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When current state Senator Eric Schneiderman decided to run for attorney general, it provided the first vacancy in the 31st Senate District, which stretches from the Upper West Side through Washington Heights and Inwood to Riverdale in the Bronx, since 1998. The four Democratic candidates running to succeed Schneiderman are Adriano Espaillat, Mark Levine, Anna Lewis and Miosotis Muñoz.
In the waning days before the Sep. 14 Democratic primary, the Manhattan Times caught up with the front runners Espaillat and Levine while they campaigned.
In the Sep. 8 issue the Manhattan Times will publish bios of all the candidates in the local races.
Adriano Espaillat
It’s 10:30 a.m. on a recent Saturday at the corner of Broadway and W. 103rd Street. Upper West Siders have traded their weekday briefcases for backpacks and tennis rackets, their suits for work out clothes. Shoppers hustle by with bags full of merchandise and clutch take out coffee cups like children holding teddy bears.
Standing in the stream of sidewalk foot traffic are Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat. The gum covered patch of concrete is about 60 blocks from the community Espaillat has represented for over 10 years. But it is part of the 31st Senate District that he aspires to capture.
A middle aged couple with twin daughters dressed in rainbow colors greets Stringer by name. The borough president explains how Espaillat has what it takes to get Albany back on track.
“He’ll do a great job,” Stringer says.
The father of the twins responds: “If you like him, we like him.”
Espaillat’s campaign uses Internet-based social networking tools like Facebook, but much more of the emphasis has been on face to face introductions.
Stringer is one of Espaillat’s near monopoly of current elected officials who have endorsed his campaign, opening doors outside his Northern Manhattan base, where he has lived for 47 years since moving from the Dominican Republic.
When Espaillat visits Riverdale, Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz or City Council Member Oliver Koppell may be by his side. On the Upper West Side it could be Stringer or Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal. In Harlem state Senator Bill Perkins or Assembly Member Herman “Denny” Farrell or City Council Member Inez Dickens shakes hands with him. Throughout the district his campaign literature also includes the seal of approval from Senator Eric Schneiderman, whose coattails he hopes to ride in on.
Stumping in neighborhoods outside his current Assembly district, Espaillat said, “has brought us closer together and given me the opportunity to do a much better job.”
Interestingly, several of the conversations Espaillat has with passersby at W. 103rd Street are in Spanish. A few people spot him, slow down and say, “I recognize you.”
After 14 years in the Assembly, where he became the first Dominican American ever elected to state office, he says he is willing to put his job on the line to switch houses because the Senate is so broken.
“In order to change the Senate you need to know it,” he said during a conversation while driving from the Upper West Side to a breakfast for his volunteers in Inwood. “You can’t bring down the transmission of a car unless you are a mechanic. It takes experience to bring about change.”
His experience, relationships and leadership, he said, will allow him to hit the ground running in working with other elected officials to create change.
“We need to make sure a coalition of conscience moves to pass redistricting reform, campaign finance reform, ethics reform, and budget reform,” he said.
The most pressing reform, he said, is redistricting, which will take place next year after the census data is tabulated. Espaillat says Albany has taken a first step by recently passing legislation he co-sponsored (led by Schneiderman) that will end so-called prison gerrymandering, counting prisoners in the district where they are incarcerated rather than their home districts. Espaillat has also authored legislation that would standardize the population size of Assembly and Senate districts.
Some of the achievements he is most proud of include founding Project Remain/Nos Quedamos in 2005 to help secure tenants rights; working with Con Edison and the Hispanic Federation to provide funding to local small businesses to reduce energy costs; and, as chair of the Veterans Committee, providing returning service men and women better access to health care, education, job opportunities and housing.
As Espaillat’s car passes the Dyckman Street 1-train station he notices construction activity, signaling that the long awaited rehabilitation of the decrepit station will soon begin. He has poured funding into that project as well as the new school on Sherman Avenue that will open in September.
“Another Espaillat accomplishment,” he quips.
Mark Levine
For all the tech-savvy social networking that fuels the candidacy of community activist and nonprofit leader Mark Levine, the basic instruments of street-level campaigning are still very much a part of his outreach: the flier, street team and megaphone.
All were on display in the cool morning hours during a recent Friday at the St. Nicholas Avenue exit of the 191st Street 1-train stop. A dozen supporters fanned out on the sidewalk, leaving a passerby as much chance of bypassing the scene without being handed a flier as a ground ball has of dodging Derek Jeter.
The 41-year-old Levine, in a peach button-down shirt rolled up to the wrists, speaks English to a 20-something woman with an arm tattoo pushing a stroller. Moments later he speaks fluent Spanish to a middle aged woman in a purple tank top. Later with an elderly woman, he sprinkles in some Greek.
In any language the message is the same: Vote for change.
When Levine first ran for City Council in 2001, the feedback he heard was about cleaning up subway stations and improving schools and parks.
“Now before I can talk to them about subway stations and schools, they want to know what I can do to fix Albany,” Levine said during a recent interview. “They are disgusted and demanding change.”
As Levine sees it, Albany has to be reformed by creating non-partisan redistricting; enacting campaign finance reform; instituting a more open and transparent budget process; and empowering legislative committees to help shape legislation.
The issues he feels most deeply about – gun control, emergency contraception, equal marriage rights, tenants’ rights – have to wait until the Legislature is overhauled. “We have to solve the fundamental dysfunction in Albany before progressive issues can be tackled,” he said.
An optimist in the face of the epic pessimism clouding Albany’s future, Levine believes that these fixes are not only possible but possible during the next legislative session. The Senate’s delicate balance of power, combined with statewide voter dissatisfaction and presumptive new Governor Andrew Cuomo’s stated intentions to get the government back on track have created the perfect storm for reform, Levine believes.
While Levine has never held elected office – he lost his 2001 Council bid to Robert Jackson, who is now a supporter, and last year aborted his presumed race against Assembly Member Herman “Denny” Farrell to succeed Jackson when term limits were extended – he says the nonprofit world gave him the experience to govern.
His signature local achievement was starting Northern Manhattan’s first credit union, Neighborhood Trust. Most recently he served as executive director of the nonprofit Center for After-School Excellence. He credits his public speaking skills to the years he spent as a bilingual science teacher at JHS 149 in the South Bronx.
Education, he said, would be his top priority, if he didn’t feel that Albany needed so much fixing.
Levine, who lives in Washington Heights with his wife and two children in elementary school, has campaigned from one end of the district to the other and picked up endorsements from a few political clubs, perhaps most notably the 3 Parks Democratic Club on the Upper West Side, in addition to the Barack Obama Club of Upper Manhattan, which he founded.
But he is also leaning heavily on social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to raise money and keep his message fresh.
While he and his primary opponent Espaillat have raised nearly the same amount of money for their campaigns, both around $275,000, Levine did it largely through individual donations, tapping close to 700 transactions, two-thirds of them $100 or less, while Espaillat had about 220 individual contributions. Although Levine's childhood friendship with the actor Ed Norton helped rake in $30,000 through A-listers in the Hollywood and publishing worlds.
The social networking sites also provide instant communication to – and from – supporters. While walking away from campaigning at the 1-train subway stop, Levine noted that a volunteer had probably already sent a Tweet about it. Upon returning to the office I found that it had been tweeted, including a photo of yours truly who was identified as an “undercover primary reporter.”
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