EDITORIAL: Nydia for Mayor

Back in June 2010, when I started this paper, I didn’t have any experience with politicians.

I didn’t even think I’d ever report on politics. I kind of thought local politics was boring.

However, after Carlos Menchaca became our unexpected councilman, I realized that it was my responsibility as a publisher to take it all seriously.

So I began paying more attention.

The first thing I noticed is that some politicians are always “on.” In other words, you never know what they really think because they never actually talk like a regular person. When somebody always sounds like they are Meet the Press, it’s hard to know when they are saying something they actually believe, or simply something that won’t harm their re-election prospects.

To this day, there are some representatives that I really don’t know at all, despite having read countless press releases, heard speeches and even had conversations with.

Nydia Velazquez was the first elected official to take this paper seriously. She invited us to her victory party in Williamsburg in 2012, which was the race where she defeated Erik Dilan, a candidate backed by Vito Lopez.

She was genuinely excited about beating anyone connected with Vito.

At that time I didn’t quite know why. I thought it was because he was a political boss—but she was standing next to another boss on the victory stand—Sheldon Silver.

I later understood that it wasn’t about bosses at all—she had a personal grudge against Vito, and he against her, but I still wondered why she would stand head and shoulders next to one someone that everyone suspected of being corrupt.

When I asked her about that a few years later, her answer was that it was simply politics. She wasn’t afraid to tell me that, rather than some sugar coated excuse that wasn’t true.

Nydia has been in the US Congress for over 25 years, representing parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.

Her career is distinguished, and she is the minority leader of the Small Business Committee. She is today, and has always been, a strong supporter for immigrant, women and minority rights. She has good friends, including current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whom she recommended to President Obama.

But since Trump became president, she has really come into her own.

She made national news when Trump suddenly decided to block the arrival of anyone coming from some mideast countries. That night, she and fellow representative Jerry Nadler, drove to Kennedy airport, and prevented the deportation of an Iraqi who had spent the past eight years helping the US military in Iraq as an interpreter. We would have deported an American hero.

That act made personal to Americans the terrible policy sought by our president, and was soon halted by the courts.

Then, she worked ceaselessly against the attempt to roll back the Affordable Care Act, holding an informative Town Hall meeting at Gouverneur Hospital in lower Manhattan, together with Joe Crowley and Nadler.

She also works tirelessly behind the scenes. I recently heard her give a talk to representatives of local non-profits, warning them of the repercussions of the change in the national tax law.

This was not an event designed to get her votes, it was simply a congresswoman wanting to do the right thing.

The other day I was listening to Brian Lehrer on my way to work. Lehrer does an erudite interview show program on WNYC radio.

He was talking to Gerson Borrero, a NYC journalist and commentator. I didn’t really know who he was, but soon figured out that this is one smart guy.

The conversation drifted from Roseanne Barr, to Starbucks, and finally to the Harvard study that suggested that thousands had died in Puerto Rico due to the hurricane, as opposed to the official count of 46.

Borrero mentioned that he had spoken earlier that morning to someone in Congress who was planning to ask for an investigation. It turned out that it was Nydia who had returned his phone call. If she were Jewish you might call that a “mensch” move.

Nydia comes from a large and poor Puerto Rican family, with none of the built in advantages that say, someone like George W. had.

She did have a strong father, a worker in the sugar fields who worked to unionize his fellow workers. He obviously had an outsized influence on her life.

I think it would be a refreshing change from our current political landscape to have a mayor who was not only intelligent, progressive, hardworking, but most of all, humble.

Someone who is not so taken by themselves that they become the whole story, not the people they are supposed to be working for.

NYC would be lucky to have her.

gbrook@pipeline.com