Mark Levine (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
After prevailing in the Democratic primary that just concluded, City Council Member Mark Levine appears very likely to be Manhattan’s next Borough President, given the borough’s overwhelming Democratc enrollment advantage.
Along with chairing the City Council’s health committee and growing into a prominent voice on COVID-19 health guidelines and accountability during the pandemic, Levine relied on a strong uptown base of support, major endorsements, and key accomplishments like legislation to provide a right to counsel in housing court for low-income New Yorkers that has prevented tens of thousands of evictions.
Of the ballots that have been tabulated so far, which include all the in-person votes and almost all the absentee votes, Levine garnered 28.3% of the first-choice votes, narrowly ahead of State Senator Brad Hoylman’s 26%, with all other candidates emerging with no more than 13%. The ranked-choice runoff calculations yielded a somewhat more comfortable lead for Levine, who received 99,643 votes after the final elimination round — 53.7% — compared to Hoylman’s 85,756 votes, or 46.3%. While the Board of Elections will release a final tally including more absentee ballots next week, Hoylman conceded the race on July 4 and Levine celebrated a Democratic primary victory that all but assures him to become the next Manhattan Borough President.
Levine is currently serving his final term in the City Council representing parts of Washington Heights, Morningside Heights, Harlem, and the Upper West Side. He ran in the Democratic primary against Hoylman, City Council Member Ben Kallos, former state economic development official Lindsey Boylan, former community board chair Elizabeth Caputo, community activist Guillermo Perez, and education advocate Kimberly Watkins. In November, Levine will face off against Yorkville-based Republican candidate Lou Pouliafito, who last year lost in a bid to unseat Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright.
Over the course of the race, Levine highlighted his record pressuring the city to rapidly institute science-based COVID-19 policies and co-sponsoring two right to counsel bills that guarantee many tenants’ access to a lawyer in housing court. Levine has represented Manhattan’s 7th district on the City Council for two four-year terms, which he’ll serve through the end of the year. His platform focused on healthcare access and public health preparedness, instituting a public bank to aid small businesses and community land trusts, and creating a borough-wide zoning and development plan.
The last of these perhaps speaks most to the role of the borough president, which is something of what the office-holder makes of it along with several formal powers and a significant advisory say in land use matters.
While Levine would have limited formal power to enact his promised reforms as Borough President, he would serve as a face of Manhattan with a bully pulpit to advocate for his priorities. Borough Presidents play a role in land use decisions that ultimately go before the City Council, appoint members to community boards and other committees, and can co-sponsor legislation in the Council. They also get to allocate budget funding to nonprofits and capital projects, and can utilize their own office budgets to issue reports and recommendations on focus issues of their choice. They can act as a convener, helping to ameliorate disputes or work out compromises, and can try to pitch businesses, cultural institutions, and others on coming to or expanding in their borough (or leaving or not coming to, as it may be).
Levine would enter this role at a pivotal moment for Manhattan, along with the rest of the city, as the city attempts to fight and recover from the pandemic and its fallout. Manhattan’s small business economy suffered acutely from the downturn in tourism, shift to remote work, and pause in live performances brought about by COVID-19. Many of the borough’s office and commercial buildings have sat empty for more than a year, particularly in Midtown and Lower Manhattan, leading politicians and developers alike to speculate about new possible futures for the vacant space and contributing to massive challenges for the restaurants and many other businesses dependent upon that human traffic. The theater industry has also struggled to stay afloat through the pandemic, though federal aid has helped to a yet-determined extent.
As always, but perhaps most acutely now, homelessness, housing, and development are top issues for the borough and its next president.
For years before the pandemic, Manhattan’s skyline had been changing rapidly with a spurt of tall buildings, including thousands of luxury apartments selling for tens of millions of dollars that have sat empty, even as the city faces a dire affordable housing shortage. A majority of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers live in Manhattan, according to the Bowery Mission. And neighborhoods including Harlem and the Lower East Side have been gentrifying, with low-income people of color disproportionately displaced. Questions around housing development, even with large shares of affordable units, and battles over the placement of homeless shelters persist.
The incoming Borough President will also need to address an increasingly urgent need for climate infrastructure, especially given the borough’s island geography; the likely forthcoming congestion pricing program; upzonings in Inwood (passed) and SoHo/NoHo (proposed), which have both met resistance; transit infrastructure like busways and protected bike lanes; and more.
Over the course of his campaign, Levine received the largest number of private campaign contributions throughout the race, with 2,372 donations amounting to $523,234, and, like Hoylman and Kallos, he received more than $1 million in public matching funds. His endorsers included a range of labor unions, including District Council 37 (representing municipal employees), Transport Workers Local 100, the Uniformed Fire Officers’ Association, the New York State Nurses’ Association, the Hotel Trades Council, and the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association. He was also crucially endorsed by U.S. Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez, as well as several Assembly members and City Council members, a number of hyperlocal Democratic Clubs, and New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), and others.
Levine’s central priority is tackling COVID-19 and its aftereffects, which of course spans many issues. As Borough President, he would create a COVID-19 Recovery Unit in his office, which would focus on health equity, economic recovery, and ensuring the city’s preparedness for the next public health crisis.
As part of his pandemic recovery plan, Levine promises to advocate for universal access to primary health care, particularly for undocumented immigrants lacking health insurance, and to fight for better funding for public hospitals. He would also work to bolster healthcare workers’ anti-racism training, create new channels of communication between public health experts and leaders at every level of government, and increase coordination between public and private hospitals.
Levine’s role as chair of the Council’s health committee pushed him into a citywide and even national spotlight during the pandemic. Early in March 2020, as the de Blasio administration wavered on shutting down the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Levine called for restaurants and bars to close. He became a vocal critic of the city’s allocation of viral testing resources, arguing that tests should be reserved for the most sick residents, and pressed for the city to open 24-hour vaccination sites. His social media presence became a regular source of public health guidance, frequently calling attention to the severity of the pandemic and stressing the need to follow health guidelines.
His advocacy on pandemic health measures was not without controversy. On Twitter in April 2020, he suggested that the city was planning to use public parks as possible burial grounds — a statement that the de Blasio administration refuted, and which he later retracted.
As the first summer of the pandemic approached, Levine called for beaches to officially reopen — a somewhat unpopular position among the political class that he argued would help New Yorkers adhere to critical social distancing guidelines by providing an outlet for relaxing out of the house. The mayor eventually opened the beaches.
Levine has also campaigned on a plan to create a public bank by reinvesting city money typically held through Wall Street. Under his vision, the bank could loan to small, minority- and women-owned businesses, as well as toward investments in affordable housing, green technology, and community land trusts. To revive the city’s small business ecosystem, he would provide direct cash assistance, rent relief, and legal aid to small enterprises. He also supports offering tax incentives to landlords who agree to lower commercial rent.
And Levine has called for an overhaul of the city’s neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to zoning reform, arguing that Manhattan should be holistically rezoned with equity among neighborhoods in mind.
On the “Decision NYC” series from Gotham Gazette and Manhattan Neighborhood Network, he argued that Manhattan needs “a full borough review so that we have equal sharing of the benefits and burdens of development,” critiquing the city’s rezoning efforts as “a patchwork approach” that has unfairly targeted majority-Black and Latino neighborhoods for upzonings that spark development. He envisions a borough-wide plan that adds density to Manhattan’s avenues with required affordable housing development, sets height limits for mid-block projects, and builds in stronger community engagement processes.
Still, he has supported the city’s current initiative to rezone parts of SoHo/NoHo — which may become the first predominantly white residential neighborhood to be upzoned under de Blasio. “We have to respect the integrity of the historic district, but I think there’s opportunity for a real win-win there that will help bring much needed affordable housing to the neighborhood,” he said on Decision NYC, pointing out that SoHo’s edges are underdeveloped.
Levine believes that apartments built on publicly-owned land should be 100% affordable units. For this reason, he opposes the forthcoming skyscraper at 5 World Trade Center, which would build new office space and over 1,300 apartments, 25% of which would be affordable units for families making 50% of the area median income.
At a June debate hosted by NY1, Levine also criticized a forthcoming “life sciences hub” at 310 East 67th Street, arguing that there were better sites in the city for the proposed New York Blood Center project — for instance, in more commercial parts of Midtown and West Harlem. “Basic urban planning principles dictate that you don’t build a huge building mid-block in a residential area,” he said, in a sentiment shared by his competitors. “It is out of scale, and it doesn’t bring any affordable housing.”
Levine has run as a tenants’ rights advocate, pointing to his work on passing — and then accelerating — the right to counsel legislation for tenants facing housing court. According to his website, he supports taxing landlords for vacant residential and commercial units, and he has said he would work to add more NYCHA residents to community boards. He also refused donations from real estate developers over the course of the campaign, joining a number of his competitors.
As part of addressing Manhattan’s homelessness crisis, Levine supports more use of safe haven-style shelters, which typically don’t have curfew or sobriety requirements so as to lower barriers to entry, particularly aiming to help people move off the streets and subways. He has pledged to bring in more supportive housing with built-in social services, citing his support as the local Council member of a 200-unit supportive housing development on 108th Street.
He also supports a number of traffic and street design reforms, including proposals to containerize the heaps of garbage bags that wait for collection on sidewalks and the forthcoming congestion pricing system that will take effect below 61st Street and the revenue from which is supposed to help fund critical subway infrastructure upgrades. He has proposed legislation to institute a residential parking permit system in the city to allocate certain parking spots for local residents. And at the NY1 debate, he expressed support for the pandemic-era expansion of outdoor dining into parking spaces to continue in a tweaked format.
On the issue of criminal justice reform, Levine has called for some police funding to be reallocated towards mental health care teams, social workers, and violence interrupters. He supports removing police officers from addiction, mental health, and traffic-related calls. And he believes in a city residency requirement for all NYPD officers. Levine also supports the city’s plan to shut down the Rikers Island jails and to institute borough-based jails in its place, arguing on Decision NYC that “it’s much more humane to have smaller, community-based jails”; the details of the city’s plans, which he voted to approve and include the building of a new jail in downtown Manhattan, would need to be reevaluated, he added, in light of the city’s pandemic fiscal crisis.
Levine has called for public schools to open five days per week in the coming school year, which is now the plan. He said at the NY1 debate that social distancing requirements that students remain six or three feet apart from one another are “impractical.” He also said he is open to supporting mask-free education, depending on the covid rates. He also stressed the importance of strengthening filters and air purifiers in schools. More broadly, Levine says he wants the city to build more schools to address overcrowding and would work to ensure that every school has medical and mental health professionals.
Levine is himself a public school parent, and he used to teach bilingual math and science classes in a South Bronx school, where he was a member of the United Federation of Teachers. He subsequently founded the Neighborhood Trust Credit Union, a community development credit union that offers affordable loans and financial services, before becoming a member of City Council.
On Decision NYC, Levine said he would approach the Borough President position as “a powerful platform for organizing” to address these issues, viewing the role as an opportunity to build coalitions around the issues he believes in.
“Thank you Manhattan!” Levine wrote on July 6 as he declared victory on Twitter. “I will put my heart and soul into fighting for our comeback.”
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by Laura Glesby
@GothamGazette
City Council Member Vanessa Gibson (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
City Council Member Vanessa Gibson is likely to become the Bronx’s Borough President after winning the Democratic primary in the overwhelmingly Democratic borough. Gibson had centered her campaign around the Bronx’s recovery from the devastation of COVID-19, focusing particularly on the needs of low-income residents facing food insecurity and housing instability.
She would make history as the first woman to serve as Bronx Borough President, and Gibson, who is Black, would be the first non-Latino Bronx Borough President in 35 years.
As borough president, Gibson’s role would in some ways be symbolic, but while borough presidents have little binding power in city government, they still have an influential voice on a number of government processes. Gibson would offer formal advice and input on both the city’s annual budget and local land use initiatives. She would be charged with appointing members to Community Boards, Community Education Councils, the City Planning Commission, and the Panel for Educational Policy. She would have the ability to co-sponsor City Council legislation, have a budget to allocate money to local nonprofit organizations and to capital projects. And perhaps most importantly, she would have a significant bully pulpit, the ability to dedicate energy and staff to focus issues, and a key voice in the city’s extensive process for approving or rejecting Bronx-based land use decisions that require city approval — decisions that are ultimately made by the City Council but often include the voices of developers, the mayoral administration, local stakeholders, and the borough president, among others.
Of the in-person ballots cast during early voting and on primary day, Gibson emerged with 39.2% of first-choice votes, running a slight lead over City Council Member Fernando Cabrera, who received 34.1% of first-choice votes. Unofficial ranked-choice tallies of those in-person votes, excluding absentee ballots, showed Gibson garnering 43,258 votes, or 53%, compared to Cabrera’s 38,365, or 47%, once the “instant runoff” was tabulated.
That left more than 12,000 Bronx-based absentee ballots uncounted, according to the New York City Board of Elections, which would need to be counted then factored into a new ranked-choice runoff. With most of those absentees accounted for, a new unofficial but very close to final tally released by the Board of Elections on Tuesday night showed Gibson with 49,392, or 53.5%, and Cabrera with 42,953, or 46.5%, making Gibson the clear winner of the primary.
That night, Gibson declared victory on Twitter, writing, “Thank you to all of the people who came out to vote in this race. There's plenty of work to be done, but I'm honored to be your Democratic nominee for Bronx Borough President. Thank you for believing in me.”
Cabrera, who has unsuccessfully run for State Senate twice before and like Gibson is term-limited from running for the Council again, represents Fordham, Kingsbridge, Morris Heights, and University Heights. He is known for being among the Council’s most socially conservative members, having faced backlash for a number of homophobic votes and remarks, as reported by Gay City News. Cabrera founded and served as pastor of New Life Outreach International Church, which maintains that marriage is “the exclusive covenantal union of one man and one woman.”
Gibson, meanwhile, supported efforts to build a Bronx LGBTQIA+ Center and along with fellow candidate Assemblymember Nathalia Fernandez, who is coming in third in the race, picked up many endorsements in the race from elected officials, labor unions, progressive groups (which mostly went to Fernandez), and others who liked their candidacies and in many cases also opposed Cabrera’s. Notably, Gibson teamed up and cross-endorsed with mayoral candidate Andrew Yang while Fernandez did likewise with Maya Wiley.
Other candidates in the primary were State Senator Luis Sepulveda, whose campaign was felled by accusations of spousal abuse that he has disputed, and former police officer Sammy Ravelo.
Cabrera ran the best-funded campaign, receiving $261,848 in campaign contributions from 1,644 contributors and garnering $1,065,762 in public matching funds. Gibson, meanwhile, raised $231,409 from 1,229 contributors and received $610,792 in public funds.
The Bronx is heavily Democratic, and as winner of the Democratic primary, Gibson is almost undoubtedly going to become the next Borough President come January, replacing Ruben Diaz Jr., who has been in the position for more than a decade. According to the New York State Board of Elections, there are 532,297 active registered Democrats in the Bronx, compared to 39,172 active Republicans, 12,942 independents, and 2,755 Conservative Party members. In November’s general election, the Democratic primary victor will face off against Sammy Ravelo of the Conservative Party and Janelle King of the Republican Party.
The incoming Bronx Borough President will need to contend with the borough’s long-term fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the Bronx particularly hard. A year before COVID in 2019, the borough had the highest poverty rate across the city — 26.2% of households — with the median household income that year at $40,088. Still, the Bronx was seeing a growing economy, including a spurt of new businesses and development, rising employment rates, and an influx of immigrants and other new residents.
That trajectory changed course early on in the pandemic, when the borough became a hotspot for COVID-19, leaving many Bronx residents struggling with illness, grief, and unemployment. Residents of the Bronx were more likely to have pre-existing health conditions like asthma, which, as The City reported, correlates with higher pollution levels from expressways that run through the borough. These health disparities have long affected Black and Latino residents at a disproportionate rate. The Bronx has the highest proportion of people of color of any borough in the city; according to 2019 Census estimates, Bronx residents are 44.7% Hispanic or Latino, 43.6% Black, 9% white, 4.6% Asian, and 2.9% Indigenous.
As a result, according to a state comptroller report, the Bronx has had the most severe hospitalization and death rates for COVID-19 throughout the city. And the borough has also seen the highest unemployment rates. Early in the pandemic, in May 2020, unemployment in the Bronx surged to nearly 25%, an 18% spike. By the following year, the borough’s unemployment rate dropped to 15% — still more than twice its pre-pandemic levels.
City data shows that just 42% of Bronx residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to 52% of residents citywide.
Taking up health equity as a central issue of her campaign, Gibson ran on promises to bolster infrastructure around public and environmental health, with a focus on food insecurity. On her website, she promises to address healthy food deserts by installing community gardens on the roofs of every elementary and middle school in the borough, while also expanding healthy food access in the Bronx through programs like the city’s Healthy Bodega Initiative, and fostering worker-owned urban agriculture and grocery businesses. She says she will push for the city’s Get Food NYC program, established during the pandemic to provide emergency food, including directly to homebound seniors, to last beyond COVID-19, and for the expansion of free breakfast and lunch at schools. In the borough that has been home to the worst health outcomes for residents of all 62 counties in the state -- a crisis Diaz Jr. has worked to combat -- Gibson also plans to promote exercise programs in public parks, expand greenspaces, advocate for green energy sources throughout the borough, and support protected bike lanes.
Gibson has also focused on affordable housing development, violence prevention and intervention, and police accountability in her campaign.
Given the Borough President’s significant role in land use decisions, affordable housing and tenants’ rights are top issues for Gibson. On her website, Gibson says she will foster Community Land Trusts to create new homeownership opportunities and prioritize developments intended for vulnerable residents including the elderly, young people aging out of foster care, grandparents raising grandchildren, and LGBTQ residents. She has committed to ensuring that new developments are built sustainably. Gibson pledges to advocate for more NYCHA funding and bolstered public housing tenants’ rights. She promises to advocate on a federal level for altered cost of living and area median income estimates that reflect the “reality of living in the Bronx.”
As a Council member, Gibson negotiated with the de Blasio administration over plans to rezone an area surrounding a stretch of Jerome Avenue in her district, pressing for more affordable housing and expanded school seats. She ultimately supported the rezoning plans, despite concerns from community advocates that commercial and residential tenants would be displaced. The rezoning incorporated promises for new playgrounds, parks, and plazas; two new elementary schools; and 1,300 affordable or supportive housing units.
When pressed on her support for the plan at a BronxNet debate in the borough president race, Gibson reiterated her support for the rezoning, saying, “We wanted to create affordable housing, invest in parks and playgrounds and new schools and open spaces.”
Working to increase tenant protections, Gibson championed legislation guaranteeing low-income tenants’ right to counsel, which ensured that all low-income New Yorkers facing eviction have access to a lawyer and led to massive drops in evictions over the last few years. Gibson also sponsored the Commercial Tenant Harassment Bill, which expanded penalties for landlords illegally pressuring renting businesses.
As Council member, Gibson also worked on policing and criminal justice issues. From 2014 to 2017, she chaired the Council’s Committee on Public Safety, where she worked to expand the NYPD by nearly 1,300 officers and expand District Attorney funding with special allocations for the Bronx and Staten Island. The addition of the officers, agreed to the in 2015 city budget, was meant in large part to support a community policing philosophy that Gibson is a proponent of. She stressed throughout her time as the committee chair and since that her constituents want police presence and responsiveness but also respectful and accountable policing.
At the BronxNet debate, she pointed to the Neighborhood Coordination Officer program as a model for how police can build closer ties to residents in their work. At the same time, last summer, as calls for police accountability mounted during a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement that was also met with police brutality, Gibson sponsored legislation to bolster oversight of the NYPD’s use of cell towers, license plate readers, facial recognition technology, and other surveillance technology.
Gibson has also been a vocal community voice against violence, frequently speaking on the issue at rallies and press conferences. She stresses the importance of “addressing the ongoing plague of gun violence through the lens of a healthcare perspective” on her website, pledging to increase support for grassroots, peer-based violence intervention programs through the city’s Crisis Management System of experienced, authentic, neighborhood-based violence interrupters. At the debate, she called for more teen employment opportunities and youth group programs as a means of addressing rising gun violence. “Young people need opportunities. They need safe spaces,” she said. “After this pandemic, we need programs like never before."
Gibson has been a key driver of the city plan to close the Rikers Island jail facilities and open smaller borough-based jails instead, with one new jail in each borough but Staten Island. In 2018, she called for the city to shift away from plans to place the forthcoming Bronx jail in the up-and-coming Concourse neighborhood and build it instead at the tow pound in Mott Haven where the jail would have more square footage — a plan the city ultimately took up.
Gibson’s tenure on the Council has not been without controversy. In 2014, Gibson used her political position to get out of a traffic violation she received for talking on the phone while driving. After her case came before the Conflicts of Interest Board, she received a $5,000 fine for the incident.
Prior to serving on the Council, Gibson was a member of the state Assembly from 2009 to 2013, representing the Bronx’s District 77. Before that, she worked as an assistant and, later, district office manager for state Assembly Member Aurelia Greene, who Gibson considers a mentor and who passed away earlier this year.
Gibson currently serves as Deputy Leader, co-chair of the City Council Women’s Caucus, and chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigation, a position she took up after chairing the subcommittee on the capital budget for the first part of her second and final term.
For her bid for borough president, Gibson received endorsements in the primary from TenantsPAC, LiUNA! NY, Pride Power, and a number of labor organizations including the United Federation of Teachers, the 1199 SEIU union representing healthcare workers, the SEIU 32BJ union representing property service workers, the New York City union of Probation Officers, and the Public Hospitals Workers’ Union. She was also endorsed by Congressional Reps. Ritchie Torres, Yvette Clarke, and Grace Meng; Public Advocate Jumaane Williams; Council Speaker Corey Johnson; and Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, among others.
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by Laura Glesby
@GothamGazette
City Hall (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)
July 7, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Breaking Down the Mayoral Primary Results, with Bob Hardt
Bob Hardt, New York political director for Spectrum News, including NY1, joined the show to dissect the Eric Adams' win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, the larger race, and what comes next.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.
Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Breaking Down Mayoral Primary Results, with Bob Hardt