In the 1980s, most, but not all, of Sunset Park was linked in the State Assembly with most of Park Slope and Windsor Terrace in a district which was majority Latino on paper, but where the majority of voters were white. Since the 1984 election, it had been represented by Jim Brennan, a white liberal whose support was based in Park Slope.
In an effort to create a district more likely to elect a Latino, Red Hook and Gowanus were moved into the 51st and only the most Latino blocks of the Slope were left in the district, along with Brennan’s residence. In an effort to hang on, Brennan formed a slate with a Black civic leader from Red Hood, Bea Byrd, running for female district leader, and a young Latino from Sunset Park running for the male position.
At the last minute, however, Brennan decided to drop out of the 51st race and run in AD 44, newly home to most of the Slope he used to represent, against incumbent Joni Yoswein, who had just won a special election there and had few of the advantages of incumbency. Brennan won.
Meanwhile, Byrd, ran for Assembly in the 51st, with the young Latino as her candidate for male leader. But while strong in Red Hook, Byrd did not inherit Brennan’s Slope or Sunset Park support, especially when another candidate from the Brennan faction also entered the race.
However, the young Latino running for Male district leader benefited from not only from his own strength in Sunset Park, but from Byrd’s support in Red Hook and the united backing of Brennan’s old support base, especially among white liberals in the district’s Slope portion.
That young man was named Felix Ortiz.
The winner of the Assembly race was another young Latino named Javier Nieves. In his first and only term, Nieves made a big blunder, getting involved in a primary against the incumbent City Council member, a Brennan protégé named Joan Griffin McCabe. McCabe hung on, and the next year Brennan’s folks backed Ortiz for the Assembly seat. While the numbers were close in the rest of the district, Nieves could not survive the overwhelming defeat he suffered among white liberals from the Slope and the other, more slowly gentrifying areas of the district. Ortiz was now the Assemblyman, and there he remains, until this year’s end.
A little over a year later, I was working for Sunset Park’s State Senator, Marty Connor, when I got a call from 44th AD district leader, Jake Gold, asking Connor to buy an ad in his club’s dinner journal. I demurred, noting Connor did not represent a single block of AD 44. Gold answered, “Yes, but he does represent the 51st and Felix Ortiz is our wholly owned subsidiary.”
It wasn’t really true then, and it certainly became less true as time went on, but this year, white liberal voters essentially told Felix Ortiz what one of the tough old-timers on my block used to tell her kids: “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.”
This really isn’t the whole truth. Very little of Gowanus and Park Slope remains in the current 51st and the white voters who voted Ortiz out are mostly young voters not around in 94 or the subsequent years when white liberals were still an essential part of the Ortiz coalition. Although, it should be added that these newcomers are not necessarily any more left than those who backed Ortiz in the beginning; while many in Brennan’s Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID) of the 70s and 80s would not have been comfortable with the moniker of Democratic Socialist, it was partially because some of them identified more readily with the CPUSA (sharing, for instance, the CPUSA view that the Equal Rights Amendment was a bourgeois distraction from the true struggle of the working class).
But young white voters were not the whole story. What led a 26-year incumbent to lose to a young upstart, even when two other candidates were splitting what was supposed to be the left-wing voting base?
A few thoughts:
- Making Unnecessary enemies. Like Nieves in 93, Ortiz had made a fatal mistake in a City Council primary, in his case by challenging the re-nomination of Carlos Menchacha. This not only infuriated Menchaca’s supporters in the district, but lost him the support of LGBT voters, who had always backed him previously. By losing to Menchacha, Ortiz also drew a road map for opponents of his weaknesses, which were amplified the next year, when his supporters barely held on to the female district leadership against a Mechaca supporter. The challenge to Menchaca stirred a hornet’s nest, without which the left insurgency might otherwise have left Ortiz alone.
- It is an open secret that Ortiz spends more time in Albany than his duties require, and has been cited in the press for taking more $174 a day per diems for overnights than almost any other Assemblymember. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder.
- Last year, Ortiz’s prime local staffer and campaign treasurer, Maruf “Mitu” Alam, was indicted and pleaded guilty to using Felix’s campaign committee and its credit card as his own personal piggy bank. It is not in my nature to blame the victim, but something smelled to many locals like mierde del toros. For instance, for how long could a pol’s treasurer keep filing in the pol’s name “no activity” campaign finance reports, or no reports at all, year after year, while the campaign committee held fundraisers, and made expenditures, without the pol ever noticing? This problem was amplified by the rumor Ortiz himself had been on the trip to China which was central to the most glaring counts to which Alam pleaded guilty (Alam has been awaiting sentencing for over half a year, as the investigation continues). The problems already apparent in the indictment were amplified by the loss of Alam’s services and political savvy, and the sudden lack of enthusiasm for Ortiz the indictment generated in the district’s large Arab/Muslim community, where Alam’s father is a cleric.
- The COVID pandemic and a Federal Court decision resulted in the Presidential primary being held the same day as the primary for local offices. The enthusiasm of Sanders supporters who might not otherwise have turned out certainly generated votes for the other socialists on the ballot, State Senate victor Jibari Brisport and Assembly victor Marcella Mitaynes.
- The DSA. White votes alone were not enough to beat Ortiz, but the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) picked a candidate, Marcela Mitaynes, who had a strong track record as a tenant organizer in a district facing gentrification and tenant harassment by landlords looking to reap gentrifications’ benefits (ironic that Mitaynes’ two bases of support were the gentrifiers and the victims of gentrification). Further, the DSA planned its work and worked its plan, and when COVID came, they were quick to alter it. The DSA is notorious for not spreading itself thin. They pick a few races, even though many others elsewhere sought its support, and they concentrate their people and money in those races. Effective use of smoke and mirrors may make DSA’s numbers seem larger than they are, but the very policy of their refusing to bite off more than they can chew and concentrating their resources where they can count is what makes them such a viable threat; so much so that more established politicians like Bobby Carroll and Mike Gianaris have essentially Finlandized themselves in an effort not to incur DSA’s wrath.
- Other factors. A) The old Sunset Park Latino establishment of Puerto Ricans and, to a lesser extent, Dominicans, has gradually been displaced by Mexicans, and South and Central Americans, who are finally flexing their political muscles (Menchaca is Mexican; Mitaynes is Peruvian). B) Though white lefty Katie Walsh’s race for the seat probably cost Mitaynes more votes than it did Ortiz, it should be noted that many less than liberal white Sunset Park old timers, a constituency likely to back Ortiz, knew Katie’s dad Bob, from his days in the leadership of Lutheran Medical Center, and Walsh seems to have done well in the areas in which such old timers are a factor.
Adios Felix.
