is not necessarily a priority for them,” Quinn said. “The experience of having a conversation with someone that isn’t their most burning issue is something

I’m fairly used to.”

Even with the State Senate chaos, she remains resolutely upbeat about the chances of passage, determined that the law pass soon.

“It’s hard to think about what the pride parade in Manhattan will be like if it doesn’t happen. It’s hard to think about how disappointing it will be,” she said.

The senators she has met with remain mostly on the fence (or were, precoup), but say that Quinn is a persuasive advocate on the matter, that she listens more than she talks, that she tells about her own experiences, that she mostly eschews the political questions.

Fellow advocates say that Quinn’s quiet

JUNE 22, 2009

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for the Council and for speaker.”

City residents and even ardent supporters in her district remain less comfortable.

“I like most of what’s she done,” said one woman at her campaign kick-off.

“The term-limit thing I don’t think I can forgive.”

Most expect her to win another term without much difficulty, and are hoping for a strong showing to ward off any questions of Quinn’s popularity, even as her two opponents, Maria PassannanteDerr and civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland, try to make the term-limit vote the central issue in the race.

“My opponent stood on the floor of

“Quite frankly, the administration should not put the Council in this position, where it has to demand information that should be provided, particularly given the collegial nature of our relationship the past three-and-a-half years,” Quinn said. “I think it is out of character and I don’t understand it.” work, far removed from the pep-rallies and the press conferences, deserves enormous credit.

“When the history of this is written,” said Assembly Member Micah Kellner (DManhattan), “her activism up in Albany is going to loom large.”

The marriage equality campaign has raised Quinn’s profile—John King recently featured her in a piece on CNN— and given her a campaign to run instead of the mayoral one.

“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe if I was running for mayor now I wouldn’t have time to go up to Albany and make my voice heard. Who knows?”

No campaign, though, even one as major as this one, compares to running for mayor.

And the transition has hardly been easy.

According to those who know, Quinn was disappointed after Bloomberg pushed for a term-limit extension. She was eager to start the race to succeed him, to ramp up her own nascent campaign infrastructure. Eight months later, she said she remained just as sure about her decision to overturn the city’s law, even though that meant delaying—some would say dooming—her own mayoral ambitions.

“I’m very comfortable with the decision I made,” she says. “I’m a private person, and in private I have regrets—I get into the truck and I think to myself, ‘Did I wear the right shoes?’—but I have no regrets about my decision. I think it was the right thing for the city and I feel unbelievably lucky to run for re-election

the City Council and said, ‘Listen, I know that 79 percent of voters are saying don’t do this, but I’m going to do it anyway,’” Kurland said while laying out her campaign rationale. “The real question is not why am I running. The real question is—why is she running.”

Quinn was always against term limits, and won the speaker’s job in 2005 partially by promising members she would overturn them—an insistence she held to until seeing a 2006 poll she commissioned that showed New Yorkers were overwhelmingly opposed to the idea.

As much heat as she takes for her flipflop, though, she stands by what she did, even as others have attempted to put their distance from the extension or bend their way through other rationales. The mayor and his aides, meanwhile invariably try to shrug off the onus for why he gets to run again by framing the issue somewhere along the lines of, “When the Council voted to overturn term limits … ” When this lexical formulation is pointed out to her, Quinn grimaces.

“I think the mayor and the Council overturned term limits. I think government extended term limits,” she said. “I am not going to shy away from the action the Council took.” uinn was running nearly an hour late for the pre-stated press conference and the handful of reporters and Council members in the Red Room was starting to get antsy.

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In her stead, Council Member James Oddo (R-Staten Island,) walked up and commandeered the microphone.

“Ladies and gentleman, I’d like to announce that I’m taking over. The second coup of the week,” he said, referring to the events in Albany two days before. “All reporters have to evacuate.”

Taking a cue from the Senate Democrats, who cut the video feed and the electricity after the Senate Republicans took over, Jamie McShane, Quinn’s communications director yelled to Andrew Doba, her press aide, “Doba, hit the lights!”

The press peppered the new fauxleader with questions.

“Do you live in the district?”

“Are you going to ban all foreign press?” one asked, in reference to Oddo’s famous explosion at a Norwegian ambush comedian, available for posterity on YouTube.

Later, Oddo, who has known Quinn for nearly 20 years since both served as Council aides, explained why he would never want her job.

“If there was ever a coup, I’d give the job back in five minutes. Being mayor might be easier than being head of the City Council. If one of the 50 is caught by a Fox News camera throwing a chunk of metal at someone, that ends up on your doorstep. You’re a legislator and a leader and a kindergarten cop and a psychiatrist,” he said. “You have to do what’s right by the city and to satisfy the parochial needs of the members. You have to juggle all of that and keep the body moving in a direction that’s built up through consensus. For all the criticism she takes, there is no way all the people who sit in the back and throw bombs at her could do that job.”

The New York City Charter heavily favors the mayor in the crafting of municipal policy. The only way the Council can counterbalance the executive’s influence, say many with knowledge of the inner-workings of city government, is to speak as a unified whole. Part of Quinn’s political genius is her ability to balance both, to collaborate with the mayor while keeping her members behind her.

“She seems to always be walking, like, 20 tight ropes at one time,” said one person who works closely with the Council. “As a politician, I think she is brilliant in a strategic way. Bloomberg is smart, but I don’t think even he has the political mind that she does. She always seems to be thinking five steps ahead.”

How she has done that is a matter of some dispute between Quinn and many of her members. Bloomberg officials say privately that the perception that the speaker does the mayor’s bidding at the City Council is overstated, though they are happy to have her involved, as they were amid a budget process this year that could have been a much bloodier battle. Behind closed doors, they say, she is a far more aggressive negotiator than many realize, and has been known to dress down Bloomberg officials who act

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without taking the Council into account.

“There is a pragmatism that she doesn’t get enough credit for,” said one.

“She could have beaten the hell out of the mayor, but what good would that have done? He just would have done what he wanted without the Council. This way the Council is able to get a lot of credit for a lot of pretty progressive legislation.”

Quinn agrees, saying that her reputation as Deputy Mayor for Legislative Affairs is more of a product of many, especially in the media, missing the complexity of the legislative process.

“Reporters like to boil things down to black and white—they hate each other, they love each other, they spit on each other,” she said. “Things are just more complicated than that.”

For example, she points to her work alongside Council Member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn,) a longtime Quinn antagonist, to preserve affordable housing at Starrett City.

She bristles at the suggestion that her doing so is calculated.

“Get out, cut it out with that ‘I’ll need him again,’” she said, interrupting the line of thought. “I worked with Charles Barron to save Starrett City because thousands of people live in those buildings at affordable rates … the important thing there wasn’t the Sonny Carson street naming or whether we like each other or

dislike each other.”

With no real speaker challenger on the horizon, Quinn’s leadership position is almost certainly secure. All the more reason that even her closest allies on the Council sometimes wish she would kick the mayor in the shins more, make the other side of City Hall pay deference.

They want the Council to take the lead on issues, force override votes of the mayor’s vetoes. Instead, the council has often been forced to take votes that expose many members to criticism. These votes are the kind that, say some, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) would never allow to come to the floor.

“When you think about other legislative leaders, I think our Council is far more democratic than people realize,” said Council Member Lew Fidler (DBrooklyn.) “Let’s face it, she is a lot closer to Mike Bloomberg than I am, but I haven’t felt any repercussions for that. I certainly don’t think any of her predecessors would have tolerated the kind of democracy that we have.”

But others say that Fidler’s formulation is only true for some—that Quinn rewards allies with prized committee chairmanships and a greater ability to move legislation, and point to her consolidation of the speaker’s office— which keeps a tighter rein over staffing decisions and what kinds of issues can get aired at committee hearings.

CITY HALL A perfect example of what some believe can happen, charged Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum (D), was the 40-percent slice taken out of her office’s budget, which she claims is retribution for questioning the integrity of members who voted in favor of the term-limits extension. Gotbaum’s anger sent tongues around City Hall wagging, but, as is typical, few could discern Quinn’s real motivation. Was she really so vindictive to cut the funding of an antagonist? Council members have said for years that their discretionary funding was dependent on playing well with the speaker, but Quinn has often been savvier than this.

Was it because, as Quinn said, there was no money left and she was simply deferring her to members who wanted the money restored to city agencies and the borough presidents’ offices? Another theory was that Quinn was merely being nimble, and dancing the budget dance like only she could—keeping her members happy while keeping an eye on her own future. The next public advocate is an all-but-certain mayoral candidate in 2013, and Quinn could be seen as trying to preemptively undercut the next occupant’s effectiveness.

“There is a lot of fear about people running for this office,” Gotbaum said.

“I understand the politics. A lot of the people running for this office will be running for mayor … they don’t want to give them any advantage.”

Meanwhile, Council Members James Vacca (D-Bronx) and Darlene Mealy (D-Brooklyn), both of them term-limit extension flip voters, conspicuously got new committee chairs in February.

Then there is the legislation that she lets onto the floor. Quinn meets biweekly with her Democratic conference to hash out legislation. But many members say they usually get the feeling that the decisions have already been made by Quinn and the mayor’s office.

“The mayor isn’t vetoing a whole lot of Council bills,” one member pointed out with remorse. “Most things are negotiated in advance.”

This perception leads members to question even their hard-fought victories.

Take the recent fight over firehouses. In 2003, the administration proposed closing firehouses as well, and despite protests by individual members, many Council members say that their failure to mount a unified opposition allowed the mayor to win that round. This year, Bloomberg proposed closing 12 in his budget but would not reveal in which districts, much to the chagrin of Council members who feared they would be voting on a budget not knowing if it would be a vote for closures in their neighborhoods. The Uniformed Firefighters’ Association lobbied members heavily to protest. Even Quinn’s ally Oddo said that the issue would be, “a real good test of, does she get members concerns, is she willing to stand up to the administration.”

In an interview before the budget agreement, Quinn sounded exasperated

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Quinn And Stringer Approach Possible 2013 Collision Course Manhattan, especially on its famously liberal West Side, is the highest turnout area of the city and a treasure of votes for Democrats in citywide primaries.

But for Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, both of who are clearly aiming for Gracie Mansion in 2013, there may not be enough to go around.

That is one of the key questions on the minds of people already looking past this fall’s election and wondering what will happen when the two progressive Democrats from the same general West Side Manhattan base find themselves with their eyes on the same prize.

In a crowded primary, most figure, if both run, both will lose, and, for the first time in nearly half a century, Manhattan will not be represented in Gracie Mansion.

“Having two candidates from Manhattan means somebody has to get out,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf.

One way to avoid a confrontation would be for Quinn to run for Manhattan at Bloomberg’s stubborn refusal to illuminate her, even after all the letters Council members sent and all the press conferences they held.

“We have demanded the list,” she said.

“But, quite frankly, the administration should not put the Council in this position, where it has to demand information that should be provided, particularly given the collegial nature of our relationship the past three-and-a-half years. I think it is out of character and I don’t understand it.”

The mayor did ultimately restore the funding, but even then some wondered if the threat of closure was a mere trial balloon, if the mayor let Quinn take a strong stand on this issue so that she would be forced to bend elsewhere.

“Christine Quinn involves the members, but it’s often after a decision

borough president and Stringer to make a bid for the top job. In 2008, when Quinn was dogged by the slush fund scandal but before term limits were overturned, some speculated that just that would happen.

In 2005, Speaker Gifford Miller nearly ran for borough president before trying, disastrously, to run for mayor.

Quinn and Stringer are certainly not strangers. Earlier this month, Stringer endorsed Quinn for re-election to her Council seat. Prior to that, Quinn attended a fundraiser for Stringer, notable if only because it happened when the speculation that Stringer would mount a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was at full tilt.

And the two go back even further: In 1994, the West Side was home to a brutal, knock-down drag-out Congressional primary between newly elected incumbent Jerrold Nadler and fresh-faced Council Member Tom Duane, then employing Quinn as his chief of staff. Nadler had won the nomination two years early in a county lefties who want their old fist-raising advocate back, by good government reformers who want her to be more like them—all while wading through a farreaching budget scandal and keeping one eye on higher office. But the years ahead may prove to be a much bigger test of her political ability than she has yet faced.

On the one hand, Quinn should emerge stronger. Several of the more independent and outspoken members of the city council, including Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn), Eric Gioia (D-Queens), John Liu (D-Queens) and Tony Avella (DQueens), will be leaving to run for higher office. Hiram Monserrate, as just about everyone in the state knows by now, has already left for Albany.

But new problems may come as Council members get antsy, finally

committee internal battle engineered mainly by his closest aide, a young up-andcomer named Scott Stringer.

Aides to the two say that they are good friends and, more importantly, are aware that they share the same geographic base and so would be unlikely to actually go through with a primary.

With just one of them in the race, though, there could be powerful support from Manhattan, which has roughly a quarter of the vote in a citywide primary, according to electoral mathematics guru Jerry Skurnik.

But political ambition does have a way of fraying bonds and clouding judgment.

“Hey, you would think that Melinda Katz and David Weprin [who are both from Queens] would have worked things out in the comptroller’s race, or that Keith Wright and Bill Perkins would have worked it out before the [2005] Manhattan borough president’s race,” Skurnik said. “Sometimes candidates play chicken.”

—DF the kind of sophisticated campaign that Bloomberg did for initiatives like PlaNYC 2030.

“The leaders of the Council too often accept reality as it’s given to them,” said one exasperated Council member. “Every political process is based upon public perception, and the Council by and large does not try to change public opinion or frame the debate. The status quo is too strong there.”

If Quinn does not lead the way towards a more pro-active agenda, some say, somebody else could take over as the leader of the body, even unofficially.

There are other possible tripwires. The new Democratic leader in the State Senate, John Sampson, is an ally of Kings County Democratic Party chair Vito Lopez, who is quickly increasing his political clout

Several of the more independent and outspoken members of the Council, including Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn), Eric Gioia (D-Queens), John Liu (D-Queens) and Tony Avella (D-Queens), will be leaving to run for higher office. But new problems may come as returning Council members get antsy. has been made,” says one high-ranking former Council staffer. “They discuss it, but it’s more of, like, ‘This is where we are going and everybody get on board.’

It’s the illusion of inclusion.” o far, Quinn has been able to walk a straight line despite being pushed and pulled in every direction: by a mayor who wants her cooperation, by 50 other Council members who have their own parochial needs, by vocal Chelsea

S

beginning to demand that the speaker use her leverage with the mayor to benefit the body in a major way beyond getting them more time in office. Looking ahead, many members say they want the Council to stop merely reacting to the mayor but, now that many of them will have had the benefit of eight years behind them, begin to lay out their own broad, ambitious agenda.

The key to overcoming the mayor’s charter power advantages is to mount

and willingness to use it. In the Council, Brooklynites are already stewing, locked out of the speaker’s chair since the days of Tom Cuite, kept from top committee chairs and snubbed by Quinn’s pushing a Queens pick for the city clerk. Lopez, some political insiders speculate, could make a power play for the Council.

In the meantime, Quinn must navigate another minefield. Her endorsement carries considerable weight, especially among LGBT voters. Because so many

JUNE 22, 2009

15

of her Council colleagues are involved, Quinn has pledged to stay out of all Democratic primaries. But as summer stretches on and tensions increase on the campaign trail, Quinn may find that the candidates—and the voters—demand that she show her cards. Already, many LGBT voters are hoping that Quinn quietly signals support for the handful of gay candidates running for Council seats—even Danny Dromm, who is running against incumbent Helen Sears (D-Queens). Both marched alongside her at the Jackson Heights parade.

The primaries are not her biggest problem, though.

Most doubt she will jeopardize her strong ties to Bloomberg by endorsing Comptroller Bill Thompson (D). But for one of the city’s top Democrats not to go with her party’s nominee could create problems of its own down the line for a woman who is expected to make a mayoral run in 2013, when an end-ofthird-term Bloomberg might be less popular and she would need institutional Democratic support.

She refuses to discuss the speculation.

“I have said publicly that I am not going to do anything until the primary season is over,” she said. “And I don’t have much more to say about it now. I haven’t given it a lot more—I decided I wasn’t going to do anything until the primary season is over, and that is where I am going to leave it at the moment.”

The bigger stumbling block, though, might be within the Council. Not a lot of people will likely be following the mayor’s race this year, and even fewer will be paying attention to who endorses whom.

Perhaps, Quinn supporters seem to think, Quinn can lay low without attracting too much attention for her muted (if that) endorsement, whichever way it goes. But however few New Yorkers are paying attention, her members certainly will be.

Members are already wondering what Quinn backing the mayor would mean for them over the next four years. How will the Council ever assert itself as a body, they wonder, if the speaker explicitly or implicitly says she supports the direction Bloomberg is taking the city? And if she endorses Thompson, and Bloomberg wins regardless, what will going against a man known to hold political grudges mean for them? And what if Thompson pulls off a come-from-behind win without her endorsement? Where would that leave the Council?

Similarly, the laws of physics alone seem to suggest that Bloomberg’s approval ratings are bound to come back to earth sooner or later in the second term. Will Quinn find herself yoked to an unpopular mayor, fighting off a fractious Council? Could the lights actually go out in the Red Room, for real?

Already, some in the building are beginning to hear the tightropes tighten. dfreedlander@cityhallnews.com

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JUNE 22, 2009

the

Art

of Politics

REVIEW

New Doc Chronicles 2008 Silver Primary Saga

BY JOE WALKER “I need 6,000 votes to change the way 19 million New Yorkers are governed.”

This was Paul Newell’s favorite line in 2008 when he dared enter the race to give Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) his first primary in 20 years.

Naïve? Quixotic? Sure. Insincere? No. In Justin Sullivan’s new documentary, Excuse Me, Mr. Speaker …, the awkward first-time candidate comes across as believing every word of his talking points. Having a sense of politics, though, is something else entirely.

To Sullivan’s credit, most viewers will know how the movie ends before it starts. Nonetheless, the film manages to stay engrossing from the beginning until all the votes are counted and the credits roll.

Sullivan gave up print journalism for the life of an independent filmmaker, and says that he did not make the film as part of a crusade against Silver. His aim was to tell a good story.

“I knew that Paul’s campaign would be messy and funny and a little bit confused,” he said, discussing the film. He also knew that he would have full access to the insurgent candidate, who has been a friend since junior high school.

While Newell is a sympathetic figure in the film, viewers are invited to laugh at the absurdity of his quest. We get to see Newell curse and fight with his campaign manager, as well as all of the casual indignities that an upstart candidate suffers on the campaign trail. A woman on the Lower East Side refuses to shake his hand, while Assembly Member Herman D. Farrell, Jr. (D-Manhattan) requests hand sanitizer after granting Newell the honor.

But Newell manages to radiate a certain kind of

Paul Newell may have lost his primary race, but his effort has been immortalized on the silver screen.

charm, with the film filled with surrealistically humorous moments, like when Newell responds to a public housing resident who assumes that he is actually a cop with an uncharacteristic “Wazzup, wazzup.”

Anyone who has ever decried the three-men-in-aroom system of governance will take heart when an endorsement from the New York Times re-energizes Newell’s campaign. Viewers will be forgiven, also, if they suspend their disbelief momentarily and, along with Newell and his staff, entertain the notion that the lovable loser might actually win.

Sullivan succeeds in telling a good story, but he also presents an inside look at what it is like to wage a political battle with one of Albany’s most powerful men.

“It provides the viewer,” he said, “a uniquely intimate look at a campaign from A to Z.” Excuse Me, Mr. Speaker … debuted at Tribeca Cinemas during VisionFest on June 19, the first stop for Sullivan this summer on the festival circuit. jwalker@cityhallnews.com

My Pick Assembly Member William Scarborough My favorite music genre is jazz. Because, first off, the music is broad-based and traditional. It has a soothing quality to it. The art form is creative and the people that have created jazz, time immemorial, have been innovators and pioneers in music. It’s a native American art form. And I just enjoy the creativity of it.

You can go anywhere from John Coltrane, Miles Davis, some of the Thelonious Monk music—these are people who are real pioneers in the field. You can come up now to people

like Paul Hardcastle, just a long line of musicians.

I have jazz playing in the background now. It’s the soothing part of my day.

As you grow older, you associate certain music with certain experiences in your life. So in that sense, there are certain pieces of music that I associate with certain times in my life. For example, and if my wife sees this I might be getting in trouble, but John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things,” which is one of my favorite pieces of jazz, reminds me of, you know, an early relationship I had when I was in college.

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Summer Reading Guide The Death of “Why?”: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy Andrea Batista Schlesinger Berrett-Koehler $16.95 paperback 264 pages Andrea Batista Schlesinger’s The Death of Why is a book mostly of questions. In fact, as she confesses in the introduction, providing answers “would be contrary to the values that have driven my investigation.”

Hers is a descriptive project: Examining our increasingly answer-oriented society and understanding the consequences of our addiction to quick and easy solutions.

Schlesinger, on leave as the executive director of the Drum Major Institute, mourns the decay of inquiry, or what she describes as “a process of discovery, asking, re-asking, synthesizing and evaluating until we can get close to something that approximates truth.” She offers as an example the rise of financial literacy education and the scarcity of civics classes, once common features of an elementary education.

Our public schools, she said in an interview, “have become increasingly answer-oriented, so it’s about filling in the right bubble.”

That criticism, ironically, has been leveled at the man who now employs her: Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.), for whose campaign Schlesinger works as a policy adviser. In what could very well be taken as a reference to Bloomberg’s education agenda, and his close ties to the financial industry, Schlesinger says our public schools “have been increasingly focused on preparing consumers rather than citizens.”

Arguing with the premise that information technology has made plug-in answers both more accessible and, in turn, more attractive, would be difficult. But that evolution has come with an upside as well: The dissemination and consumption of information have become more democratic. The question of how to resolve that democratization, clearly a social good, with Schlesinger’s concern for the value of inquiry is a difficult one, and

would benefit from some investigation. Unfortunately, Schlesinger avoids providing exactly what many readers will likely seek: answers.

Which is sort of the point.

“My hope for the book is that people will just start thinking about the value of inquiry in a new way, and then that will result in people taking action,” Schlesinger said. “I don’t offer the how-to.”

—SG

The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York’s Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship Francis S. Barry Rutgers University Press Berrett-Koehler $26.95 cloth 306 pages Political observers who shook their heads in skepticism at the recent Tom Golisano-brokered “coalition of reform” in Albany have a provocative summer read to look forward to in Francis S. Barry’s The Scandal of Reform.

While he criticizes the corrupt party hacks who have plagued New York politics, Barry’s real targets are their ostensible foils: reform groups that, according to him, have always been plagued by self-righteousness and more interested in power than in true democracy.

Barry contends that New York’s good-government groups have become policy advocates more concerned

In City Funding Drought, Summer Music Festivals Struggle More people and less money equals a headache for concert planners

BY CORINNE RAMEY

F

or fans of New York’s many free summer music festivals, the recession can be a buzz kill. This year, the economic downturn has meant less funding and larger audiences, throwing yet another challenge into the mix for planners, sponsors and city officials. While simultaneously bracing for larger audiences and shrinking budgets, city arts organizations are finding new methods of funding and figuring out how to accommodate what they anticipate will be larger audiences than ever before.

Though emptier wallets will not necessarily translate into big crowds for free shows, said Robert Pirani, executive director of the Governor’s Island Alliance.

“The New York crowd is kind of a discerning crowd,” he said. “Just because something is free doesn’t mean they’re going to come out.”

The recession has taken its toll on concert organizers, making getting sponsorships and funding harder than ever. The Governor’s Island Alliance, which partnered with Trinity Church on Wall Street to put on five concerts last year, decided to schedule just one larger concert with folk artist Judy Collins this year due to budget constraints, Pirani said. The New York Philharmonic, which gave eight free concerts in the parks last year, is only giving four outdoor and two indoor concerts this summer. There will not be any in Long Island and New Jersey.

The City Parks Foundation, which is putting on the same number of events as last year, was able to pay for this summer’s events by dipping into savings amassed over the past 20 years. The organization spends about $4 million a year on arts programming, said David Rivel, executive director of the City Parks Foundation. About 90 percent of that comes

JUNE 22, 2009

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with how the sausage tastes than how it is made.

“Let’s be for real. When you’re on the outside, you’re a reformer. When you’re on the inside, you’re a regular,” Barry said in an interview, quoting former Brooklyn Democratic party boss and convicted felon Clarence Norman.

The book takes us from Tammany Hall’s origins as a good-government group that fought to extend suffrage rights, through the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt, to present-day New York City where registered Independents almost double Republicans but are, as Barry said, “completely shut out of the process” because of the party primary system.

Barry, a life-long Democrat and veteran of the reform movement, has worked as a speechwriter and policy adviser to the city’s most famous party bolter, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, since 2002.

The book’s press materials make the disclaimer that the book’s opinions should not be interpreted as those of the mayor, but the blurb from Bloomberg on the book’s jacket makes clear that he and Barry are of like minds.

The peak of Barry’s disillusionment with the reform movement came in 2003, when the city’s good-government groups refused to support a referendum on nonpartisan elections, a measure that Bloomberg strenuously supported. This was a prime opportunity, Barry argues, to level the electoral playing field for the politically unconnected and make the November elections meaningful contests rather than coronations for the winners of the Democratic primary. Both the Democratic establishment and reformers balked and it was voted down by a margin of more than 2-1.

Barry’s journey has taken a similar arc to that of the reform movement that he derides. A former outsider, now a member of the establishment, he’s still trying to make things right as he sees it.

“The city’s democratic process is broken and we’ve got to start figuring out ways to fix it,” he said.

—JW

from private sources and 10 percent comes from government sources.

The recession has also heightened anticipation for larger crowds. Hudson River Park’s “Take Me to the River” series is expecting an increase in attendance of about 15 to 20 percent, said David Katz, the park’s vice president for marketing and events. Rivel also said he is expecting a 15- to 20-percent jump in attendance.

Pirani, of Governor’s Island, suggested less money could mean less traveling, and therefore more demand for concerts.

“People may not be taking that long vacation, and they’re going to be hanging around the city,” he said.

“They’re looking for something neat to do on the weekend—not just an hour in the park, but an experience.”

And concert fans are glad that the show will go on.

“With Live Nation and Ticketmaster joining together, soon we’ll need a subprime mortgage just to get a concert ticket,” said Randy Shannon, who blogs at FreeConcertsNYC.com. “With the economy the way it is, we need all the free concerts we can get.”

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JUNE 22, 2009

On Father’s Day, Thompsons Sr. And Jr. Reflect And Debate

THE

OF

The weird and woeful mayors through hizz-tory

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Demolition Man

BY EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE lot of former state senators have been watching in agony as the aftermath of the Albany coup continues to unfold. But Bill Thompson, Sr.’s gripe is less about how the situation has torn apart his old chamber than with a principle he sees at stake: just like with the term-limits extension, this is another case of a billionaire subverting the political process in an attempt to overturn the people’s will.

Not coincidentally, this is exactly the line his son, Comptroller Bill Thompson, Jr. (D), used in a rally on the City Hall steps to protest the defections in the Capitol. So as he listened to his father make the argument again while taking a break from fundraising calls in advance of Father’s Day, a broad smile opened on his face.

“Always on message,” Jr. said proudly.

Thompson Sr. was ready to say more, but his son stopped him. He does, after all, have to be careful of every word as he wages his uphill battle against Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.). They do usually agree on politics, especially, Jr. says, after years of pulling his father away from slightly more conservative views. But while Jr. deeply respects his father’s political advice, as well as his ability to turn a phrase, sometimes, Jr. admitted, the attacks can go a little further than he might be ready to do himself.

“The truth is, I’d like to say it’s on message, but that’s his

A

opinion,” Jr. said. “Put it this way: if it’s his opinion that’s not on message, it’s kind of like, ‘Oooo,’ as it’s coming out.”

Having a father who spent his own life in politics—in addition to his time in Albany, Thompson Sr. was a member of the City Council and a longtime state appellate judge—has had its advantages. Not only did being his father’s son help open a few political doors to entry-level jobs, but Jr. has always counted his father as one of his key mentors and advisors.

These days, with just over four-and-a-half months to go before the biggest election of his life, Jr. has less time to spend with his father than he would like, but they still talk regularly, still discussing many of the ins and outs of the campaign and various strategies.

Aside from always pushing his son to be out on the street more, Thompson Sr. generally agrees with the decisions Jr. has been making.

“So far, yes,” he said.

But his biggest way of influencing his son politically may well have been through exposing Jr. at a very young age to the process, both through campaigning on the street and getting to meet some of the top politicians of the day. Ed Muskie slept over at their house. Robert F. Kennedy was a friend.

This was great, Jr. reflected, even despite incidents like the afternoon when his father interrupted a summer vacation in Cape Cod to drive over to the Kennedy Compound for a meeting and left him behind in the car.

“We rolled up to the compound, and he’s going in for a quick meeting, and says, ‘I’ll be back,’” Jr. said, “and I was like, ‘I don’t get to go in?’”

In the years since, Thompson Sr. has gently faded into the background as his son’s own political career took flight.

Though he still occasionally speaks on his son’s behalf as a surrogate, especially with the hectic mayoral campaign schedule and his current job as comptroller overcrowding his schedule, Sr. said that he has been glad to let the spotlight shift.

“Years ago, I used to walk down the street, people would say, ‘Judge Thompson, that’s your son, Billy.’ Now people look at me and say, ‘That’s the comptroller’s father,’” Sr. said.

“That’s a nice feeling, believe it or not.”

But there is only one place where he expects to be the center of attention again, at least momentarily. Somewhat famously on Inauguration Day 2001, he cracked up the crowd after swearing in his son, joking, “So Billy, if you do your usual good job, if you listen to your father and if god spares my life, eight years from now, I want to be back up here.”

Even with the term-limits campaign and his son now needing to unseat Bloomberg, the former judge said his robe is in the closet, ready as ever for action again on Jan. 1.

“Nothing’s changed.

I’m available,” Sr. said. “That’s what we’re going to do.” eidovere@cityhallnews.com

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During Cornelius Lawrence’s four years as mayor, the city was ravaged by cholera, nearly burned to the ground and saw a total collapse of its financial system. In light of this, who can blame the guy for seeking the comfort of prostitutes?

For pure violence and chaos, the election of 1833 cannot be beat. That year, Lawrence won office as New York’s first popularly elected mayor. Essentially a three-day drunken brawl between the Whig party and Tammany Hall, the end of CORNELIUS VAN WYCK the race had all the ingredients of a fun election: guns, street fights LAWRENCE and looting.

1834-1837 Lawrence was Tammany’s candidate, and he faced in the Whigs a new party with a major beef toward the Democratic establishment. On the first day of voting, an angry Whig mob marched into the Irish Sixth Ward, a Tammany stronghold. The Irish, nonplussed with this move, threw down with the invaders in a huge brawl. The Whigs were driven out, but they returned the next day and out came the guns. Dozens were injured in the ensuing melee.

By the third day, the gun stores on Broadway were being looted and the whole thing looked more like a Warren Zevon song than a mayoral election. The final showdown came when some 20,000 Whig and Tammany partisans faced off with way too much firepower for anyone’s good. However, a shootout was avoided when 1,200 infantrymen arrived and calmed the situation.

When the dust settled, Lawrence had won by 180 votes out of 35,000 cast. Thus elected, his prize was a City Council controlled by the opposition and a city infested with cholera, filth and chronic fires. Congratulations.

The mayor did rack up cool points in 1835, however, when he probably saved half the city from burning to the ground.

The Great Fire of that year was an inferno that eventually destroyed nearly 700 buildings; it was so huge the glow could be seen in Philadelphia. In response, the mayor started blowing up buildings to stop the fire from jumping across Wall Street, which probably preserved the non-burning half of town.

In his last year in office, Lawrence presided over the Panic of 1837, a complete collapse of the city’s financial system.

Ironically, the crash was largely the result of unchecked development and Wall Street speculation in the wake of the 1835 fire. D’oh!

After leaving office, Lawrence became a successful banker but was also known for making deposits of a different nature in the city’s prostitution houses. This recreation eventually caught up with him, when the proprietor of a Harlem brothel extorted large sums from the former mayor to keep his patronage out of the public eye.

Nevertheless, Lawrence died a wealthy man in 1861.

—James Caldwell

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As Albany Explodes, New Bronx Assembly Members Enter Their Chamber

BY JULIE SOBEL hen newly elected Assembly members Vanessa Gibson (D-Bronx) and Marcos Crespo (D-Bronx) reflect on their first week on the job—a week that was marked by unprecedented confusion in the upper house—both pause for a second before answering.

“Hectic,” Gibson tactfully described it.

“A rollercoaster,” said Crespo. “I don’t know that you can put [it] into words.”

The Senate gridlock has thrown many of the priorities they hoped to get started on into disarray.

“My main concern is the mayoral control, because we have a deadline,” Gibson said.

Crespo says that mayoral control is front and center on his docket as well.

“I’m most concerned that it’ll simply expire,” he said. “Worst-case scenario is that we go back to the old system.”

Both came up through the traditional ranks of Bronx Democratic politics.

Until she won election this month, Gibson, 30, had served as district office manager for Aurelia Greene, who vacated her seat to become Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.’s deputy. Gibson spent her entire career in Greene’s office, starting as an intern in the Albany office while still an undergraduate at SUNY Albany.

Given her long history with the district she now represents, Gibson said catching up on the relevant issues has been the easy part of her transition. The hard part has been learning to delegate responsibilities she held until recently and getting up to speed on the Assembly’s legislative agenda.

“I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed,” Gibson said.

She said her top priority for now is working on housing issues.

“I have always advocated for mixedincome neighborhoods,” she explained, saying that the key was to find something that would lure middle-income families to previously neglected neighborhoods. “You need services that will attract people.”

She said another priority is increasing technological literacy among young people in her district, and said she would like to open community Internet centers there.

Crespo, meanwhile, is navigating his way through his own transition from staffer to elected official.

“I knew there would be a lot of work,” he said. “If there was any hope of working less than a staff member, that’s not true.”

Crespo said his guide is State Sen.

JUNE 22, 2009

19

Andrew Rasiej & Micah Sifry Present:

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June 29-30 Frederick P. Rose Hall • Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center • 60th & Broadway

Speaker Lineup Includes: Marcos Crespo and Vanessa Gibson, newly elected to fill two vacant Bronx seats, both said they are eager to take on the issues before the end of session.

Ruben Diaz, Sr. (D-Bronx), whom he worked under for the past five years.

“Diaz was a great role model for me,” said Crespo.

Crespo majored in government at John Jay College, but says he did not harbor longtime ambitions of running for office.

“I can’t say until the last day of the election this was anything I envisioned or planned for,” he said.

One big shift, he says, is remembering he speaks for himself now, rather than someone else. “I still think as a staff member.”

His top legislative priorities, besides mayoral control, include housing issues, environmental justice and health care. He also feels strongly about higher education issues.

“If it weren’t for SEEK [Search for Education Elevation and Knowledge] or TAP [Tuition Assistance Program], I wouldn’t have gone to college,” Crespo said. “And god knows I wouldn’t be here today.”

Crespo and Gibson were helped in their election by the Bronx County Democratic Party, which under its new leadership was swift in installing Diaz’s and Greene’s replacements. Both had their fields cleared for them in their June 2 special elections.

Patrick Jenkins, special assistant to Bronx Democratic Chairman Carl Heastie, praised them both for coming up through the ranks and said he had high hopes for where they would go next.

“In terms of members, we’ve gained two new members into the movement,” Jenkins said. “I think they’re both visionary.” jsobel@nycapitolnews.com

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• 10+ years of experience working as a project manager in the field of community development, finance, urban planning, or real estate development.

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JUNE 22, 2009

CITY HALL

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monster scrum, reported feeling faint and dehydrated.

Republican aides later said the food was for a pre-planned “Women of Distinction” event, and just happened to arrive moments after the senators returned to the office.

dsdsds

Not Enough Howard Dean To Go Around

Can I get an extra “C” with that latte? Mayor Mike Bloomberg may be helping small business owners, but true “sucess” stories are spellchecked, first.

Get a doctor, Christine Quinn (DManhattan) has got gephyrophobia.

That’s right, the normally calm Council speaker has an irrational fear of bridges.

Specifically the Brooklyn Bridge.

“There’s that wood,” Quinn shuddered

during a recent Red Room press conference. “It makes me so nervous.”

Quinn said she conquered her fear during a recent bridge crossing to assess the viability of the controversial Dock Street project, which the Council approved in a 40-9 vote over the objections of local Council Member David Yassky (D-Brooklyn).

Quinn said she understands the appeal of the Brooklyn Bridge, but cannot reconcile that with her acrophobia, or fear of heights.

“Though people like walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, I don’t. I don’t like heights,” she said. “I don’t know why we have to walk over it when we have demonstrations.”

Quinn’s rare moment of candor spurred Council Member James Oddo (R-Staten Island) to make his own confession.

“I too have a fear of bridges,” Oddo said solemnly. “But that’s because I’m from Staten Island and I don’t like tolls.”

Espada, Monserrate, GOP Eat Like … Kings It was quite the display.

First, they holed up in their plush, air-conditioned office for more than two hours as sweaty, impatient reporters and onlookers jostled in a mega-scrum waiting for them to emerge. Then, they spoke for less than five minutes in a grand show of force before the ornate doors of the still-locked Senate chamber. Finally, they returned, flanked by guards and refusing to speak to the reporters who huddled anxiously at their feet for the paltriest of sound bites.

State Sens. Pedro Espada, Dean Skelos and Hiram Monserrate could

not have done more to demonstrate their grip on the Capitol on Wednesday, June 10, two days after a stunning coup they orchestrated to hand control of the Senate to the Republicans.

The buffet was just overkill.

Moments after disappearing behind closed doors to further hash out the terms of their “coalition majority,” the three were trailed by several carts of catered food: everything from coffee to fruit and cheese platters to champagne and beer.

Most of the reporters and hangerson had already dispersed from the hallway leading to Skelos’ office when the food arrived, pushed along by Capitol employees from the dining hall downstairs. One cart even included crates of bottled water, arriving just moments after several bystanders, caught up in the

ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Dueling Fears In The Red Room

Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn, Congressman Nadler and borough president Stringer cut the ribbon on the new High Line Park.

The long-awaited first section of the elevated rail line-turned-green space opened this month to rave reviews from architecture critics and neighbors.

That will teach Howard Dean to wade into the Byzantine world of New York City politics. The Vermont doctor, New York native and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee arrived earlier this month with much fanfare to the cramped Park Slope headquarters of the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats.

He arrived nearly an hour late, dripping wet from the summer rainstorm, blaming his tardiness not on his flight but on the subways, which were delayed due to the weather.

The onetime presidential candidate and current health care advocate was there to bestow his endorsement upon Josh Skaller, a candidate for Bill de Blasio’s Council seat and a former head of the local version of Dean’s Democracy for America organizing group.

Only one problem: Dean had already bestowed his blessing on another candidate in the race, Pratt Center executive director Brad Lander.

Lander had, according to Dean, come up to him at a recent fundraiser for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhttan/Brooklyn) to seek his endorsement, and Dean obliged, without realizing that he already had a man in the race.

After the event, Dean was asked whether or not he planned to make any other endorsements in Council races this fall.

“Probably not,” he said, “After all the mess I got myself into in this one.”

Even The Insects Are On Board Barack Obama has recently caught heat from animal rights groups for swatting and killing a fly during an interview with CNBC. A week earlier, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Ind.) faced a similar situation at a Women for Bloomberg event. But the mayor reacted very differently than the president.

Whoopi Goldberg was interviewing Bloomberg when she noticed a fly going

by Bloomberg’s head. She began swatting with a cue card.

“There’s a fly by you and I really want to hit it,” said Goldberg.

Bloomberg, however, remained collected and calm, sitting back with one leg crossed over the other and clasping his hands.

“It’s all right,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s a fly for Bloomberg.”

—by Chris Bragg, David Freedlander, Sal Gentile and Andrew J. Hawkins

C

CITY HALL

www.cityhallnews.com

JUNE 22, 2009

23

: Families Man CH: Are you going to back challengers to Sens.

Espada and Monserrate in 2010?

DC: That’s so far away. We’re not even thinking about that stuff yet. We’re just trying to get through this legislative session.

an Cantor has been busy lately. In the weeks following the Senate coup, the executive director of the Working Families Party has been lobbying in Albany, throwing the party’s weight around and trying to broker a solution. At the same time, the WFP also recently made their endorsement in Council races, which are considered a major factor in winning or losing. Between working the hallways in Albany, Cantor spoke with The Capitol about why he dismisses the idea that the millionaire’s tax caused the Senate coup, how the Working Families Party compares to Tom Golisano’s Responsible New York, and how the party explains supporting candidates who voted for the term-limits extension at home in New York City.

What follows is an edited transcript.

D

CH: You were out in front against the term-limits extension. What role did that issue end up playing in your Council endorsements?

DC: We’re looking at a person’s overall record. We never make a decision based on one single issue. So, there are some people who voted against the term limits who were supported and other people who voted against us who we’re battling, and it’s one of the many things that we consider. We weren’t against the extension of term limits. We actually favor the extension of term limits, but we favor doing it via a referendum. We were not against having three terms, by any means. Our position was that it had to be done by the populace.

City Hall: What was your initial reaction to the coup, given that the WFP put such effort into winning a Democratic majority in the Senate?

Dan Cantor: Like everybody, we were dismayed and unhappy. We didn’t have a different reaction from anybody else. It was shocking. We’re not used to that kind of thing in American politics. But we’re glad that it seems to have been walked back to this stalemate, which is better than the Republicans being in control.

CH: In his rationale for the coup, Tom Golisano cited the millionaire’s tax, which is something that the Working Families Party pushed for. With Responsible New York, do you see him trying to serve as counterweight to the Working Families Party?

DC: I think it’s fair to say that what he did was disgraceful.

He lost in the ballot box. His ideas were rejected. So like any good billionaire, he used his money to try to buy his ideas into power. … The level of coldness in this guy’s heart is really shocking. Just because you have a lot of money doesn’t mean that you know what’s right all the time. And he has failed again with the stalemate. Find that quote where he said something like, “I wish I had 100,000 people with me, but I don’t.” Well, that’s right— he doesn’t have 100,000 people. He has $100 million, but that’s not the same as having actual people. This is not a one-dollar, one-vote society. It’s one person, one vote.

The average working person is equal in democracy’s eyes to Tom Golisano, and it’s a shame and disgrace that he doesn’t understand that. But hopefully we’ll prevail in the long run. Many, many more people prefer what the Working Families Party stands for—decent jobs, decent schools and fair taxes—rather than Tom Golisano’s selfserving twoddle.

CH: This session, the Democrats were trying to pass a lot of progressive legislation very quickly, since they’d been out of power for so long. Did that help cause the fracture in the party?

DC: Well, it’s certainly true that there was a big, pentup demand during the long drought of the Pataki years.

This pent-up demand for good legislation did mean that there were a lot of issues instantly on the table for the Democrats. But that’s the price of leadership. They wanted control and they knew that with that control and power would come the responsibility to deal with these issues. Obviously, we think the kinds of things we were promoting are tremendously popular with voters, and the polling data totally supports us. People like affordable housing, they like good schools, they favor health care for everybody, they want people to have a decent

chance in life. So these are not crazy ideas. These are common, progressive ideas supported by the majority of New Yorkers, and I think this program supports social government and political gain.

CH: How does your approach change now, given the likely gridlock in the Senate until after the 2010 elections?

DC: It changes somewhat. You’re always trying to figure out, what are the circumstances and what should you do. But on some levels it doesn’t change at all. You still try to advance and articulate your ideas in both the public arena and in the halls of Legislature with whoever is in power. And if you’re lively and smart and creative, you can break through and you can persuade people who don’t necessarily agree with you on everything to agree with you on some things. That said, you also have to look towards 2010 and the election in that year. Of course we, and everybody else, will too. After 2010 it could end up 31-31, or it could change. The odds are, it will change.

CH: Was there any other criteria you considered that were different this year than in past years?

DC: Yes. That’s what’s different and exciting about this year. We’re not the first ones to refer to it, but we have the community organizer-in-chief in the White House, and we were actively looking for candidates who would bring that kind of sensibility into government.

People who had spent time actually trying to build community organizations across the city and shared our general political approach, our general ideological issues. And we are very excited because we think we really found a good group of prospective candidates.

All the races are long shots, but these are really some first-rate people.

CH: Do you think it’s likely that you’ll endorse Bill Thompson for mayor?

DC: All three candidates, including Tony Avella, enjoy some support inside Working Families, and you have to have process integrity here. Otherwise you can’t stay together. So we just have to go through our process and see where the candidates come down on the issues we care about, calculate it and make our decisions accordingly.

“Many, many more people prefer what the Working Families Party stands for—decent jobs, decent schools and fair taxes— rather than Tom Golisano’s selfserving twoddle.”

CH: You backed Sen. Monserrate when he won election last year. Do you now regret that?

DC: We had supported Monserrate, he had been a good councilman on City Council with both nerve and intelligence. We were supportive of his bid because we thought he would be a good ally here. We were as surprised as anyone by his shift last week. And I think it’s right that he has now shifted back.

CH: Working Families has been trying to step up its presence in Western New York, which is the home turf of Golisano’s Responsible New York. How does the WFP compare?

DC: All Responsible New York does is write checks. They don’t have any people who knock on doors and talk to neighbors. They don’t have any actual people. They’re not a serious force in local politics. I mean, have you ever heard of anyone actually going to a Responsible New York meeting?

Politics is about human beings, it’s not just about money.

There’s a WFP meeting somewhere every night of the week, every day of the year. Somewhere in New York there’s a WFP meeting every weeknight. So go see what Responsible New York meetings you can find. I’d be curious.

- Chris Bragg cbragg@cityhallnews.com

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