I have been offered and accepted an opportunity to continue writing about the political scene in Brownstone Brooklyn, even though I will be stepping aside as the president of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats while I remain a general and executive board come September.
In New York City politics it is close to impossible to unseat an incumbent elected office holder and that is particularly true with respect those state officeholder’s who haven’t yet been indicted. An incumbent has the advantage of name recognition, a staff singing her virtues, free mailings, and better funding. When you add to that a redistricting process where the incumbent has selected an electorate predisposed to her, well it just isn’t a level playing field. When it comes to City Council races at least there are term limits and matching funds for campaign contributions. There are no such countervailing factors at the state level, yet.
That leaves us to look at the non-incumbent race that touches upon the area where I have a passing familiarity. In the 52nd Assembly District where Pete Sikora takes on JoAnne Simon and the other perennial candidate, Doug Biviano (the potential spoiler in the race). Among the consultants and the politically experienced people with whom I speak Doug’s appearance on the ballot will be of some limited help to Simon.
JoAnne Simon, although not technically an incumbent, has some of those advantages. She is a party functionary, as a district leader, and as such is endorsed by the head of the county organization. She also has name recognition from her previous runs for a city council seat and for district leader. As a largely self-financed candidate, having lent her campaign $100,000.00, JoAnne Simon has a substantial war chest. Pete Sikora has raised substantial sums with much of his money coming from the Communication Workers Union and its members. This isn’t a surprise given that Pete is an economist for the CWA. JoAnne Simon is a practicing attorney. Pete Sikora, who I continue to strongly support, must be viewed as a formidable but underdog candidate in the race.
Councilmembers Lander and Levin, State Senator Squadron, the Working Families Party, along with IND and a number of labor unions, have now endorsed Pete Sikora. Congresswoman Velasquez, Assemblywoman Millman, and State Senator Montgomery along with LID and CBID have endorsed Simon. On the surface it looks like the guys against the girls, but at a less superficial level, it is the newer elected officials versus the party establishment. I am particularly supportive of the WFP and its endorsed candidates at this juncture because WTP refused to rubber stamp the endorsement of the Governor and got a pledge to push for Democratic Party control of the State Senate. On the heels of Democratic control there will likely be passage of the women’s rights agenda and campaign finance reform that have been languishing until now.
Sikora is expected to do well in Park Slope while Simon is expected to well in the Heights with the other neighborhoods up for grabs.
Simon and Sikora have each sent out their first pieces of campaign literature with Pete emphasizing things he has done and JoAnne emphasizing a testimonial. Our mailboxes should be full from now until early September.
6 Comments
Hmm. If the labeling on the photo was inclusive, it would have mentioned that the other person you identified, Susan Raboy, is a strong supporter of Jo Anne Simon.
Sikora may be a nice guy, but he doesn’t really hold a candle to Jo Anne in terms of knowledge of the whole district and the many issues in the district – which go beyond LICH. I’ve been honestly puzzled as to why WFP put up a young male, relatively inexperienced candidate against a woman who certainly earned her stripes as a reformer – Jo Anne was one of the few local Democrats to push back against the ultimate”old boy insider” rule of Vito Lopez and I don’t remember any of the the men who are now supporting Sikora having the will to push back against Lopez (some of them were hand picked by him).
I’m also not so willing to give WPF leadership praise for the way they endorsed Cuomo (nor, would it seem are a significant number of of the WFP rank and file) – especially in terms of the pretty well known Cuomo m.o, it was hardly what one would expect of real progressives.
Last, but not least, the inclusion of a “girls vs boys” (really!!!) dismissal is truly annoying. This woman is firmly committed to supporting another woman who has been a terrific litigator (both as lead and as adviser in cases that range from important disability cases to Atlantic Yards cases to work on protecting branches of the Brooklyn Public Library) and who shares a vested interest in the passage of the Woman’s Rights Agenda.
It’s great to see the launch of a column on Brooklyn politics. I wrote one myself for many years, most recently from 2002 to 2005. But I question whether this important task should be given to anyone with a vested interest. I suppose that something is better than nothing, so long as full disclosure is made by the author about any allegiances, but given the great potential of the subject matter in the hands of an independent journalist, a part of me thinks we should hold out until one comes along who is up to the task. The risk of having a non-independent columnist write about Brooklyn politics is that readers are always going to suspect something is being left unsaid. For example, in the above piece one might come away with the impression that Simon is part of the Brooklyn Democratic machine. While that is nominally true, the piece doesn’t mention that for years she was part of the “reformers” wing fighting against the machine when it was controlled by Clarence Norman. It might have been better if for his first column the author wrote about a race to which he had no connection.
Erik, you miss the point; the whole point is for Mark to write only about the races in which he has a vested interest. So, you will never learn that Mark and his crowd ran a candidate for District Leader two years ago against Jo Anne at the behest of Vito. That is why he feels he can slur Jo Anne Simon by saying she is running on testimonials, when those testimonials come from those who’ve worked with her in her successful battles on behalf of the disabled and in fighting and exposing corrupt politics.
Pete Sikora has been a somewhat effective lobbyist for those who’ve paid him, almost always on the side of good, although his literature shows he does not believe Truman’s adage that “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit,” since he seems obsessed with hogging it all for himself.
But, whatever the truth of his record in Albany, the fact he’s been totally absent from the neighborhood, with the exception of his work on LICH, which he got paid for. He seems to think the most notable thing about that is he got arrested. I think the most notable thing is the name of the pro bono lawyer who represented him (and herself and the rest of the demonstrators) when he got arrested:
JO ANNE SIMON.
Thanks, Howard, for bringing Hope Reichbach into this discussion.
I wasn’t talking about Hope, I was talking about Debra Scotto
Sorry, I went back too far…