In Brooklyn Political Launching Pad, Another Highly Competitive Council Race
Activists, Council Member Brad Lander & others (photo: John McCarten.City Council)
With voting underway in this month’s primary elections, including for almost all 51 City Council seats, including about three dozen that are “open” due to term limits, crowded fields of candidates are pushing for every vote.
The competition is especially hot, if civil, in Brooklyn’s 39th City Council District, one of the most politically-active areas in the city, with some of the highest voter turnout rates, and the home district of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who represented the district before being elected Public Advocate then Mayor. His successor, City Council Member Brad Lander, is now term-limited and attempting a similar jump to citywide office in his bid for Comptroller, hoping to be catapulted by the district’s voters who will also be choosing his replacement among a large and diverse field of candidates.
The district stretches from Cobble Hill to parts of Kensington and Borough Park. It includes Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Prospect Park, and Windsor Terrace. Due to an overwhelming Democratic majority within the district, the winner of District 39’s primary will all but certainly become the next Council member.
City Council members are responsible for writing and passing legislation, negotiating and approving the city’s budget, performing oversight of city agencies, making crucial land use decisions, and attending to constituent services in many different ways.
Seven prominent candidates have emerged to take Lander’s place and Democratic voters are choosing among an array of former teachers, labor organizers, and political and civil rights activists. The race is set to be decided through early voting June 12-20 and primary day on June 22, along with absentee voting. It is among the first citywide use of ranked-choice voting, where voters can select up to five candidates in each primary in order of preference, and, as long as no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, votes are redistributed as candidates are eliminated in an instant-runoff tabulation.
In addition to citywide issues including post-pandemic recovery, policing and public safety, and an affordable housing crisis, Lander’s successor will need to address district-specific concerns that have been essential to the campaign. For instance, the next Council member will inherit a planned rezoning initiative for an 82-block section of the Gowanus neighborhood, which has proven controversial but appears likely to be a done deal by January, when the next Council class takes office.
The Gowanus rezoning proposal, which Lander has shaped and supported with conditions still being negotiated, would allow for 8,500 more units of housing in the neighborhood, 3,000 of which would have affordability caps on rent. The plan includes developing a 100% affordable complex on a city-owned lot known as Public Place, which is in need of intense environmental remediation before construction begins, part of the larger issue around the Gowanus canal as a toxic site being cleaned up. Proponents say the plan would bring much-needed affordable housing and modernized zoning to the area; opponents claim the remediation and environmental impact mitigation efforts aren’t enough to keep the area healthy, and some have called for a higher percentage of affordable housing and/or more deeply affordable thresholds. One of the key sticking points in the deal Lander is looking to reach with the de Blasio administration is investments in nearby NYCHA developments.
The Council district also overlaps with much of school district 15, spanning from Cobble Hill to Sunset Park, which has initiated rare integration efforts amid the city’s sluggish approach to racially divided schools. The push was led by parents and activists and realized by Lander and Council Member Carlos Menchaca, who also represents parts of the school district, and has shown encouraging results for those who support integrated schools. In 2019, school district 15 eliminated the use of grade and test-based screening for middle school admissions, instead employing a lottery-based system. The move prompted backlash from some of the district’s white families, a smattering of whom reportedly moved their kids to private schools in response.
Educational equity and pandemic-related school issues, including their full reopening, have figured prominently throughout the Council race, with several former educators and public school parents running for the seat.
According to 2010 Census data, the district had a population of 154,341 people, with 65.9% white, 14.2% Hispanic, 12.5% Asian, 4.4% Black, and 2.3% multiracial. Out of the 58,051 occupied housing units in the district, 40,009, or 68.9%, are occupied by renters, and 18,042 are occupied by owners.
During his time as the City Council member of the 39th district, Lander prioritized worker protections, housing rights, racial justice and police reform, sustainability, public education, safe streets, and participatory government. As he’s running for city Comptroller, he has not made an endorsement in the race to replace him.
Shahana Hanif
Hanif, who was born and raised in Kensington, has worked in Lander’s office as Director of Organizing and Community Engagement in Lander’s office, and the Bangladeshi Community Liaison previously. If elected, Hanif would be both the first Muslim woman and the first South Asian woman elected to the New York City Council, along with being the first woman to represent Council District 39.
Hanif has been a Community Board 12 member and a County Committee member in Assembly District 44. She has also worked as a public housing tenant organizer with the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV).
In Lander’s office she has worked especially on establishing and running the participatory budgeting program, which allows residents to have a say in where some public funds are spent, among other initiatives.
Hanif lists her top three issues and solutions as integrating public schools, providing affordable housing for all, and divesting from policing. She also places emphasis on radical language justice and her “NYC Survivor Security Plan.” Hanif’s policies are reflective of her own lived experiences as a daughter to Bangladeshi immigrants, a Lupus survivor, and a member of Muslim student clubs that were said to be infiltrated by the NYPD.
While discussing integrating schools, Hanif has called for abolishing admissions screens, expanding culturally responsive education, and creating sustained pipelines for Black and brown teachers. Additionally, Hanif outlines a plan to expand free childcare in the district and on CUNY campuses, along with fighting for better wages for early childhood educators. She also emphasises mental health services for students throughout schooling including into college.
Within her affordable housing platform, Hanif calls for investing in permanent affordable housing over temporary shelters and combating the ill-effects of gentrification within the district. She says she would prevent the privatization of NYCHA by pushing for more funding for public housing. She also aims to expand tenants rights, specifically the right to legal counsel, and wants to work towards creating a more participatory city planning process, saying the Gowanus rezoning discussion has too often excluded impacted residents.
Hanif calls for defunding and demilitarizing the NYPD, citing a rising budget despite the deaths of Black and brown New Yorkers at the hands of police. She wants to end mass incarceration, surveillance, and over-policing. She calls for defunding the NYPD budget by $3 billion and reallocating those funds to various mental health and youth services, while also insisting on police-free schools that invest in guidance counselors and mental health services as an alternative.
Hanif wants to expand participatory budgeting so community members can help decide where funds are needed the most.
Having watched the most linguistically-diverse neighborhoods in Brooklyn become devastated by COVID-19, Hanif calls for “radical language justice” to defeat barriers to city services and care. Her goals for resolving language injustice include establishing a “Citywide Interpretation Fund” for interpreters, translators, and other interpretation services, creating a pipeline for diverse translators that include a variety of languages rather than those most prominent in New York City and expanding IDNYC, which gives all New Yorkers municipal identification cards.
Among many other policy proposals in a variety of issue areas, Hanif also places emphasis on her “NYC Survivor Security Plan,” which is aimed at helping end homelessness among domestic violence survivors. The plan, developed from Hanif’s own experiences helping victims, calls for the creation of a new citywide “Survivor Security Fund” to provide immediate financial support to survivors and cover essential costs like housing, medical care, and mental health resources. It also outlines a plan to advocate for reforms that allow survivors to leave abusive homes, particularly by ending early lease termination fees and forcing landlords to cover the cost of changing building locks. Hanif says that she would create a social-worker run domestic violence hotline out of her City Council office if elected.
Hanif has gained many notable endorsements, including from the Working Families Party, the Sunrise Movement, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, Muslim Democracy Club of New York, New York Communities for Change, Met Council Action, the Sierra Club, and UNITE HERE Local 100, the union representing local restaurant and food service workers. Along with Brandon West, she also received a co-endorsement from U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
As of June 7, Hanif had raised $84,050 in campaign contributions from 1,184 contributors and qualified for $160,444 in matching public funds.
Justin Krebs
Krebs is among the candidates running a campaign prioritizing education. “Excellent and equitable public schools,” “vibrant and safe main streets” and a “green future” take up the most space within his campaign. According to Krebs’ campaign website, his campaign hinges on energy, creativity, and a 20-year track record.
Krebs’ track record involves years as a progressive campaigner, including the past five years as the National Campaigns Director for MoveOn, said to be the country’s largest, progressive grassroots membership organization. He also founded The Tank, a non-profit, non-commercial theater, and Living Liberally, which is a network of progressive social communities. Krebs also describes himself as an author and father of three children who attend District 39 public schools, where he has been involved in parent organizing and advocacy.
Krebs was previously a constituent liaison for U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton and a professional advocate for parks, civic engagement, culture, labor and democracy reforms, he says.
During COVID-19, Krebs called for more attention from city leaders regarding education in both in-person and remote settings. He also established the Camp Friendship Food Pantry alongside community leaders, and organized a local protest in an effort to help protect the Post Office.
Krebs had been demanding a plan to return to in-person learning full time in the fall. While Mayor de Blasio announced that as the goal, he has yet to present a full plan.
Krebs has called for all proper public health protocols to be followed, as well as outdoor learning, COVID-19 testing, and ventilation for every school in the district.
He has also called for integrating and reimagining schools within the district. He wants to remove the NYPD from schools, eliminate high-stakes standardized tests, and recognize that families have a right to choose their child’s education -- whether that be in a Yeshiva or a special needs institution.
Additionally, Krebs says he will fight for more school funding in order to shrink class sizes, invest in teachers, champion universal summer school to make up for time lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, re-invest in lost programs in STEM and the arts, and increase special needs funding; and he mentions transforming more venues into classrooms, saying “think big.”
Krebs’ is also proposing ways to make District 39’s main streets safer, which includes treating public space and the arts as crucial to neighborhood culture, along with providing viable COVID-19 support to small businesses. He suggests including government-backed loans to cover payroll for small businesses and similar entities. He says that these loans should come in the form of direct payments, and should include undocumented workers within the district. Krebs says he would support proposed legislation (Intro 1796) that stabilizes rent for commercial spaces, while also looking into ideas like vacancy taxes and legal support regarding evictions. Additionally, he says he would advocate for a “Bar Czar” to examine New York City’s nightlife and hospitality industries (though there is already a recently-created city Office of Nightlife with these responsibilities).
Within Krebs’ small business relief plan, he also says that he would support measures to alleviate the disadvantage that retailers like Amazon put small businesses at, while also working at efforts to build collective power among the district’s retailers.
Krebs plans include creating one regular and funded “open street” in each neighborhood while simultaneously creating a “pedestrian first” model within the district overall and creating safe bike lanes everywhere. He places a lot of emphasis on the arts, and giving New Yorkers access to live performances through school and community-based programs, guarantee space for the arts in any new development, create a fund dedicated to the arts and cultural institutions, give creators access to present their work in public spaces like storefronts and provide legal counsel for artists facing landlord conflicts.
He also wants to increase the parks budget and maintenance of green spaces within the district. Krebs seeks to remove the NYPD from traffic enforcement, instead placing control in the hands of the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program by fully funding it.
Another main priority for Krebs is a “Green Future” for the 39th District, including making “New York a climate leader and investing in the parks, green spaces and open spaces that help our neighborhoods thrive, with four main tenets: rooftop solar, safe streets and pedestrian-first zones, reducing waste and food footprints, and accelerating the cleanup of toxic legacies.
Krebs has received endorsements from many local New York City artists and parent leaders as well as Zephyr Teachout, the New York League of Conservation Voters, the American Institute of Architects in New York, and the League of Independent Theaters. Like several others in the race he got the seal of approval from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Courage to Change PAC.
As of June 7, Krebs had received $58,746 in contributions from 497 contributors and qualified for $160,444 in public matching funds.
Briget Rein
Rein, a full-time union organizer with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), has emerged as the candidate with the strongest focus on labor, and she’s been backed by the UFT in the race. She previously worked as a teacher at PS 104 and PS 109, and has also centered much of her campaign on improving education quality and schools’ pandemic safety.
On her website, Rein promises to support UFT efforts to secure sufficient Personal Protective Equipment in schools and promote COVID-19 vaccination. She would seek to expand existing schools and open new ones with the goal of reducing class sizes and overcrowding. Specifically, she proposes a new high school on the border of Gowanus and 7th Avenue, a high school in the Carroll Gardens area, and a new Brooklyn-based specialized high school, preferably in Kensington.
Rein does not want to see the SHSAT scrapped as the entrance exam for the city’s specialized high schools, which admit very few Black and Latino students. She supports universal access to test prep and calls for factors outside the test to be incorporated into specialized high school screening.
Rein also supports the community schools model, which incorporates wrap-around health and social services for families into schools.
On her website, Rein outlines that she would work to bolster police accountability by giving the City Council the power to confirm police commissioners nominated by the mayor, and endow the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) with final disciplinary authority.
While several candidates have promised to support defunding the NYPD and reallocating dollars to external departments devoted to social work, Rein said she supports having the police department itself hire social workers and psychologists to take on calls related to mental health and drug use. Rein has also said she would work with transit workers about where more officers are needed in the subways.
Rein has called for a halt to the Gowanus rezoning efforts, arguing that the area’s flood zone status and necessary remediation should be more thoroughly addressed; expressed staunch support for a municipal Green New Deal program to create green jobs; pledges to institute municipal broadband for all students to access wifi; and supports workforce housing programs for union members.
As of June 7, Rein had raised $84,879 from 513 private donations and received $142,891 in public matching funds. She has an array of endorsements, including a large number of labor organizations, from her employer at the UFT to 1199 SEIU healthcare workers, the NYC Central Labor Council, the Transport Workers Union Local 100, two chapters of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the NYC Council of Carpenters, two unions representing firefighters and FDNY employees, and more.
She has also been endorsed by the National Organization for Women, Stonewall Democrats of NYC, the New York Amsterdam News, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, U.S. Reps. Nydia Velázquez, Carolyn Maloney, and Tom Suozzi, State Senators Leroy Comrie, John Liu, Diane Savino, Brad Hoylman, and Robert Jackson; and City Council members Ben Kallos, Daniel Dromm, and Mark Treyger. She also got the seal of approval from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Courage to Change PAC.
Douglas Schneider
Schneider, a Democratic Party district leader from Park Slope, is running a campaign centered around education and childcare. He is both a civil and defense lawyer who has touted his experience fighting workplace discrimination in court. He has pushed hard for city public schools to reopen five days per week and hosted a town hall on the subject in the summer of 2020. He has spoken to his own experience as a parent to a first-grader in the district.
In particular, Schneider has criticized the school system’s lack of preparedness for the pandemic. He is now running on creating a Pandemic Response Emergency Plan for future public health emergencies, which would prioritize in-person learning, air quality and ventilation-related maintenance, and classroom expansion spaces for possible social distancing measures.
In an interview with South Central Brooklyn United For Progress, Schneider stressed an immediate need for schools to hire more “social workers and child psychiatrists and trauma informed professionals, because there’s going to be a lot of kids coming back to school with real trauma, especially in communities that were hit hardest by COVID.” He added, “We need to reinvest unprecedented amounts in public education.” On his website, Schneider calls for the removal of police officers from schools, instead supporting more social workers and mental health providers to intervene in place of school resource officers.
Schneider supports integration efforts such as the end of screened middle school admissions and prioritizing school seats for low-income students, English Language Learners, and students facing housing insecurity. He also promises to expand affordable and multilingual childcare opportunities, with a focus on “childcare deserts” like in Kensington, Boro Park, the Ocean Parkway corridor, and Windsor Terrace, he says. He would also expand after-school offerings, partnering with higher education students.
To address small businesses’ struggle to survive the pandemic, Schneider proposes tax relief and utilities assistance for local commerce. He would institute commercial rent control practices, including incentivizing landlords to fill vacant commercial spaces, and would cap commission rates for “app-based services” like Seamless.
Schneider also proposes a Green New Deal-esque plan for a “green jobs pipeline,” creating jobs by retrofitting buildings for greater sustainability, constructing renewable energy infrastructure, and jumpstarting flood prevention projects. On his website, he notes that he would create training initiatives for those jobs through partnerships with CUNY and local organizations and businesses.
Schneider has prioritized traffic safety, declaring support for more speed and red light cameras as well as protected bike lanes. According to his website, he is in favor of restricting commercial deliveries to “off-hour deliveries” between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. and creating more pedestrian-oriented “open streets” for outdoor dining and other public events.
By June 7, Schneider had received $49,342 in campaign contributions from 368 donors as well as $160,444 in public matching funds. Bklyner reported that Schneider has been endorsed by a group of 39 individual community activists, including safe streets advocates, police reform activists, Parent-Teacher Association members, and Democratic District Leaders Shaquana Boykin and Julio Pena. He has also received the endorsement of the Brooklyn Young Democrats.
Brandon West
West is, along with Hanif, running furthest left in the primary, and he has the backing of the New York City branch of the Democratic Socialists of America. The two candidates were co-endorsed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.
West was a budget analyst in the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget from 2013 through 2015 and then served as the City Council’s Senior Legislative Financial Analyst from 2016 to 2017. He then worked to increase voting rights as a manager of the Center for Popular Democracy’s national voting rights and democracy campaign. West is also a former president of New Kings Democrats, where he led a borough-wide engagement campaign called Rep Your Block that got hundreds involved with the local Democratic Party on a reform platform.
One of West’s central plans is restructuring the NYPD. On his website, West calls for the city to divest at least $3 billion from the NYPD and to halve the number of uniformed police officers, currently about 35,000, remove police from schools and hospitals, and eliminate the NYPD’s role in responding to mental health, homelessness, and drug-related calls. He wants to see the department’s problem-riddled Vice Enforcement Division shut down. West would work to make sure the city provides job training and counseling to NYPD officers transitioning out of the job. He would expand the city’s Mobile Crisis Team program so that it can respond to all mental health-related 911 calls. West wants to see the Rikers Island jails closed without constructing new jails.
Among housing and anti-poverty initiatives, West supports “community-based” and publicly controlled utility models, arguing that no one should be denied utilities based on their ability to pay the bills. West subscribes to a Housing First philosophy for homelessness intervention, which prioritizes housing shelter residents and other unhoused individuals, regardless of employment status or addiction. He opposes any privatization of NYCHA properties, though does not appear to have made clear where he thinks the public housing authority can get the $30-40 billion it needs for repairs. West proposes a Green New Deal focused on NYCHA properties, promising to “eliminate NYCHA’s carbon pollution by 2030” while creating new “green jobs.”
He would also prioritize plans to “de-center the automobile” and enhance public transportation with a focus on transit deserts.
West is a staunch opponent of the current effort to rezone parts of Gowanus. On his website, he calls for more affordable housing than promised, with units offered at a deeper level of affordability. He also criticizes the placement of housing on an environmentally contaminated site, echoing some activists’ skepticism that the plot can be adequately remediated. West would require a Racial Impact Study to assess every rezoning initiative a bill that just passed the City Council in mid-June but has been part of Lander’s approach to the Gowanus plan.
Finally, West supports school desegregation efforts like those of the local school district, district 15, which recently switched to lottery-based admissions for middle schools, rather than grade, test score, and audition based admissions, along with other pro-integration measures as mentioned.
As of June 7, West has raised $78,813 in campaign contributions from 1,107 donors, and he has received $160,349 in public matching funds. He has been endorsed by organizations including the Democratic Socialists of America, New Kings Democrats, New York Communities for Change, Citizen Action of New York, Tenants PAC, Met Council Action, Resilience PAC, Streets PAC, Churches United for Fair Housing, and the union for CUNY Faculty and Staff, PSC CUNY. West also has the backing of State Senators Julia Salazar and Jabari Brisport, two socialists from Brooklyn, and progressive leaders and former candidates Cynthia Nixon and Zephyr Teachout. And along with the personal co-endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez, he also got the seal of approval from her Courage to Change PAC.
Mamnunul Haq
Haq is running a campaign centered around bridging healthcare access, improving affordable housing, and protecting workers’ rights. As a Bangladeshi immigrant himself, Haq says he truly understands these issues, and has fought to resolve them in his roles as a labor organizer, a public health advocate, and a working class New Yorker.
In an interview with NYC Votes, Haq explains that his vision for the office is to reinvest in communities. To Haq, these investments can range anywhere from improving multilingual resources to building and securing affordable and dignified housing.
Haq’s past experiences include time as a labor organizer, a public health advocate, an activist, a member of Community Board 12, and a yellow cab driver. He helped advocate for the Avenue C Plaza, safer streets, participatory budgeting, and improvement of language and social service access, he says. He currently works as a Program Associate and Community Health Worker at NYU’s School of Medicine.
In his time as a cab driver, Haq advocated for drivers’ rights and support. Between 1994 and 1996, Haq founded the Bangladesh Yellow Society New York, Inc., and co-founded the Bangladeshi Cabbie Society to gain monetary support and safety for him and his fellow cab drivers. Then, in 1998, he co-founded the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the largest cab driver union in the country to date. Haq advocated for the Taxi Driver’s Protection Act intensely after he was stabbed by a passenger. The act was passed in 2014, marking a victory for both Haq and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
Within his platform for bridging healthcare access, Haq says many poor New Yorkers likely have not received medical care in the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and says “community health workers” are the solution to this issue. They would be members of the community who work with the local healthcare system to provide care to people in need, operating at a neighborhood-wide level. Haq sets his goals as improving healthcare access in unserved communities, using community health workers to serve as a primary go-to for neighborhood residents instead of emergency services and increasing health screening.
Haq aims to set up community health worker access points within a 10-minute walk from everyone in District 39. He also aims to recruit and train community residents to create a pipeline for community health workers, meaning jobs for area residents.
Another one of Haq’s main priorities as a candidate is affordable housing. Haq divides this issue into three subsections: protection for renters, homelessness, and community ownership and small landlords.
Within the “protection for renters” part of his plan, Haq proposes mobile housing clinics every week within a 10-minute walk for all District 39 residents. These clinics would educate renters about tenant rights while also providing free legal counsel. Haq also says he would advocate that the government cancels all rent fully and automatically from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to the conclusion, along with expanding eligibility for rent relief to include everyone who cannot afford it, regardless of immigration status. Haq wants to raise fines for negligent landlords, use tax policy to curb speculative behavior by landlords, and improve conditions for basement apartment conversions.
When discussing community ownership and small landlords, Haq proposes advancing tenant, nonprofit, and public acquisition of distressed rental buildings, giving small landlords priority access to landlord relief funds, and supporting small landlords with mortgage forgiveness.
Haq has spent many years advocating for workers’ rights, including his own, and it is now a pillar to his campaign. He divides his plan into four sections: bettering the workplace, helping workers understand their rights, protection for gig workers, and generating jobs.
He outlines steps to improve workplace standards, strengthen legal protections for organizing, offer hazard pay for frontline workers, and create a citywide fund that supports undocumented workers. He also proposes setting up bi-weekly free clinics to recover workers’ unpaid wages, access workers compensation benefits, and address health and safety violations. He aims to provide free training to workers regularly on critical health and safety rights, and says he would work to provide free legal support when workers confront various violations.
Haq uses his own experience as a cab driver to place emphasis on sending yellow cab drivers back to work by forgiving many loans, fees, and leases. He also proposes full employment status to gig economy workers, which would give workers protections like paid sick leave and unemployment benefits.
Haq also claims that these proposals will generate jobs through allocating funds for workforce development, adult education, and job training opportunities, along with devoting funding for Community Health Workers in order to create a strong, grassroots network.
Additionally, Haq’s campaign places emphasis on abating some of the effects of the Gowanus rezoning and examines the slack in OneNYC 2050 and the NYC Green Deal.
As of June 7, Haq had raised $33,130 from 589 contributors and qualified for $160,349 in public funds.
Jessica Simmons
Simmons is running as an educator, a former principal, and a parent. She was the principal at a charter school that is part of Uncommon Schools, the Brownsville Collegiate Charter School; according to her LinkedIn profile, she served in this role from 2008 to 2015, and now works at The New Teacher Project, a national organization focused on teacher training and education consulting.
On her website, Simmons promises that if elected, she would fulfill all office needs with local small businesses’ products. She proposes the creation of a small business roundtable to provide her office with input on the business community’s needs, and to create a Business Improvement District in the area. And she supports funneling rent assistance to small businesses.
Simmons supports defunding the NYPD by $3 billion, and would redirect those funds to mental health resources and youth activity programs, she says on her website.
While she has not laid out specific education plans on her website, she has expressed broad intentions to “accelerate learning” in schools to make up for learning losses over the course of the pandemic; to focus resources towards special needs students; and to end school segregation. She told Patch that she supports expanding school integration efforts similar to those of Brooklyn’s School District 13, where middle schools began giving admissions priority to low-income and housing-insecure students for 57% of seats at each school.
Simmons opposes current plans to rezone part of Gowanus, expressing concern that the Combined Sewage Overflow tanks would be overwhelmed by storms.
Simmons had raised $18,771 from 90 contributors by June 7, and did not qualify for matching funds.
Housing and Policing Spark Debate
At two recent forums, candidates clashed on how to balance historic preservation with affordable housing development, as well as how to address police brutality and public safety.
On May 26, the District 39 Democratic candidates participated in a forum hosted by the Park Slope Civic Council to further communicate their plans for the area to prospective voters. According to reporting by Bklyner, the candidates had different perspectives on the preservation of Park Slope Historic District, an area that prohibits drastic changes to their buildings, and what it means for affordable housing development.
Earlier that week, on May 24, the candidates had convened for an online forum hosted by Politics NY. Through friendly dialogue, they expressed a clear focus on education reform and desegregation. Krebs, Schneider, and Rein argued that students urgently need to return to in-person, full-time education; Rein urged families to enroll their kids in summer school this season to catch up on learning loss from the course of the pandemic. And Hanif and Simmons spoke out against screened admissions for local schools in favor of lottery admissions systems.
The only major point of disagreement between candidates that emerged during the debate pertained to police accountability and the movement to defund the NYPD.
West argued in favor of defunding the police department; he has pledged to reduce the police budget by $3 billion. Police don’t fix the root causes of crime, he argued. “When we overinvest in policing and cops, it’s too late — we’re just dealing with the symptoms. We’re funding the city in a way that isn’t keeping the community strong.”
True public safety, he said, happens “when people’s everyday needs are met.” Hanif, Simmons, Krebs, and Schneider did not weigh in at the debate but have expressed somewhat similar points of view.
Haq disagreed. “Simply defunding is not the solution,” he said, stressing that he would prioritize “reform and transparency and accountability” without dramatically reducing operations. Still, he said he would reallocate funds from smaller parts of the NYPD budget, like police dogs and helicopters, “and send it to mental health, guidance counselors, and social workers.”
Rein and Haq said they would put forward stronger accountability measures for police.
Rein said she would prioritize “making sure the City Council is the hiring agent for the police commissioner — making sure the City Council has oversight over the day-to-day structure of the department.” She would also integrate social workers into police activity.
West pushed back on this approach. “Accountability for police racism and brutality isn’t enough,” he said. “Every reform we’ve had, the police have tried to undermine...They find a way to get around it.”
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by Laura Glesby
@GothamGazette
Kira Silbergeld co-authored this article.
Ray McGuire's Strengths and Weaknesses as He Runs for Mayor
Ray McGuire (photo: McGuire compaign)
[This article is part of a series on the leading Democratic mayoral candidates' strengths and weaknesses.]
Ray McGuire has a good story to pitch to New Yorkers. His rags-to-riches journey of growing up poor in Ohio, working hard and getting a few breaks to eventually become one the few top Black executives on Wall Street made for a compelling narrative for a candidate for mayor. He could lend his business acumen and global banking experience to the task of governing New York City, particularly at a time of fiscal and economic crisis. He could blend his lived and work experience -- both “what I’ve done” and “who I am,” as he says -- to speak to New Yorkers of all backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, and aspirations.
But McGuire’s campaign has failed to make a mark even as he and his donors pour millions of dollars into what is looking like a doomed effort to go from virtual unknown to mayor in one campaign.
McGuire, the former vice chairman of Citigroup, may serve as little more than a cautionary tale as he has sought to run as a business-friendly candidate focused on economic revitalization and growth, racial justice, and education, with moderate positions and heavy emphasis on his private-sector resume. His own success in persevering despite structural racism in his upbringing and then the financial industry may endear him to some number of moderate voters, especially Black homeowners in Southeast Queens, for example, but his four-decade career with Citigroup and work with clients such as Koch Industries is unlikely to earn him any plaudits among the city’s more liberal and progressive quarters. A campaign funded by wealthy corporate donors and his own personal wealth, and profiles that highlight his expensive art and literature collection in his residence on Central Park West set him well apart from a city where the median household income is barely $64,000 a year. As much as McGuire has sought to bridge that distance by telling his personal story and offering policies he believes are in the best interest of those struggling to get by and striving for social mobility, he has not been able to break through and has floundered in the public polling in low single digits.
With more moderate and centrist positions on crime and public safety, education, taxes, development, and more, McGuire has been running in the same vein as several other primary candidates like Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia -- all of whom had major built-in advantages or got key endorsements that McGuire could not match. The progressive lane, meanwhile, has been occupied by the likes of former counsel to the mayor Maya Wiley, Comptroller Scott Stringer, and former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales. Former federal housing secretary Shaun Donovan, the eighth candidate in the ‘top tier’ of the primary, has been somewhere in the middle of the ideological pack, and he and McGuire have often clashed at forums and debates.
McGuire’s executive experience doesn't compensate for a lack of a political constituency, and though he has had ties in communities of color and in business, the arts, and philanthropy, he had virtually no name recognition among voters to speak of when he started the campaign, putting him well behind candidates like Adams and Yang.
With just a few days to go before primary day, June 22, and with early voting in full swing and the final televised debate over, Adams, Garcia, Wiley, adn Yang appear to be the top four candidates in the race. McGuire, in poll after poll, has been at or near the bottom and hasn’t broken past single digits. Though he often breaks through with clarity during interviews, forums, and debates to talk about problems and some of his proposed solutions, McGuire has often shown a lack of depth on many issues and repeated broad talking points without supporting details. Though he appeared among other candidates at many of an endless stream of zoom forums in front of interest groups, clubs, and others, he often failed to speak knowledgeably about the topics at hand, indicative of his lack of experience with or in local government.
When McGuire announced his candidacy in December, he made clear his belief that his extensive background in business was the key to his campaign and his prospects for success if elected.
In many public appearances since then, he has explained that he would run the city in something of a business-like manner, emphasizing his economic plans first and foremost, pitching his management of major transactions and large budgets, and offering principles from the corporate world. In trying to get voters to take a chance on an unknown political quantity with extensive private sector and philanthropic experience, McGuire has attempted to blend his professional and personal stories, stressing his poor upbringing and the racism he has faced as a Black man, in the corporate world and beyond, including with the police. He is fond of talking about “what I have done” in regards to his work and “who I am” about his fuller life story, of which his business experience is a key piece but not the full puzzle.
McGuire worked at Citigroup for nearly four decades, starting in 1984. His expertise is in investment banking, for which he recruited and worked with clients worldwide, including governments and corporations. Before leaving the position to run for mayor, he had been Citigroup’s global head of investment banking and vice chairman for 15 years, which he says is the longest tenure anyone has had in the position. While at Citigroup, McGuire says he helped manage major deals and client budgets, and advised clients on how to grow their businesses, make tough decisions, and invest with a keen eye on the future.
During interviews and appearances, he has often referred to his management of roughly 50 client budgets, many “larger than some state budgets,” as his preparation to take the reins on New York City’s economic crisis, lead the sprawling and complicated government with its own nearly $100 billion annual operating budget, and kickstart his own initiatives.
“As someone who has been at the center of high stakes deals with enormous consequences, I can tell you this: to make this vision a reality, you need someone who can bring together people from all walks of life, who can unify the often warring factions and inspire them to focus on the bigger picture,” McGuire said in a February interview with Gotham Gazette. “That’s been the hallmark of my career and it will be the very centerpiece of my term serving you as your mayor.”
He has, for instance, repeatedly said it was a mistake to lose out on Amazon’s 'HQ2' satellite campus, which was projected to bring tens of thousands of jobs to the city, and has said he would have gotten the deal done right.
To this point, he released his economic recovery and jobs -- “The McGuire Comeback Plan” -- early on in his campaign, and it is the main focus of his pitch to voters as he promised “the biggest, most inclusive comeback this city has ever seen.” He is the candidate, he argues, who can truly accelerate the speed at which the city’s jobs and economy bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic, but with important improvements to help all New Yorkers, including workers and small business owners.
“It goes without saying that we find ourselves in unprecedented times,” McGuire said at a virtual campaign event about his economic plan in late January. “In New York, we have a pandemic that’s gripped our city more deeply than anywhere else in the world, an unparalleled economic crisis and a demand for racial justice that will not go unanswered. I am proud to share with New Yorkers my bold vision to stage the most inclusive economic recovery in New York City history, and that starts with this plan.”
The Comeback Plan — which McGuire said on the Max & Murphy podcast will be New York City’s largest-ever jobs creation program — is meant to bring back and otherwise create 500,000 jobs that were lost over the course of the pandemic. Half of these would be in small businesses, he says.
In order to pull this off, McGuire separates the plan into three categories: Go Big, Go Small and Go Forward, a mantra he has repeated in front of many audiences over the course of the last six months.
Go Small includes a city-financed wage subsidy to help small businesses by paying 50% of each of their employees’ salaries for a year, along with cutting red tape for business owners and creating a deputy mayor for small businesses.
The subsidy plan, which he calls the Comeback Job Excelerator, would be aimed at businesses that lost over 40% of their “total revenue compared to 2019 levels,” the Comeback Plan’s website explains.
Also included in Go Small are plans to allow small businesses to keep the city’s portion of their sales tax receipts for a year, with the expectation that the additional money gets put back into the business, potentially for the purpose of hiring more staff.
Go Small would also allow city permits and licenses to renew for a year without any fees, provide rent relief or forgiveness to small businesses, get small business owners relief on their utility bills, and set up a Red Tape Commission “to identify additional ways to reduce burdensome regulation and unnecessary costs and delays.”
For the Go Big portion of the plan, there is an infrastructure program that will create or bring back jobs relating to construction and maintenance. This includes conducting renovations on bridges, subway stations and elevators, tunnels, and roads, as he explained in an interview on NY1’s You Decide with Errol Louis podcast, in addition to building more and fixing up existing affordable housing buildings.
The infrastructure program also incorporates sustainability, with plans to accelerate the installation of resilient infrastructure, solar panels, green roofs, and charging stations for electric cars. The idea is that these new initiatives would create a need for more workers, and thus more jobs.
Another large part of the plan is to start up the “NYC Comeback Festival,” which would kick off in spring 2022. This is meant to be a yearlong effort to revitalize the arts and culture and hospitality sectors of the economy, including tourism, by bringing in and promoting venues, galleries, performance stages, parks, bars, and restaurants.
When it comes to Go Forward, the plan discusses ensuring minority- and woman-owned business enterprises (MWBEs) get treated equitably by the city, building “the most inclusive and innovative workforce training system in the world,” fixing the property tax system, and making affordable child care more accessible.
“My plan gives a lifeline to everyone who is working, who is looking for a job and can’t find one, regardless of the type of work,” McGuire said.
“He has a lot of diversity in his appeal,” said Tyquana Henderson-Rivers, the campaign’s political director, in a phone interview, “given his policy chops, particularly around the economy, knowing how to create jobs, and understanding what it's like to manage big staffs and big budgets. People get that. One thing that people don't question is his ability to do the job.”
While many see McGuire’s successful Wall Street background as a strength and like his economic comeback plans, others view his resume with great skepticism, doubt his approach to the city’s revitalization, and question his campaign donors.
“He was never a serious candidate for the race, because he comes from Citibank. It seems highly unlikely that New Yorkers are gonna elect a Wall Street banker to become mayor,” said Charles Khan from Our City PAC, a political action committee formed to promote progressive candidates in this year’s election.
CNBC reported earlier this year that McGuire’s campaign has been in large part financed by wealthy business leaders, including well-known Republicans, presumably thanks to his close ties to Wall Street and large corporations. McGuire was the only candidate in the top tier who declined to participate in the city’s public campaign financing program. He said it was because he didn’t need to take any public money, especially at a time of fiscal hardship. His campaign was thus able to accept larger individual donations than those being accepted by all other top-tier Democrats but Donovan, and McGuire has taken in $5.9 million in max contributions of $5,100 and raised nearly $12 million (including $2 million loaned from McGuire’s own money and a $1 million personal gift to his campaign) and has blown past $10.5 million in spending. More than $4.3 million of the money he raised came from people who aren’t residents of New York City.
While other candidates have put more attention on small-dollar contributions from constituents, McGuire has received the maximum allowed from both of his campaign co-chairs of finance, Kirkland & Ellis partner and corporate restructuring attorney Jon Henes and New York Giants co-owner Laurie Tisch, and many others. Thanks to his high rate of fundraising, the Campaign Finance Board raised the spending cap for the primary election from $7.3 million to $10.9 million.
McGuire’s elitist image deepened when The New York Times’ editorial board mayoral endorsement interview transcripts were released. Asked, as other candidates were, if he knew the median sales price for a home or apartment in Brooklyn, which is about $900,000, he guessed $80,000 to $90,000. He later simply called it a bad moment and said of course he has a better grasp of real estate prices than he showed.
While McGuire is running on his Wall Street success, there are specific elements to his work that may be problematic for many Democratic voters. During his time at Citigroup, McGuire had Koch Industries, which used its immense wealth to back conservative causes and candidates, as a client, The New York Daily News reported. City Limits reported that McGuire’s work at Citigroup caused thousands of layoffs from mergers he facilitated. In one particular case — when McGuire’s client, Kraft Foods, purchased Nabisco — 7,500 workers were laid off in one shot nationwide.
McGuire has been repeatedly asked if he is a Bloomberg-esque figure, with some obvious differences, trying to make a similar leap from the business world to City Hall. He largely chafes at the question.
Part of what McGuire typically points to in answering is his lived experience, growing up poor and Black “on the other-other side of the tracks” in Ohio, and often being the only Black person in many corporate settings as he ascended the ranks, other than some of the talent he made a point to hire and help.
New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay asked McGuire about the comparison.
“And in a world where the demands are greater and the divide is broader, I would make sure that we brought the city together differently than how Michael brought it together,” McGuire said in response to Gay’s question, according to the transcript of the editorial board endorsement process interview. “But I think he was very effective in leadership. I’ll be equally effective in leadership and management and bringing the city together. I’ve done that. I know how to do that. I’ve done a lifetime of that, especially in the midst of one of the greatest financial crises that we’ve had.”
He also told Louis that he plans to bring his skills of strategic logic and management, which he generated over his 36-year business career, to the role of mayor, recalling Bloomberg’s business-like style to running the city.
When asked by the hosts of the FAQ NYC podcast about being referred to as “the Black Bloomberg,” McGuire said that he resents that, being that he’s had different lived experiences from the former mayor and that it’s been one of his goals throughout his career to bring more Black people into business, and would be for city government too.
McGuire has been endorsed by several Democrats from Southeast Queens including U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, who chairs the Queens Democratic Party, state Senator Leroy Comrie, and Assemblymember Vivian Cook; as well as Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez; former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel; and police reform activist Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner. There are also a slew of celebrities backing him including director Spike Lee, actors Samuel L. Jackson and Steve Martin, rappers and producers Diddy, LL Cool J, Nas, Jay-Z, and Rev. Run, former New York Giants player Tiki Barber, and former New York Knicks players Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley.
Though that list displays a broad popularity among prominent figures for his nontraditional campaign, it also indicates McGuire’s weakness in being able to pull support from the traditional power brokers in the city. He has, for instance, no union endorsements and has been ranked third in endorsements by The Chief-Leader, The New York Daily News, and the Sephardic Community Federation.
Beyond his economic plan and business background, McGuire also has plans for education and public safety — the other two pillars of his campaign.
When it comes to these topics, it is not uncommon for him to reference his childhood. The three-time Harvard University graduate grew up in Dayton, Ohio being raised by a single mother and his grandparents with his two older brothers and six foster siblings.
He credits his education in both Dayton and New England with getting him to where he is today. If his business experience has “uniquely prepared” him for the high stakes economic aspects of being mayor, McGuire believes his life story has prepared him for the rest.
“I think once New Yorkers understand how it is that I got the opportunity — through education — and without that somebody else would be talking to you today, that’s going to be a top priority,” he said on the Max & Murphy podcast in December.
“My mission is simple,” McGuire said. “I want to be mayor for the greatest, most inclusive comeback this city has ever seen. I believe that I am a candidate who meets this moment on every level.”
Political observers, however, say the moment has left McGuire behind.
“McGuire's problem is his strategic approach was to create a coalition between outer borough Black voters and outer borough white ethnics,” said Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist with the firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, in a phone interview. “So you would find Black voters would take pride in his achievement and feel he could do a great job. The white ethnics would say ‘We want a businessman to do this.’ That was his potential strength.”
But, Gyory noted, McGuire was aiming for the same coalition as Adams, who has a career in public service and has spent his last two terms building relationships in those very constituencies. Adams also laid a more pronounced emphasis on tackling crime and public safety, which is near or at the top of issues for primary voters according to polls, while McGuire has been hammering home his plan for job creation and economic recovery. “Functionally Adams put together around crime, the coalition that McGuire did and he's been edged out of it,” he added.
“He has to be the prototypical business type to win,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant, in a phone interview. “But the last prototypical business type was Mike Bloomberg who wasn’t prototypical at all because he had a deep involvement in the city. Ray McGuire didn’t. So McGuire's campaign will be looked at in short as one that was a good idea, but was badly executed.”
[This article is part of a series on the leading Democratic mayoral candidates' strengths and weaknesses.]
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
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by Amanda Salazar
@GothamGazette
Free-for-All in Flushing as Voters Choose Next City Council Member
Council Member Koo, center, among others (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
In central Queens’ City Council District 20, which spans Flushing, Murray Hill, and Queensboro Hill there is a crowded and competitive Democratic primary race coming to a head this month, with early voting ongoing and primary day on June 22. The candidates face an onslaught of contentious issues such as anti-Asian hate crime, rezoning of the Flushing waterfront, a busway in downtown Flushing’s Main Street, and small business struggles.
Hoping to replace outgoing Council Member Peter Koo, known as the “Mayor of Flushing,” are Hailing Chen, an Uber driver and gig worker activist; John Choe, a community organizer and public policy professor; Anthony Miranda, a retired NYPD sergeant; Sandra Ung, a lawyer and congressional aide; Neng Wang, a leader at the Chinese‐American Planning Council; Dao Yiin, Secretary-General of the Shanghai Association of America; Ellen Young, a former State Senator; and Ming-Kang Low, who does not appear to be running much of a campaign.
The race has put the Queens Democratic establishment on trial. City & State reports that a coalition of seven Democratic candidates (Chen, Choe, Low, Miranda, Wang, Yin and Young) have positioned themselves against the Democratic Party-endorsed Ung in an attempt to strategically use ranked-choice voting to take down the party-backed pick, who is endorsed by Koo, among others.
The coalition wants a “change in political leadership” given concerns around the party’s lack of accountability and transparency. Miranda and Choe say they were excluded from the Democrats’ decision to endorse Ung, and claim that the party internally predetermined nominees without public input. Meanwhile, Choe, an outspoken local activist opposed to private market development, is facing his own opposition as he’s being targeted by his fellow community board members.
The candidates are fighting to represent a district that, according to 2010 Census data, has experienced a massive influx of Asian-American residents since 2000, with a 37% increase from 2000 to 2010. Of the district’s 160,913 residents, in 2010 64.1% were Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), 15.6% Hispanic, 15.4% white, and 2.7% Black.
Racist reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have sparked a surge of hate crimes against the city’s AAPI population, which Koo has been outspoken about combatting, calling on Congress and the President to enact the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act to look into pandemic-related hate crimes against Asian-Americans. Koo announced support for mayoral candidate Eric Adams based in part on his tough-on-crime stance, but also related to Adams’ positions on education, including keeping the specialized high schools admissions test in place (a position Adams has taken after reversing himself).
A recent report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that between the first quarter of 2020 and 2021, New York City experienced a 223% increase in hate crimes against AAPI residents. It has become a key issue in the race to replace Koo.
Health care infrastructure in Queens, especially coming out of the pandemic, is another pressing issue in the district and beyond. In a June 1 letter to the State Department of Health, 51 Queens candidates and elected officials, including Ung and Hailing in this race, demanded expanded hospital capacity in the borough, which currently has the fewest hospital beds per capita in the city, according to a Bloomberg report.
The long conflict over the busway project on Main Street in Flushing to create a mostly car-free zone for the 19 bus lines that run through the bustling commercial area is also still an issue driving the race. Despite a 2018 DOT report demonstrating the value of the busway, a consortium of Flushing businesses including the Flushing Chinese Business Association, says it will hurt their profits even though the report found that 79% of shoppers get to a business by walking or using public transportation. Proponents of the plan, such as Mayor de Blasio, point out that it will “serve 150,000 New Yorkers everyday.”
Koo was opposed to the busway and led a misappropriated “Business Lives Matter” chant during a Department of Transportation press conference last July. With Koo’s support, the business consortium sued the city for not consulting the public enough before altering the streetscape, and initially obtained a temporary restraining order before ultimately losing the case earlier this January.
Even mayoral candidate Andrew Yang weighed in on the busway, saying he is “open to re-examining” the new project, which was finally implemented on January 19 and quickly increased bus efficiency. Candidates in the district will have to decide if they will nurture or fight to roll back the nascent project, especially if the next mayor looks less favorably on the busway.
Rezoning on the Flushing waterfront is another major issue shaping the primary race, though the project is moving ahead after the City Council, at Koo’s urging, approved a private rezoning plan in December 2020 that Koo said would “transform an isolated and polluted brownfield into an active waterfront community with open space and promenade for the public.”
The Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD) plan proposed to the City Council by a group of three developers -- F&T Group, United Construction & Development Group, and Young Nian Group -- drew sharp criticism from some and support from others, a lightning rod of sorts like many other large development projects in the city, in this case over questions about whether high-end condos and a new hotel would be bad for the surrounding area in terms of driving up the cost of living or whether the project would be beneficial given the economic activity and new amenities, like park space.
Hailing Chen
Chen immigrated to New York from southeast China’s Fujian province when he was 14, working in restaurants and as an Uber driver to support his family and pay for college. Chen organizes with the Independent Drivers Guild and a Machinists Union affiliate to rally for gig workers’ rights, having already seen success in helping to win a 44% pay increase and better benefits for the city’s for-hire drivers, he claims on his campaign website.
Chen hopes to bring this fight for gig worker rights to the City Council with his arsenal of $43,220 in privately-raised funds and $160,443 in public matching funds, according to the NYC Campaign Finance Board (CFB) website as of June 8. While some legislation has been introduced in the City Council to address the classification of gig workers as employees, Chen told the Queens Chronicle that the Council also needs to guarantee gig workers a “livable wage.”
On his website, Chen’s platform is relatively sparse, with only a sentence per campaign goal outlining a community solution.
On housing, Chen said he will advocate for all New Yorkers to have the chance to own their own home, build 500,000 new affordable housing units, and aligned himself with Koo’s pro-basement apartment position to combat overcrowding. Chen was a signatory of the open letter demanding Koo’s opposition to the SFWD waterfront development project.
While driving for Uber, Chen told Documented NY that he witnessed first-hand the discrimination that fellow Chinese drivers faced from unreasonable customer complaints and anti-Chinese rhetoric with no way to fight back. While he hasn’t proposed any specific solutions to address the surge of discrimination against AAPI communities, Chen said that community outreach should be a starting point to fight for vulnerable populations.
Less definitive on the topic than some of his opponents, Chen says that while the Main Street Busway is important for efficient sharing of the road, he wants to see more parking spaces and is open to changes in its design, although he did not elaborate on specifics.
Chen, proponent of a $1,000 universal basic income, wants a larger social safety net that includes city-run “Food Hubs” to provide free and reduced access to quality food for the needy, as well as a city-based universal health care system with no deductibles or copays.
John Choe
Choe immigrated from South Korea as a teenager to New York, where his family started a grocery store. He is a SUNY and University of Chicago graduate, and has continued his work in public affairs and policy as an adjunct professor at Queens College. Choe worked for now State Senator John Liu beginning with his City Council tenure in the ‘90s, eventually becoming his Chief of Staff in the State Senate. He ran for the seat in 2009, when Liu was elected comptroller, but lost in the primary. Choe founded numerous community groups such as the Flushing Interfaith Council to promote religious tolerance and the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce to support Flushing’s small business community.
Choe, an active player in the SFWD dispute as the leader of one of the organizations who filed suit against the city and a signatory of the open letter to Koo, told The City that his campaign is “insurgent … opposition to the development community,” which he claims has “their tentacles in our democracy.” Choe is a member of Queens Community Board 7, which approved the SFWD plan 30-8 in February 2020. An outspoken critic of the project during the hearings, Choe said he would only support the plan if 500 units of affordable housing were included.
On his website, Choe says he will fight to ban luxury developments until more affordable housing units are constructed, the ULURP land use process is reformed, and more community input is considered. Additionally, Choe hopes to reform Area Median Income to more closely represent residents’ ability to pay the rent and ensure that tenants are able to stay in their homes despite pandemic misfortune.
Choe’s vociferous criticism of development made him a few enemies on the more pro-development CB 7 on which he sits. In an unprecedented move just days before early voting was to begin, CB 7 informed Choe of numerous allegations they filed against him of ethics violations that threatened his membership to the board, the Queens Daily Eagle reported.
Choe denies that he violated ethics codes and called the investigation “a witch hunt against me” full of “funhouse mirror images” of his anti-development stance that often clashes with the board’s leadership. In a statement to QNS, Choe said that he thinks the move is an attempt to “quash dissent and consolidate the power of the board leadership, which rammed through the rezoning.”
Choe’s loud dissent during the SFWD approval process was interpreted by fellow officials as unnecessary levels of defiance. Koo, who chose not to nominate Choe to the board earlier this year, although he was eventually appointed by Donovan Richards, the Queens Borough President, told the Eagle that Choe always presented an obstacle to advancing the board’s agenda instead of “[listening] to the majority.” Kelty, CB 7 Chair, echoed Koo's complaint, saying that she was “tired” of Choe’s repeated failure to comply with the board’s proceedings and that he has even “gotten up and left meetings” part way through.
Choe thinks that the investigation is politically motivated to suppress development opposition. It sends “a message that you shouldn’t be participating, you shouldn’t be speaking out and participating in these types of public hearings and meetings,” he told the Eagle.
Despite the investigation and controversy, Choe claims many endorsements for his City Council run with the support of the Working Families Party, health care workers (1199 SEIU), school administrators (CSA), immigrant justice group Make the Road Action, racial justice group Community Voices Heard, tenants’ rights group Tenants PAC, street safety group StreetsPAC, the National Association of Social Workers, environmental justice group Resilience PAC, AOC’s Courage to Change PAC, State Senators John Liu, Robert Jackson, and James Sanders Jr., City Council Members Jimmy Van Bramer and Brad Lander, and Assembly Member Ron Kim. According to the CFB, Choe raised $54,629 in private donations and $160,444 in public matching funds as of June 8.
Choe has been a strong proponent of the Flushing Main Street busway, and hopes to expand open streets and add protected bike lanes, according to his website.
In an interview, Choe said that when combating anti-Asian hate crimes, the police “are not always there” and “cannot be relied on.” Instead, he argued, we must rely on people in “our neighborhoods” to “stand up, protect and intervene.”
Anthony Miranda
Miranda, who lost to Richards in last year’s Queens borough presidential race, is a retired NYPD sergeant who now chairs the National Latino Officers Association, which he helped start after seeing discrimination in law enforcement.
Miranda claims to have been voted “chairman of the Democratic Coalition for Council District 20,” the group of seven candidates uniting against Ung. He is outspoken against the Democratic establishment whose “machine politics” fail to serve the community, he argued in a recent press release.
No endorsements are published on Miranda’s website, although the NYPD Sheriffs Association endorsed him during his campaign for borough president. He fundraised $25,695, none of which was eligible to be matched with public funds, according to the CFB as of June 10.
While he did not sign the open letter against the SFWD development plan, Miranda told the Queens Daily Eagle that he opposed the plan for its lack of affordable housing units and likelihood of raising rent for Flushing residents. Instead, Miranda wants “a moratorium on luxury development,” to rezone to revitalize less populated areas of Queens, and to “remove any caps to building public housing,” he explains on his website.
On his website Miranda also vows to expand pedestrian- and bike-friendly areas, but made it clear that “these expansions will not be made at the expense of small business.”
In an interview with QNS, Miranda said that defunding the NYPD would only serve to hurt the department’s diversity, accountability and transparency. He did say, however, that funding social and community services ought to be a priority, but the money can come from “more than one institution.”
Miranda’s website offers an in-depth policy platform on public safety with accountability, ending mass incarceration, decriminalizing poverty, ending racial targeting, and stopping the war on drugs as key goals. He wants to increase the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s oversight, appoint a permanent independent special prosecutor to investigate police misconduct, promote the hiring of officers from local communities, and provide addiction treatment and other support to individuals incarcerated for crimes related to “poverty, mental illness, [or] addiction.”
Lack of diversity and equal opportunity in the city’s specialized schools are a problem in Miranda’s eyes. He hopes to make funding more equitable across all schools and expand the admissions process to consider qualities beyond testing such as extracurricular activities. Making CUNY free is another, more long term education goal of Miranda’s.
Sandra Ung
Ung has had an extensive career in public service and community advocacy and has widespread support among elected officials, including Koo and Rep. Grace Meng. A Flushing resident since age 10, Ung emigrated from Taiwan and attended New York public schools throughout her life, ultimately getting her law degree from Columbia Law School. She is now special assistant to Meng and has served in the state parks department, the city comptroller office under two comptrolllers, and the state Assembly.
As a community advocate, Ung sits on the Flushing YMCA board and is the executive director of At the Table PAC, a group working to expand representation of women and minorities in politics.
In May, Ung cross-endorsed with mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, who praised her as a “rising AAPI leader” in a time when “increasing AAPI representation in government is going to be critical to ensuring a fair recovery.”
Ung had raised $109,504 in private funds and $160,444 in public matchings funds according to the CFB as of June 10, and she is endorsed by many Queens elected Democrats, beyond Koo and Meng, and some from other boroughs: Council Members Keith Powers, Carlina Rivera, Justin Brannan, and Karen Koslowitz, State Senators Toby Stavisky and John Liu, and Assembly Members Catalina Cruz, Nily Rozic, Dan Rosenthal, and Ed Braunstein; as well as many labor unions: teachers and school supervisors and administrators, property service workers, public employees, nurses, hotel workers, home health care workers, communications workers, sanitation workers, firefighters, transportation workers, retail workers, and others. Endorsements from community and advocacy groups are also plentiful for Ung: New American Voters Association, NY League of Conservation Voters, National Institute of Reproductive Health, NY Pan-Asian Democratic Club, Stonewall Democratic Club, Lesbian & Gay Democratic Club of Queens, women in politics group 21 in ‘21, and Vote Pro Choice.
While her plethora of endorsements, pedigree, and ample funding make her a clear frontrunner, Ung’s website platform often falls back on fluffy rhetoric without providing specifics.
In an interview with QNS, Ung listed pandemic recovery as her campaign’s top priority. To support small businesses impacted by the pandemic, she wants to end fining businesses for minor mistakes, add language liaisons to the Department of Small Business Services, and organize seminars in law and business for small business owners.
Ung also hopes to expand after-school programming and bring more gifted and talented programs to Flushing schools, she states on her website.
To combat anti-Asian hate crimes, Ung says she will fully fund the city’s Commission on Human Rights so that discrimination and hate crimes are investigated and prosecuted and promises to be a “steadfast advocate for civil rights for all New Yorkers,” she puts it on her website. She told Jim Owles, an LGBTQ-focused club, that police officers should be removed from schools, taken off of mental health response calls, and no longer preside over traffic enforcement.
In July 2020, the Queens Daily Eagle reported that Ung was skeptical about the busway’s “lack of parking” and diversion of traffic to nearby streets, arguing that small businesses should be consulted before “we implement any changes of this magnitude.”
Ung has not signed the open letter to indicate opposition to the SFWD project and told The City she had yet to make a decision on the issue. She told Jim Owles that she thought “organized labor and community groups are brought into the [development] discussion too late.”
Neng Wang
Wang, the former director of the Chinese‐American Planning Council’s Nan Shan Senior Center, immigrated to New York City from Taiwan to attend St. John’s University, eventually obtaining a master’s in social work from Hunter College. He is running as more of a moderate or conservative than other candidates in the primary aside from Yin.
Wang’s campaign centers on a law-and-order platform, securing him the endorsement of the city’s police unions: Police Benevolent Association (PBA), Detectives’ Endowment Association (DEA), Lieutenants Benevolent Association (LBA), and the Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA). Wang said that he “will make public safety [his] priority, which includes restoring the NYPD budget.” (The PBA co-endorsed Wang and Dao Yin.)
He is also endorsed by the Asian American Voters Alliance, NY Laundromat Business Association, local political group Kissena Democratic Club, a financial advisory group and two law firms. His campaign had $140,348 from private donations and $99,775 in public matching funds, according to the CFB website as of June 10.
Last November, Wang told The City that he aligned with Koo in his support for the SFWD plan because it will create “thousands of permanent jobs” and help the suffering economy. On his website, Wang vowed to support landlords by granting “reasonable property tax relief, freezing property taxes, and providing low-interest loans.” He will also “advocate for tenants who have difficulty paying rent,” although he doesn’t say how.
Education is another major tenet of Wang’s platform is supporting education. Wang hopes to bring more gifted and talented middle school programs to the district and maintain the specialized high school admissions test (SHSAT), he explains on his website.
He will also fight to “provide tax relief, reduce the burden of tickers and violations, and increase access to low-interest loans” to ensure that Flushing’s once prosperous small business community survives the pandemic.
Part of Wang’s platform to promote small business is his opposition to the Main Street busway, which he argues on his website is a “reflection of a longstanding institutional blindspot towards the economic engine that has made Flushing into a commercial and shopping destination.”
Dao Yin
Yin, born and raised in China, immigrated in the late ‘90s to Queens, where he became the Secretary-General of the Shanghai Association of America and is now the executive Vice President of the Queens Residents and Voters Coalition. After losing in the Democratic primary to Donovan Richards in the Queens borough presidential election last summer, Yin hopes to represent this slice of Queens in the City Council.
Yin is endorsed by former Assembly Member Jimmy Meng, several other current and former candidates for local office, and former President of the NYPD Hispanic Society Louis Hernandez. Several local Sikh, Muslim, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Nepali community leaders have also voiced their support for Yin. Along with the PBA co-endorsement, he also has support from the Asian Americans Alliance, National Police and Veterans Foundations, and the Guang Dong Association of Americas.
Yin had raised $26,748 in private funds and $160,444 in public matching funds, according to the CFB website as of June 10.
Yin is focusing his platform on law-and-order, according to his website, and wants to increase NYPD funding -- a point of clear deviation from most other candidates, aside from Wang. After receiving the PBA co-endorsement, Yin said that “more than ever, we need to support the NYPD” in fighting looting and anti-Asian discrimination.
Also similar to Wang, Yin is “totally against” the Main Street busway, although on his website, he claims that “unreliable” buses hurt Queens residents who have long commutes.
On education, Yin says he would promote fine arts, support charter schools, and preserve the specialized high school admissions test (SHSAT), according to his website.
Yin did not sign the open letter pressing Koo to oppose the SFDW rezoning plan, and has said it could be instrumental to Flushing’s COVID-19 recovery by bringing job opportunities and affordable housing. During his run for borough president, Yin told QNS that he would fight to eliminate luxury housing tax credits and apply them to low and middle income housing.
Ellen Young
Previously the first Asian-American woman elected to the New York State Senate, where she served for one term before her defeat in the 2008 primary to Grace Meng, Young has also been an NYPD Auxiliary officer and a small business owner.
As a state senator, Young fought for increased middle-class and senior housing, among other things, and became the first Asian-American woman to pass a New York state law, according to her website. In 2008, her primary race against Meng was tense, with Meng criticizing Young for being “a creation” of her former boss, then-Council Member (now State Senator) John Liu, and Young’s campaign manager calling Meng’s portrayal of herself as the American candidate “straight up racist.”
Young is endorsed by some of the highest profile Asian leaders in the city, including her old boss, Senator Liu, and City Council Member Margaret Chin and Assembly Member Ron Kim -- splitting this type of support with Ung. Young also has the backing of a number of community leaders.
Young raised $68,535 in private fundraising and $160,444 in public matching funds, according to the CFB website as of June 10.
Young is perhaps the candidate most vehemently opposed to the Flushing Main Street busway, having recently told StreetsBlog that “the main reason [she] decided to run was because the busway is a “punitive tax” that “is murdering Flushing.” On her website, she expounds the importance of “reliable and accessible transportation” and the need for more community input and review on streetscape issues.
To combat anti-Asian hate crimes, Young proposes creating hate-crime focused police units and funding the NYPD’s community policing programs.
Young has no platform for housing on her website, aside from mentioning expanding affordable senior housing, and has not spoken on the Flushing special district rezoning debate. She did not sign the SFWD opposition letter.
Like many of her opponents, Young wants fully-funded schools with expanded gifted and talented programs and to preserve the specialized high school admissions test, coupled with more preparatory resources.
Ming-Kang Low
Low does not have a campaign website nor any other campaign presence online (aside from a sparse Facebook page), but has raised $13,945 in private donations with no public funding according to the CFB website as of June 10.
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by Carmen Vintro
@GothamGazette
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