September 10, 2013 is a day we will have to look back on in years to come. Like all New Yorkers, it was a day when Democratic Primary voters decided who was likely to be the next Mayer, and chose someone as different from Michael Bloomberg, or Rudy Giuliani, as one can be. Bill de Blasio not only has a different political perspective, he has a different style. He isn’t arrogant. He listens. He is softly spoken. He relies on others to help him figure out what to do; and he is not part of the 1%. A de Blasio City Hall will listen to community leaders, community boards, and parents associations, and see government as having more of a role to play than attracting billionaires to the City.
September 10 had important meaning to us in the West Village as well as in two very important respects only partly affected by the Mayoralty. (Everything is affected by the Mayor. He will pick a new Police Chief, a new School’s Chancellor, a new Parks Commissioner, a new Department of Transportation Commissioner, and a new lead lawyer [Corporation Counsel]. These choices will have an enormous impact on our lives.) One respect involves the election of Gale Brewer as Borough President, and the second is the end of the Quinn-Duane era in local politics.
Gale Brewer – A New Borough President
Gale Brewer could turn out to be one of the most memorable Borough Presidents ever elected. One fact tells you so much: On Primary Day, Gayle had 1100 volunteers on the streets of Manhattan. That is an astounding number. Gayle is loved by the people she has served. To her, government is meaningless if not linked to the grassroots. Like de Blasio, she is an egalitarian listener and an effective communicator. She told me three years ago that she had a whole political operation set up in her apartment, including 30,000 people with whom she had email communication regularly. She is a woman of enormous principle, someone you are more likely to meet running a righteous nonprofit than in government.
Gale will have three critical roles as Borough President:
- She will choose three new Directors of the Board of Hudson River Park (the Mayor will choose five new Board members). Ever since that Board was set up, the Borough President’s appointees have been political hot potatoes. In 1998 Virginia Fields asked the three Waterfront Community Boards to nominate the one person, and she rejected CB2’s nominee because I had supported Deborah Glick for Borough President. She rejected the CB4 nominee too. When Scott Stringer came in, he rewarded a political supporter with no grassroots connections as his Village-SoHo Board member. Gale is likely to change that makeup. (So, too, will Bill de Blasio, who is unlikely to keep developer Joe Rose and the former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern on the Board and will have a new Deputy Mayor and Parks Commissioner on the Board as well. Maybe we will even see the end of Diana Taylor, Mayor Bloomberg’s significant other, who is a Governor Cuomo appointee.
- The Borough President plays a key role in land use issues. All significant land use proposals – like the Rudin condos at the St. Vincent’s site, NYU’s expansion, the Chelsea Market project – require review under the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). Review status at the Community Board level then goes to the Borough President, then to the City Planning Commission, then to the City Council. The Borough President has real power in this process. Gale can stop a project dead in its tracks, unlike a community board, which only makes recommendations. St. Vincent’s and NYU, and so many more projects, passed through Scott Stringer’s office, often with some change, but usually without enough. One can hope that Gale Brewer’s decision making will take community opposition (and support) more into account.
- The Borough President initiates 50% of the Community Board appointments and approves nominations made by City Council members for the other 50%. Borough Presidents set different criteria for appointments. Ruth Messinger (Gale’s mentor) generally appointed community activists. C. Virginia Fields appointed many business people, particularly people in the restaurant world. Scott Stringer’s appointees began with a definitive academic/professional slant, although he recently appointed a greater percentage of activists. Gale Brewer is likely to focus appointments on people with grassroots activism in their resumes, to make sure that the Community Boards are connected to and reflective of popular sentiment in our communities.
All in all, New York City government and our Borough government is headed much more in the direction of the people and by the people.
A New Era in Village Politics
September 10 was a watershed moment in our community, as important, I think, as the victory for the Village Independent Democrats and young Ed Koch over Tammany Hall in the 1960s. It marked the near end of an era which began in 1990 with the election of Deborah Glick to the Assembly and the 1991 election of Tom Duane to the City Council. Those two actually ended the era of the original VID, with Carol Greitzer stepping down from the Council and Bill Passanante stepping aside from the Assembly rather than taking on Glick. Duane moved “up” to the State Senate in 1998 and was succeeded by his former Chief of Staff, Chris Quinn. These three have dominated Village politics since 1991, sometimes together, sometimes with conflict.
Duane stepped down in 2012 to help Quinn’s mayoral election campaign. Glick made Quinn’s election a major priority after Quinn agreed to block residential development on or near Pier 40, Glick’s principal legislative goal in 2011 and 2012. Chris Quinn got thumped, not only in the City but in our community, her District and Glick’s District. She received 25-30% of the vote in the Village, while Bill de Blasio secured over 55%. Exit polls say that despite support from Glick and Duane, and our current gay State Senator Brad Hoylman, and the East Village’s Rosie Mendez, Quinn even lost the gay vote.
Quinn, Duane, and Glick had lost connection with the heart of the community they served. There was a lot of promise when they took control in the early 1990s as the new reformers, but they failed. During this era, our neighborhood has become maybe the most expensive in the City. The artists and musicians, and most of the gay population, have left. Our census numbers show that we are 98% white. We lost St. Vincent’s Hospital with barely a whimper, our schools don’t have enough seats, and Pier 40 is falling apart with no solution, except the barely limited sale of air rights allowed by a Glick-sponsored bill – air rights which could lead to a new spate of high-rise development on West Street. Glick hangs on as a staunch defender of Sheldon Silver and his cover-ups of sexual misconduct by other Assembly members. I predict that with her views having been rejected – including by my election as District Leader – she too will soon be gone.
As for the new era, Corey Johnson last week won the Democratic primary to succeed Quinn. He was reluctantly supported by Glick and Duane (who tried to find another candidate up until the spring) and ignored (to his benefit) by Quinn. I supported Corey’s opponent in the election and I raised questions about his qualifications, but he proved himself in his campaign as a genuine leader. He knocked on hundreds of doors, made thousands of phone calls, and worked tirelessly. His grasp of issues grew, and he actually won over some support which had been Yetta Kurland’s as a result. Corey is only 31 and has lots of room to grow. All of us should look forward to working with him. Corey brings two important attributes with him. He has a keen sense of land use law, having three years as a community board chair under his belt, and he will be focused on our community, unlike Speaker Quinn.
Then there is Brad Hoylman, who was groomed since 2001 as the next leader by Quinn, Duane, and Glick. Brad is an enormously smart, though overly cautious, man. During the recent election he was also out of step with his constituents, touting Quinn and attacking Bill de Blasio until the very end, and pushing Jessica Lappin (Quinn’s choice) for Borough President. However, Brad is a rookie, and he has paid his debt to Quinn and Duane; they can’t control him anymore. Hopefully the real Brad – the one with a list of creative ideas when he ran for City Council in 2001 – will come forward.
The Village Independent Democrats (VID) and the Village Reform Democratic Club (VRDC), both of which had faded in importance when the Duane-Quinn era bloomed, showed themselves during the recent election to be fairly irrelevant. VID, whose leaders need to stop acting as though the club is important because it deposed Tammany Hall, is the larger club, which boasts Deborah Glick and Brad Hoylman as members. Yet its activist core is around 20 people, and it had little presence in the recent primary. Its leaders supported Chris Quinn, and its members, aghast at the idea, voted to go with John Liu. Its leaders put out a call when Bill de Blasio endorsed my District Leader candidacy, which made it sound like I had been endorsed by the Tea Party. Largely, VID has failed to draw new activists into its core, and to take advantage of some of the new energy which came into the club around the Obama campaign and local school issues. My criticism is of the leaders, not the members.
VRDC, which I am a member of, is even worse off. Its core is about a dozen wonderful people. It has no meetings, endorsed no Mayoral candidate, and had no members other than me and Ray Cline – always a trooper – out doing petitioning or campaigning. I hear that Brad Sussman – a fabulous grassroots organizer – has agreed to come back and be President, but he will literally have to build from ashes.
The only way that these organizations will regain relevance would be for them to merge, and figure out clearer ways that they can be subjected to rank and file control.
Lastly, there is the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club (which includes me as a Board member), which has, until now, been a largely gay club, but which wants to enter the void left by VID and VRDC. Jim Owles needs to figure out how to bring in new blood and new activists and have its activities reflect a mass base. I will be working with them to that end.
So we have new leaders, but not a clear political vehicle where we can communicate real community sentiment to them, at least in the electoral-political arena. This void, like all voids, will be filled.
Arthur Z. Schwartz is the Democratic District Leader for Greenwich Village and the Democratic State Committee Member for the Lower West Side of Manhattan.
