(photo: Mayor's office)
February 5, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: Mayoral Candidate Loree Sutton
Loree Sutton, a retired brigadier general and recently-departed commissioner of the city's Department of Veterans' Services, joined the show to discuss her campaign for mayor. Sutton, running in the 2021 Democratic primary, discussed the reasons she's running, her critiques of Mayor de Blasio, and much more.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. 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.
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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
Queens BP special election is March 24 (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)
In low-turnout and low-information elections, like the typical special election in New York City, the prominence of a candidate’s name on the ballot can go a long way -- and that depends largely on the order in which the candidates are listed. Traditionally the subject of gaming by campaigns, for the March special election to name a new Queens Borough President, the order was determined by an unprecedented method: random draw.
“Three candidates filed simultaneously so the order of the ballot is going to be determined, by rule of our commissioners this past Tuesday, for the first three candidates that filed, via the lottery,” said Tom Satte, the ballot coordinator at the New York City Board of Elections, as he announced the outcome like the host of a lottery drawing. He was sitting in the BOE offices in Lower Manhattan in front of a large bingo wheel as another staff member turned, pulled, and read numbers off the colored balls inside.
Normally, ballot order is determined on a first-come, first-serve basis, where candidates are listed in the order in which they submit the requisite number of qualifying petition signatures starting on the submission date set by the BOE. But in the special election to replace former Queens Borough President Melina Katz, which has already seen its share of ballot-access wrangling among nearly a dozen potential candidates, three prominent campaigns -- those of Elizabeth Crowley, Donovan Richards, and Jimmy Van Bramer -- turned in their petitions within two minutes of one another, a margin narrow enough to lead elections administrators to consider using the novel approach for what they say is the first time.
On January 6, the third day to file petition signatures, Crowley, Richards, and Van Bramer, all current or former Democrats in the City Council, each delivered more than the required number of valid signatures and accompanying documentation between 9 a.m. and 9:02 a.m. Following a recommendation by the board’s legal staff and in compliance with state rules, the BOE voted to hold a random drawing among the three candidates to determine who’s name would appear first on the ballot.
“This is the first time that this specific issue happened,” said BOE General Counsel Steve Richman in a presentation to commissioners last Tuesday. “A fourth candidate filed at 9:06, Costa Constantinides, so I guess he’s not applicable [under our rules] because it’s four minutes later.”
The final order on the ballot will be Richards, Crowley, Van Bramer, then Constantinides (another Democratic Council Member), followed by Jim Quinn, Dao Yin, and Anthony Miranda. Van Bramer had dropped out of the race, citing his mother’s health, before the bingo drawing, but since he submitted valid signatures in time, his name will appear on the ballot.
Miranda, a former police sergeant who initially did not qualify because of a technical error on his cover sheet, was added to the ballot following a rare successful appeal. Quinn is a prosecutor and 42-year veteran of the Queens District Attorney’s Office and Yin is a businessman from Flushing.
In order to get on the ballot, candidates must obtain a set number of signatures from eligible voters, which varies depending on the office sought. For the Queens Borough President special election candidates needed to submit 2,000 valid signatures of registered Queens voters by the January 14 filing deadline. In partisan elections, like party primaries, the signatures must come from voters registered with the given party, but city special elections are non-partisan meaning candidates don’t run on traditional party lines, and any registered voter in the district could provide a valid signature. All Queens voters are eligible to vote on March 24, the special election day, and the nine days of early voting beforehand.
Candidates usually seek more than the minimum signature threshold -- often by a factor of three -- because once petitions have been submitted, campaigns try to challenge the validity of their rivals’ signatures in an effort to knock them off the ballot. The ability to submit enough signatures early and to challenge the signatures on an opponents’ petition is usually the sign of a well-organized and well-resourced campaign, and is part of the election calculus of campaign strategists.
The Queens Borough President special election was officially declared by Mayor de Blasio at the beginning of the year, when Katz took office as Queens County District Attorney after winning a crowded and closely-watched race in 2019.
Nine candidates, two of whom failed to get on the ballot, filed with the New York City Campaign Finance Board. In the first filing period all the candidates reported raising a collective $1.4 million in private contributions.
Of the roughly $858,000 spent in the race as of the January 16 filing, the biggest spenders remaining -- Crowley and Constantinides -- are also the only two thus far receiving public matching funds through the city’s campaign financing program. Crowley has spent about $232,000 and received $498,000 in public matches. Constantinides trails slightly, having spent $213,000 and received $477,000.
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio & First Lady McCray participate in participatory budgeting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
The New York City Civic Engagement Commission, established through a charter amendment approved by voters in 2018, is tasked with crafting a new citywide participatory budgeting program modeled after the City Council’s efforts to engage New Yorkers in funding local projects. A plan is required to be in place by July 1, the start of the next city fiscal year.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $95.3 billion preliminary budget proposal for next fiscal year, released mid-January, allocates no funding to the program and the commission’s members worry that it is already falling behind.
The City Council has for years put aside millions of dollars for participatory budgeting, allowing district residents to decide how and where to spend pots of funding for specific community improvements. Last year, the program was implemented by 32 of 51 Council members in their districts – this year, it is 33 – and each dedicated roughly $1 million (sometimes up to $2 million) for various capital projects. Ideas are solicited from the public and can cover everything from bike lanes to public restrooms to park renovations and school equipment.
A 2018 Charter Revision Commission created by de Blasio proposed that a citywide version of the program should be put into place and overseen by the newly created 15-member Civic Engagement Commission (CEC) – eight of its members are appointed by the mayor, two by the City Council speaker, and one each by the five borough presidents.
The CEC has held several public meetings since being named but it has made little progress on the citywide participatory budgeting program except for creating an advisory committee. Members of that committee joined with a coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday, signing a policy memo to the mayor calling on him to set aside at least $500 million for a citywide participatory budgeting program.
Among the groups were BetaNYC, Civic Hall, Girls for Gender Equity, IntegrateNYC, New York Civic Engagement Table, and the Participatory Budgeting Project, as well as Council Member Brad Lander, who first proposed the idea of a civic engagement commission in a bill before the City Council.
The memo carries a sense of urgency, warning the mayor that the CEC’s charter mandate is “at risk of failure” if he does not allocate the requisite funds. The coalition noted that the mayor, in his aborted presidential campaign, proposed putting $1.65 billion towards a national participatory budgeting program. “Now is the time for an equally bold Mayoral commitment, to ensure that citywide PB is a successful legacy program, not an unfulfilled promise,” the memo reads.
The advocates also pointed to other cities that currently have PB programs with a far smaller population. Paris, for instance, with a population of about 2.1 million, allocates a little more than $111 million annually to citywide, district, and school level projects, similar to Madrid. And Mexico City’s Citizen Participation law, the memo says, mandates 3.25% of the total city budget for PB in 2020, about $76 million, increasing by 0.25% each year until it comprises 4% of the city’s budget in 2024. “To reach the same 4% as Mexico City, New York would be allocating billions of dollars!” the memo reads.
The CEC members themselves acknowledged at a public meeting on January 29 that the commission could miss the deadline for launching the new citywide participatory budgeting program. “We're going to implement a citywide program by July 1st, we're sort of already behind schedule,” said Commissioner Annetta Seecharran, who is the executive director of Chhaya CDC.
While the city charter revision requires the commission and several tasks by it, including the participatory budgeting program, it does not mandate any funding from the city.
The demand for money toward the program comes at a tricky time for the city as it contends with potential budget cuts to Medicaid funding from the state, among other possible challenges. Last month, the mayor proposed a relatively conservative preliminary budget with few new initiatives, taking a wait-and-see approach as the state budget is negotiated ahead of its April 1 deadline. De Blasio, working with the City Council and other stakeholders, is likely to increase spending in his executive budget plan and the adopted budget. The city’s Office of Management and Budget often projects a lower revenue forecast to give city officials more flexibility over the budget season.
The mayor’s office is reviewing the advocates’ request, according to a spokesperson.
“The Mayor has long-hailed participatory budgeting as an important avenue for civic engagement that enhances democracy in New York City,” said Jose Bayona, a mayoral spokesperson. “This Administration is committed to extending access to participatory budgeting citywide through the work of the Civic Engagement Commission and in partnership with advocates, volunteers, elected officials and community members.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette