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Correction: An earlier version of this article reported that Ariel Ferreria, a candidate for the 71st Assembly District, received the endorsement of the Barack Obama Democratic Club of Upper Manhattan. He did not, even though he received more votes than his opponent, Assembly Member Herman Farrell, Jr.
As summer ends and Northern Manhattanites and Bronxites return to the mundane post-summer realities of work and school, they are finding their communities awash in campaign spirit.
Fliers adorn store windows. Palm cards litter the busiest intersections. Campaign literature stuffs mailboxes while email clogs in-boxes. The political hopefuls are braving the sweaty last days of the city’s hottest summer on record to shake hands, pledge their sincerity and ask for support.
At stake are a handful of state Senate and Assembly seats. But almost to a person, the candidates are saying that what’s on the table is the future of Albany, since voters are so fed up with government.
With no presidential, governor or mayoral race at the top of the primary ballot this year, most political pundits are predicting low voter turn out, although anger at Albany might raise the numbers.
What follows are introductions to the candidates running for state office. For most of these races there are no Republican challengers, meaning whoever wins the Democratic primary on Tue., Sep. 14 wins the seat.
In an added twist that is likely to complicate the primary, the state is introducing new computer voter machines this year. The New York Board of Elections has worked with some local civic groups to hold special education sessions to teach voters how to use the bubble-sheet ballots. But there are fears that the BOE didn’t do enough outreach, that next Tuesday will be marred with confusion, delays and, the biggest concern, that many ballots will be filled out incorrectly or won’t be counted due to user error.
The voters who are the most likely to have difficulty with the new voting process are the ones who are traditionally the disenfranchised from the political process in the first place: immigrants, senior citizens and the poorly educated.
Please refer to p26 to review the new procedure for marking your ballot and be sure to ask for help if you aren’t sure how to fill it out on Primary Day.
The cliché is that every vote counts: this year that just might be true.
31st Senate District
Riverdale, Inwood, Washington Heights, Hamilton Heights, Upper West Side
Last primary – 2002: 28,861 votes cast. (Data from www.ourcampaigns.com)
Adriano Espaillat
(Parts of this profile have been condensed from an article in last week’s issue.)
After 14 years in the Assembly, where he became the first Dominican American ever elected to state office, Adriano Espaillat 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.”
Espaillat is campaigning for the seat being vacated by Senator Eric Schneiderman who has held it since 1998. Schneiderman is one of an impressive number of current elected officials stretching from Riverdale to the Upper West Side who have endorsed his campaign: Borough Presidents Scott Stringer and Ruben Diaz, Jr.; Assembly Members Jeffrey Dinowitz, Herman “Denny” Farrell and Linda Rosenthal; City Council Members Oliver Koppell and Inez Dickens.
Many unions, political clubs and good government groups have also signed on, as well as the editorial boards at El Diario/La Prensa and The New York Times, which called him “an outspoken voice for the most crucial reform of all — an independent redistricting commission to create fairer elections in the state.”
Espaillat says his experience, relationships and leadership 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.
His work with veterans, he said, gave him good experience reaching across the aisle to Republicans, which will be needed to help kick start Albany in the new cycle.
“Republicans are part of the body and shouldn’t be punished because of their party affiliation, they are rank and file members like anyone else,” Espaillat said. “We can agree to disagree.”
Mark Levine
(Parts of this profile have been condensed from an article in last week’s issue.)
When Mark 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.
Anna Lewis
Since attorney Anna Lewis declared her candidacy for the Senate in April – she says she waited until then out of respect for Senator Eric Schneiderman who didn’t announce his run for attorney general until that month – the Upper West Side resident has spent much of her time learning about Northern Manhattan.
“I love it more as I become more familiar with it, I love the excitement and activity,” she said during a recent phone conversation. “There’s more diversity in this community than people realize, it’s a very diverse, lively, hard working community.”
One astute observation she made after campaigning throughout the district is that the shopping districts in Washington Heights and Inwood are busier in the morning than elsewhere. “Things get started a lot earlier, people are on the street,” Lewis said.
But no matter where she meets potential voters, she sees that many of the problems are the same: store closings and the need for affordable housing, jobs and health care.
Lewis says that her resume makes her uniquely qualified to take on these challenges, having experience both community organizing and writing legislation.
Her biggest civic accomplishment, she said, was starting a community clinic for constituent services, particularly addressing housing issues. She has also served on the boards of the Mitchell-Lama Residents Coalition and Mid-Manhattan NAACP.
Now she works as an attorney with New York State’s Health Department. From 1989 to 1992 she was counsel to the New York State Assembly's Committee on Oversight, Analysis, and Investigation, giving her experience looking into cases of fraud and mismanagement.
This insight into state operations has helped shape her slate of reform proposals.
Her plans include strengthening fiscal oversight; establishing independent, non-partisan commissions on redistricting, ethics and the budget; creating an independent investigator for ethics issues; and passing a law preventing lawmakers from changing their party affiliations. Increasing senators’ salaries, she argues, would also attract stronger candidates.
In 2001 she ran for City Council and lost to Upper West Side icon Gale Brewer. Lewis said she hasn’t pursed elected office since because there have been no vacancies, although she would have run for Council again last year had term limits not been extended. Instead she campaigned for Civil Court judge but did not make the ballot.
Lewis’ campaign operates on a shoestring (she has about $5,000 while the lead dogs each have over $260,000) and doesn’t boast any high profile endorsements or political support. But this approach, she says, can be a benefit this cynical election season. “People are looking for something fresh,” she said. To drive home the need for someone new, Lewis points out that only 10 of the state’s 62 senators are women.
In talking about her outlook, more than most candidates, Lewis uses the word hope. It seems to define her approach to politics, and life.
“I really believe that something has to be done,” she explains about Albany’s dysfunction. I tell people that and they do get hopeful.”
Miosotis Muñoz
Miosotis Muñoz has served as a staff member in the offices of Congressman Charlie Rangel and Manhattan Borough Presidents Ruth Messinger and C. Virginia Fields. Now she owns the community and public relations firm, M. Munoz & Associates.
In 2008 City Hall newspaper named her one of its “Rising Stars: 40 Under 40 the Next Generation of Political Leaders in New York.”
According to her Web site, among Muñoz’ proposals are improving services for special education, improving transportation access for seniors and advocating for home attendant programs.
72nd Assembly District
Washington Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill
Last primary – 2008: 8,402 votes cast. (Data from www.ourcampaigns.com)
Miguel Estrella
Miguel Estrella offers a mix of populist proposals: creating higher paying jobs, improving vocational training, attracting funding for small businesses, installing more security cameras in high crime areas, increasing the availability of daycare and head start programs and installing escalators at the Dyckman Street and 207th Street 1-train stations.
He has also said that if elected he will fight against legalizing same sex marriage.
Estrella ran for the Assembly seat in 2006 against Espaillat and came in third, with about 700 votes. Of the five candidates running for the seat this year, Estrella is the only one who has not registered raising any money with the New York State Board of Elections.
Nelson Denis
Nelson Denis has ideas on how to fix government. Big, specific, well-articulated ideas befitting an attorney with an Ivy League pedigree.
Get rid of the mechanism known as the governor’s message of necessity that allows a bill to be voted on without giving legislators adequate time to review it. Reinstitute the Moreland Act of 1907 that would allow Albany greater investigative powers into members’ activities. Appoint an inspector general to oversee the state’s Medicaid plan, which accounts for 40 percent of the budget, one-third of which, The New York Times has said, is unaccounted for. Hold a new state Constitutional Convention.
Ten years ago Denis, who looks and charms like Joe Namath, was in a position to fight for these changes from the inside when he served two terms as an Assembly member representing East Harlem.
But he ran afoul of Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver in what was perceived as an attempted coup and his political fortunes changed. He lost his 2000 reelection, a bid for state Senate in 2004 and a bid for City Council in 2005.
While all of his previous races have been in East Harlem, he is a Washington Heights native and says he has lived here for the last seven years.
Before his first forays into politics, Denis sharpened his views as editorial director for the newspaper El Diario/La Prensa.
In 1991 Denis’ first political instinct was to run for City Council on his home turf, which incidentally would have pitted him against Guillermo Linares (one of his opponents this year for Assembly) and Adriano Espaillat (whose vacant seat he aspires to win). Instead he decided to take on the Del Torro political machine in East Harlem, losing at first but winning an Assembly seat in 1996.
During an interview at an Inwood coffee shop, Denis was asked why after so many years in East Harlem now is the time for him to represent Washington Heights. He mentions a recent issue of the Manhattan Times that carried articles about problems at Alianza Dominicana, a rise in vacant storefronts and a lack of new schools planned for the near future. Nonprofits, private sector and public sector, he said: “the leadership of this community has allowed voters to be disenfranchised.”
Denis’ says his greatest accomplishments in East Harlem were getting banks to double their lending to home owners and small businesses and setting up the Denis Legal Clinic, which provides free assistance for housing, elder and other issues.
Denis knows that stump speeches that include lines like “fixing the structural dysfunction in Albany” have become clichés this season, but he says that he has more legitimacy than others because he was at the forefront of the movement in 1996.
Of course, had he not voted on removing Silver a decade ago he may already be in position to implement change.
Asked if he could go back in time would he vote to oust Silver again he said, “Yes: It’s the right thing to do.”
Julissa Gomez
“I didn’t think I could run [for Assembly] because I don’t have a good poker face,” Gomez said during an interview several weeks ago. But she realized that her transparency would make her the ideal candidate: “That’s part of the problem: we have too many [elected officials with] poker faces out there who lie through their teeth.”
Gomez, an attorney who has served on Community Board 12 for five years, jumped into the campaign after being approached by a group of women in March.
“I was disillusioned with the other candidates,” she said. “I felt I had to do it for myself, my son, my neighbors and parents.”
She describes her campaign as “grass roots at its best.” The most notable name on her roll of endorsements belongs to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz, who used to live in Washington Heights and wove the neighborhood into his novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”
But she also boasts growing lists of local women, doctors, artists that totaled 63 as of press time. One of the latest to sign on to the campaign was her one-time opponent Wyatt Johnson, former president of the Northern Manhattan Democrats for Change Political Club, who was knocked off the ballot.
Gomez also served as the president of the Dominican Bar Association, and said it was there that she earned a reputation for “shaking things up.”
That independent spirit has come up on the campaign trail when visiting unions in search of endorsements. After sitting down with them, she would tell the union bosses that they were part of the problem because they were wrapped up in supporting the political status quo.
Her signature issues are affordable housing and child care. As a single parent of a four-year-old boy, Gomez knows the difficulty of juggling parenthood and work. Without providing a nurturing environment for parents to leave their children, they can’t commit to a job. The solution, she argues, is universal child care.
“Early child education affects everyone not just women,” she said. “It affects the economy.”
Guillermo Linares
Having spent 35 years as a public servant in a variety of capacities, when Guillermo Linares describes what he plans to do if elected to the Assembly he speaks in narrative rather than bullet points. It’s as if he is picking up the threads of conversations that started decades ago.
When he speaks about education reform, it’s continuing the fight for smaller class sizes that he began as a member of the school board in the 1980s.
On creating a new police substation in the 34th Police Precinct, it echoes the work he did with the late City Council Member Stanley Michels in building the 33rd Precinct in the 1990s.
His stated goal of strengthening the rights of immigrants is backed by his five years as the city’s commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, which ended in 2009.
It was this most recent post that gave him the ear of all the city agencies and, particularly, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which Linares says puts him in the position to ensure Northern Manhattan receives the city services it deserves.
“I have a direct line to the [Bloomberg] administration that I fully intend to use,” he said during a recent interview in his office.
Linares made history in 1991 when he became the first Dominican American elected to office, serving in City Council until he left due to term limits in 2001.
After running for state Senate in 2002, Linares did not pursue elective office until last year. He decided to enter the race for City Council in 2009 after then Council Member Miguel Martinez stepped down and pled guilty to stealing taxpayer money. Linares said he ran then because he wanted to help the community heal. “I felt I needed to stand by the side of the community where I not only served [in office] but raised my children,” he said. His campaign was cut short due to a paperwork snafu that disqualified him.
For his Assembly bid, he has been endorsed by many of the elected leaders who overlap the district, including Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and his one-time rivals State Senator Eric Schneiderman, City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez and Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, with whom he recently buried the hatchet after years of tension.
Unions have also backed his candidacy, including 1199 SEIU, 32BJ and New York State United Teachers.
Linares knows that with the fragile state economy Albany has to do more with less. He is not proposing sweeping new programs but rather will focus on protecting core services so families can continue to make ends meet. Because if they can’t, “That’s when things get out of hand, they are force to pack and go or find themselves doing desperate things,” he said.
Linares’ signature issue is job creation and protecting small businesses. He plans to engage the growing professional class – young merchants, lawyers and doctors – to mentor and take on young interns. A new volunteer corps he wants to launch will help support nonprofits and businesses.
He will also hold accountable large institutions to encourage them to hire more local residents. Isabella Geriatric Center, he said, is doing an exemplary job of employing and mentoring its neighbors.
Linares also wants to build on his recent work as immigration commissioner, instituting on the state level three policies he helped enact in the city: increasing language access to state information; ensuring all New Yorkers can access state services without disclosing private information such as immigration status, sexual orientation or status as a victim of domestic violence; and instituting an annual state-wide immigrant heritage celebration that, in the city, has grown from 25 events in 2004 to nearly 200 this year.
The buzzword for the election season has been reform, and Linares says he is committed to change and improving good government policies. But he makes it clear that it’s more important to fix the needs of the community than those in Albany.
“Albany’s problem has been not serving constituents,” he said. “What I’m going to Albany to do is driven by my community’s needs.”
Gabriela Rosa
A former staffer for Assembly Member Herman “Denny” Farrell and City Council Member Miguel Martinez, Rosa was born in the Dominican Republic and became an American citizen in 2005.
Having worked for 16 years in government, and as a woman, she believes she is ready to make the jump to elective office.
“I am the other face of experience, I’m not an elected official, I’ve never been an elected official but I have experience,” Rosa said during a phone interview. “It’s time now to bring a woman’s voice, vision, a woman with experience” to office.
Rosa has also served on the leadership team of her son’s school.
Currently she is on a leave of absence from her position with Farrell’s office and is not receiving a salary or health insurance, so she knows first hand the concerns of many potential constituents.
While campaigning throughout the district in parks, subway stations and parks, Rosa said people are worried about the “basic things: housing, quality of life, gangs, transportation.”
Rosa has raised about $9,000 for the race and is proud that: “To this day my campaign has not accepted a single financial contribution from landlords or real estate interests,” she states on her Web site. “I made a campaign pledge to not accept contributions from that sector because I want to be a fierce and ‘no strings attached’ advocate for the tenants and small businesses.
As an immigrant, Rosa has also had a unique perspective when meeting potential constituents who do not have the right to vote. She tells them that if elected she will fight for them, saying “You need to have services, but you need to make an effort to become a citizen.”
Rosa has been endorsed by Farrell and City Council Member Robert Jackson.
71st Assembly District
Washington Heights, Inwood, Hamilton Heights, northern Harlem
Last primary – 1980: 6,882 votes (Data from www.ourcampaigns.com)
Herman “Denny” Farrell
It’s been a long time since Herman “Denny” Farrell has faced a primary challenge. But these days the 36-year incumbent is making the rounds at the subway stops most mornings, often with his five-year-old daughter.
With such a long tenure in office it’s hard to look around the neighborhood and not see the results of his work.
The centerfold of his campaign literature has photos of his accomplishments: security cameras installed on Bennett Avenue; improvements to the landscape of the Morris-Jumel Mansion; construction of a ramp to Riverside Park at W. 158th Street; legislation passed that provided tax credits to install solar panels atop the Cabrini Terrace co-op; funding for a new headquarters for Alianza Dominicana.
“Wherever you look in Northern Manhattan, you’ll see what Denny Farrell is doing to transform our neighborhoods,” is the headline of the piece. “It takes experience to bring about change,” boasts the cover.
For all the hype about how this is the year of challengers, Farrell is unafraid to run on his record.
And he says that he hasn’t felt any backlash against Albany on the campaign trail.
“Things aren’t as bad as they say,” Farrell said during a phone interview. “I’ve gotten a very nice response from everyone.”
He said he has encountered only one angry person, which is equal to the number of people he’s run into who told him “my mother voted for you the first time you won” in 1974.
There has been a lot of recent press about New York Uprising, a coalition founded by former Mayor Edward Koch to reform state government. Candidates this year have joined Koch’s “Heroes of Reform” by signing a pledge to support independent redistricting, responsible budgeting and ethics reform.
Farrell is not one of them.
If you sign the pledge, he said, then “everyone will start putting these things in front of you.”
“In a democracy you have the right to do what you want to do and the people have the right to remove you,” he added.
Asked what he plans to work on if reelected, Farrell says the state needs to put more money into education, because education leads to creating better qualified workers. Quality of life issues are also important, he said, from fixing sidewalks to reducing noise, particularly along Dyckman Street.
“As long as I do these things, [voters] don’t care about Ed Koch’s initiative,” he said. “If I get this done, they’ll vote for me.”
Ariel Ferreira
Ariel Ferreira hasn’t been alive as long as his opponent has been in office.
But considering the persistent problems he sees in the community, such as high rents and a lack of jobs, he thinks that it is time to pass the torch.
“[People] are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the same issues,” he said during a phone interview. “It’s time that we bring in new leadership and go in a new direction.”
Ferreira’s campaign operation is small, but he has won the endorsement of the Hamilton Heights Progressive Democratic Club.
Ferreira has a diverse resume. He began working at community nonprofit Alianza Dominicana as a tutor and became a program coordinator there. Among other things he led a Youth Against Guns forum. He worked in real estate throughout Manhattan, which is where he learned some of the ways landlords take advantage of tenants. For a short time Ferreira worked for former City Council Member Miguel Martinez.
At the top of his life achievements, however, is donating a kidney to his younger brother in 2008. Now he is a spokesperson for the National Kidney Foundation for Greater New York.
While two of Ferreira’s top three issues are affordable housing and jobs, the way he sees it, they get addressed by his number one priority: improving education.
This does not just mean helping school children. It encompasses teaching financial literacy to heads of households and small business owners, educating tenants on their rights, such as what constitutes harassment and illegal eviction, and providing job training.
Some of these solutions Ferreira is already working on through his own business as a consultant to nonprofits. He teaches them how to sustain themselves by diversifying their fundraising so they are not so dependent on government money.
“When an elected official loses office, that organization [that he supported] can go under,” he notes. “And it was probably providing important services to a community.”
30th Senate District
Harlem, the Upper West Side and a sliver of lower east Washington Heights
Last primary – 1998: 28,067 votes cast. (Data from www.ourcampaigns.com)
Bill Perkins
Bill Perkins has occupied the seat since 2006, replacing David Paterson when he ran as Eliot Spitzer’s lieutenant governor. Before that Perkins served eight years in City Council.
Perkins has received the lion’s share of the endorsements in the race, including elected officials (Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Council Members Inez Dickens and Robert Jackson), good government groups (Citizens Union and Citizen Action) and political clubs (Three Parks Independent Democratic Club, Stonewall Democrats).
Surprisingly, Perkins also netted the endorsement of the New York Charter Parents Association, which is devoted to supporting charter schools. Perkins has been a vocal critic of charters; supporting them has been a cornerstone of his opponent’s campaign.
Basil Smikle
Smikle is a first-time candidate, but with a resume as a political consultant that includes time spent working with both Mike Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton, he is no stranger to the game. A fundraising machine, the Board of Elections reports that Smikle raised about $160,000 through August. To compare, the incumbent Perkins had banked around $150,000.
While it doesn’t amount to an endorsement of his candidacy, Smikle did earn the number two position on The New York Observer’s list of the “Most Beautiful Political People” in New York in 2005.
Smikle founded and runs Basil Smikle Associates, a political strategy and public relations firm based in New York.
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