[Title corrected...thanks you know who you are!]
This is not about the mayoral race. If numbers stand as they are (and I can tell you from experience the preliminary counts have lots of problems because of the fact that the machines have not been well maintained) then there won't even be a mayoral runoff. But there WILL be a runoff and it is an important one that I don't want to get ignored.
This diary is about Public Advocate and why I think this is a particularly important race this year.
I want to urge my fellow Kossacks to join Planned Parenthood, the League of Conservation Voters, the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, Central Labor Council, National Organization for Women, Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (disclosure: my wife is on the board of CBID), Councilman Jumaane Williams and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery (GREAT progressives), DC-37, SEIU 1199, UAW, Central Labor Council (CLC), the Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club (LGBT) and many others in supporting Tish James for Public Advocate in the Oct. 1st runoff election in NYC. I know her personally and she is amazing. I also want to refer you to Sidnora's previous diary endorsing Tish James.
I will begin with a story...
Back during a mayoral race against Bloomberg (probably last time around), there was an event on a street corner in Brooklyn. Tish James was scheduled to arrive to rally the troops for the Dem candidate. Tish was opposed to the nearby Atlantic Yards development proposal and the developers organized a pro-Bloomberg counter demonstration. These developers (led by the Forest City Ratner corp) tended to use the same protesters over and over, so by now the counter protesters and Tish knew eachother despite being on opposing sides.
The counter demonstrators were rude and abusive, saying great things about Bloomberg and disgusting slurs against Tish and the mayoral candidate. I am pretty good in such situations and figured it would be good to create a less adversarial situation so I struck up a conversation with one of the counter demonstrators, finding some common ground. As I was doing this, arrived and Tish strode up to the crowd. She is tall and arresting and people notice her wherever she goes. All eyes turned to her, supporters and counter demonstrators alike. Everyone stopped their chants and watched as she came up.
She warmly embraced her supporters. Then she strode over to where the counter demonstrators were, addressed them each by name and embraced them. I saw all hostility drain from them and they looked almost sheepish in her embrace. She had diffused all tension in one instant and although both sides continued to express their opposing views, everything was basically alright once Tish had arrived.
There are two things that struck me here. First, Tish stands up for the community even when it is not to her political benefit. While at the same time Brooklyn politicians Hakeem Jeffries and David Yassky straddled the fence on the development plan (which turned out HUGELY corrupt and has yielded few of the promised jobs and little or none of the promised affordable housing), and hence didn't have well-funded developer opposition, Tish stood up for the community against a corrupt project and so had very well-funded developer opposition. She could have taken the easy route. Instead she chose the community route.
Second, Tish knew how to meet even the opposition as a friend, a skill that is very much lacking in NYC politics. She commanded a crowd with compassion as soon as she arrived on what was previously a tense scene.
Tish James is strong but also knows how to engage those who oppose her to blunt their opposition if not to change their minds.
Details of NYC politics leading up to the runoff below.
For those who don't know Tish, here are a few videos before I get to the meat of my diary.
Tish James at a Living Wage rally:
Tish James on Stop-and-Firsk (which de Blasio supported then swung to oppose...and I hope he stays in opposition!):
Here is Councilwomen Tish James and Margaret Chin out in support of Occupy Wall Street:
I don't have the same view of Bill de Blasio as most of you. I actually know him. I live in his former district and have been involved in politics in the area for more than a decade.
Bill de Blasio talks a good line but he is at root solidly a developer-created, slick politician. He is an excellent campaigner and knows how to work a crowd. But once challenged on issues I have seen him lose it, getting snippy and dismissive and losing his populist persona and coming off like he doesn't care what us little people think. He regains that populist persona before his next public event, and it serves him well on the campaign trail, but he is NOT at heart a populist. And as the NYT points out he is not a true progressive either, using progressive ideas as useful masks to show the public, but not what he actually does. (NOTE: the NYT of course had an agenda when they said this, but it is rare that I agree with the NYT on local politics...so take our agreement there as you will).
Bill has been a solid supporter of almost every development project he ever saw and, despite his claims, he is very solidly supported by developers. I used to call him the "LLC" candidate because when he ran for Public Advocate it seemed like most of his supporters had the last name "LLC." At a political meeting I heard him flat out say he didn't care about preserving libraries in NYC from private development (though he has been standing up for ONE of the libraries slated to be sold to private developers). Those who lived in his district lost a lot of trust in him over the years because they felt he didn't stand with them.
And de Blasio is NOT clean. He had major developers (like Ratner of Forest City Ratner, whose project he supported through thick, thin, and scandal) bundling for his campaign and he was fined $20,000 by the Campaign Finance Board for misuse of campaign money. He had just as many financial scandals as any other candidate in the mayoral race, but you just didn't hear about it so much in the press. Point is I really feel dKos is placing him on a pedestal without really knowing the man behind the words. He is a slick, calculating, lying politician...which doesn't rule him out for your support, but it does mean you should take him with far more grains of salt than I have seen around here.
Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating for Bill Thompson should there turn out to be a runoff. I am not sure who I would vote for in a mayoral runoff. Thompson is linked to some really, really corrupt machines and is almost as much as a developer shill as de Blasio. So don't take my comments above as being pro-Thompson or, Jehovah forbid, pro-Lohta. That is very much not my point. My point is this: no matter who wins the mayoral race at this point, the developers are celebrating already and whatever the rhetoric, the 1% will continue to prosper and the 99% will continue to flounder. Bloomberg policies WILL continue under any of these three candidates, it is just a matter of whether it moves slightly to the right (Lohta) or slightly to the left (de Blasio and Thompson) and what style each will take in continuing more or less Bloomberg policies. In terms of style I think de Blasio beats the others. Is that enough for me to support him? Maybe.
Turning to Comptroller: I like Scott Stringer and have met him several times. He reminds me of Marty Markowitz before Markowitz went batshit insane and became what I once dubbed the Angry Clown (sadly on a site now defunct). Amiable and a good cheerleader for the city. But without much substance. AND he is ALSO a pro-developer candidate. When we switch from John Liu to Scott Stringer we will go from someone who stood up to developers when their projects broke promises to the city or were corrupt, to someone who (like Bill Thompson before, I should add) will do very little whatsoever. John Liu is the only NYC Comptroller I know of who actually DID anything. So the developers will have a supportive mayor and a do-nothing Comptroller. Which they will love.
That leaves Public Advocate to actually advocate for the public rather than developers. Of course developers have had almost free reign for years, which has led to the selling off of libraries and parks to private developers, luxury housing development without the balancing affordable housing that is promised to the city in return for tax breaks for the developer, rising rents, etc. John Liu has really been the only citywide official to stand up at all to developers on a regular basis and hold them to their promises and catch them when they are corrupt. We will lose that and maintain basically a Bloomberg style of nearly unlimited mayoral giveaways to developers. Which, again, leaves Public Advocate. A relatively weak position but not, as the do-nothing holders of the position have claimed, a completely powerless position.
NYC has only ever had ONE effective Public Advocate in the entire history of the office: Mark Green. I never liked Mark Green. To me my son, as a newly talking infant, summed up Mark Green at a political meeting when (intending to ask for some more Cashews, please, one of his then favorite foods) yelled out in the middle of a Mark Green speech "CAT NUTS!" Sure, Jacob wanted cashews, but somehow he managed to sum up Mark Green right there in a sort of impressionistic sort of way.
But Mark Green really made something of the Public Advocate position and he really did stand up to the mayor at times. Since him, we have only had do-nothing Public Advocates, including Bill de Blasio, I might add, who did about as much as Public Advocate as Bill Thompson did as Comptroller. Bill de Blasio simply talks a better talk than Bill Thompson. Neither really used the office to accomplish anything. Maybe that is why I don't care too much about which of the Bills we get as mayor. Neither has done much with their previous positions except toot their own horns without accomplishing all that much tangible.
I also know Dan Squadron, who is entering the Public Advocate runoff in second place but with huge corporate money behind him. I like Dan. He is a very smart and nice guy. I have talked with him on several occasions and he KNOWS I have yet to support him in a race, but he still spends time discussing issues with me. The only thing he ever asked of me was if I came up with one of my infamous nicknames for him I should warn him first. I assume this was after I called David Yassky "Bloomberg's Personal Surrender Monkey" publicly but I think Squadron didn't realize that other than that one, most of the nicknames I used were actually coined by my wife. Though my calling Nick Perry essentially the Democrat's sponge cake candidate in one race did stick, perhaps more than I intended.
Back to Squadron. I like him and I respect him. I can tell you some great things he has done for a mutual friend with no benefit to himself.
But Dan Squadron is also corporate through and through. He really is a Bloomberg Democrat (though by no means as much as Quinn) with all the baggage that carries. Smart, corporate, well-connected, entitled. To be a bit overly harsh with a back handed complement, Squadron really does mean well in a very well considered and thought out way...much as the British Empire's idea of "White Man's Burden" was well intentioned and, in its way, extensively thought out. Well intentioned, very thought out, and yet fundamentally flawed because of the elitist assumptions that ultimately lay behind the intentions and ideas. I am exaggerating here regarding Squadron, but it is what he reminds me of.
Dan would probably be a better Public Advocate than Bill de Blasio was. I think de Blasio ONLY saw it as a stepping stone and another feather he can put in his "progressive" plumage but he never used it as a tool to get things done for New Yorkers. I think Squadron would actually look for things he could get done...but only as far it won't hurt his future ambitions. And he still will basically be just one more pro-developer member of city government. He in no way will be the balance to the mayor that the position was intended as. Squadron, de Blasio and Stringer would be a developer dream come true and the city would have no balance to the massive influence of developer money.
Tish James is just as progressive as Squadron on most issues and MORE progressive on most other issues like community input into development projects, preservation of green space and libraries from sale to private developers, mayoral control and charter schools. She has strong union support and is supported by some of the most liberal organizations in NYC. She has Working Families Party and (Howard/Jim Dean's) Democracy for NYC endorsements (as does de Blasio, I should in fairness add given the contrasts I am drawing...showing how complex NYC politics can be). She also has DC-37 union support, like Bill de Blasio's main progressive rival for mayor (John Liu). Tish has Planned Parenthood and NOW support. She has League of Conservation Voters and Tenants PAC support. She has been endorsed by both Amsterdam News (one of the oldest black-targeted newspapers in NYC) and El Diario/La Prensa.
Tish James is what we need for Public Advocate (since the BEST person, Norm Siegel, gave up running for the position). She will use the position for what it was intended for: standing up for NYC communities against mayoral policies that favor the wealthy and powerful, including developers, even in cases where it is against her best political interest (as she has shown in the past). Squadron will use it mostly for his own purposes as a stepping stone, and will avoid standing up to anyone whose support he will want for future ambitions, which will include most of the 1%.
I respect Dan Squadron and his supporters. But I think NYC needs Tish James for Public Advocate. I think she will do a much better job, has much more diverse (if far less wealthy) support, and has been in the trenches with our communities for longer than Dan Squadron has been in politics. Please help support Tish James for Public Advocate.
(And may I add a personal congrats to DFNYC activist Costa Constantinides for finally winning City Council!)