My recommendations for 2018 NY State Primary —this THURSDAY, September 13th!

Hi folks,

Many of you have asked me my opinions on various candidates for the upcoming primary, so I thought I’d share my thoughts here. Please read up on the candidates elsewhere as well, listen to their debates and their interviews, read others’ endorsements, etc. Don’t just rely on this! I don’t work in politics professionally and never have, and am a relative newcomer to state politics.

That said I’ve read and listened and participated in lots of meetings and conversations about various issues, especially that are important to me: housing, education, criminal justice reform, voting reforms, campaign finance and ethics reform atop that list, but also immigration, reproductive rights, transportation, and LGBTQ issues. So everything I’m writing here is based on my opinions studying the candidates.

First off — please please please vote! Please please please register as a Democrat! Regardless of what you think of the current office holders or what you think of the Democratic party, if you live in NYC chances are your vote in the Democratic state primary is the most impactful vote you ever get to cast — period. Not the presidential election, not the city election. Democratic. State. Primary.

Why? Because the presidential is decided already — NY is Democrat. Statewide offices will be held by Democrats almost exclusively, so it’s the Democratic primary that matters. Period. End of story.

State government is the layer of government that most affects our day to day lives, and that the fewest people pay attention to. State primary elections regularly get 10–15% turnout. Negative side: that’s terrible that such a small share of voters turnout. Positive side: when you vote you’re essentially voting for 10 people. You are one of the lucky few who call the shots. Candidates will listen to you, pollsters will call you, canvassers will knock on your door. You matter. Go out there and feel powerful.

Find out who is on your ballot at http://whosontheballot.org/

So, who to support — there are some easy decisions and hard decisions.

Easy

Let’s start with the easy decisions. If you live in any of the NY Senate districts currently occupied by a member of the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), your decision is an easy one. These Senators have all done the unconscionable, the thing that exemplifies what frustrates and makes cynical people who should reliably vote and vote Democratic: they gave their power to Republicans. In this case, they literally gave their vote to lead the Senate to a Republican. The best explanations of this are here, here, here, and here.

This is a big deal: imagine if when the Democrats were in power in 2010, your Democrat House Representative, newly in the majority, voted for Paul Ryan for Speaker. You’d be like — what!!?? That’s what these Senators did. Driving them out of office would be a real win for the kind of policies that I and most the people reading this want: real criminal justice reform like reforming parole and ending cash bail, affordable housing and stronger rent laws that keep people from getting evicted unnecessarily, and greater funding for education. It really is a cynical power play. IDC members received additional salary, committee chairmanships, and additional staff in exchange for their supporting Republicans. They all receive gobs of campaign donations from corporations and real estate developers, who support their campaigns explicitly to keep NY from enacting more tenant protections. It’s gross.

The good news is that each IDC member is being challenged by a truly exciting and inspiring candidate. You can see the full list here. If you live in one of these districts, your choice is easy: support the challengers.

I live in District 20 and as such am supporting Zellnor Myrie against the incumbent Jesse Hamilton. I’ve been lucky enough to have met both of these gentlemen. I have met with Senator Hamilton and respect his track record of service in the community, and don’t doubt his desire to serve the community. But his decision to join the IDC was unconscionable and he deserves to lose his seat for it. If you don’t lose your seat in a 90+% Democrat district vote literally putting a Republican in charge of the Senate, what do you lose your seat for!? He’s taken gobs of money from real estate developers, and in the district with the 3rd? most rent stabilized units in the whole state, to owe real estate developers favors necessarily compromises you.

Perhaps just as important, I’ve had the chance to meet and speak with Zellnor a number of times and each way have come away more impressed than the last. When I first met him I’ll admit I was skeptical — he’s young (just 30)! But with each conversation I’ve had with him, and each time I’ve heard him speak in public, I’m more and more impressed with his grasp of a wide range of policy and his creative ideas.

I’m particularly interested in affordable housing, which in my opinion is the most important issue specifically for our district by a large margin. Having canvassed a bit for the Real Rent Reform coalition, read through ProPublica’s expose of weak rent laws and their affect on my neighbors, spoken with other housing experts, and read articles like this and this, it’s become clear to me: we need to strengthen rent laws by doing things like closing the vacancy bonus, and by stronger enforcement of existing rent laws — and both are predominantly state issues. Beyond that, changing the law to put NYC back in control of its own rent laws and building paths to home ownership are also important, and Zellnor has spoked clearly about each of these. He was part of the team that wrote the NYC Tenants Bill of Rights and is as knowledgeable as anyone running for office on issues of affordable housing. Super important — he also accepts no corporate or real estate campaign donations. We need our representative to be fighting for people who live here — they can’t be compromised. I’ve only spent time volunteering for one candidate this season, and it’s Zellnor. Vote for Zellnor!

Harder

Governor: I’m voting for Cynthia Nixon. I do so with medium enthusiasm. I am concerned about her lack of experience. Having arguably one of the top 10 most powerful positions in the country as your very first elected office is a big jump. It’s also fair to criticize her for not explaining how she’ll pay for some pretty ambitious proposals.

BUT — she is NOT a newbie to politics entirely. Unlike many other celebrity-turned-politicians, she has been an activist at the state and local level for years and years. She’s gotten in the weeds with Alliance for Quality Education on education funding for NYC, which is a very important part of the state government’s work. While other celebrities use their causes to promote their brand, and pick sexier, national or international issues, Cynthia’s been in the trenches on really important advocacy work for a long time. She’s a real deal progressive on the issues like education, criminal justice reform, affordable housing, as well as reproductive rights, voting rights, ethics reform, etc.

Andrew Cuomo has had two terms and that’s enough IMO. He’s effective when he wants to be, but has to be pressured into anything and everything worth doing. He’s exactly the kind of willow in the wind that frustrates young people out of voting for Democrats. Obstructing change until he’s pressured into it by the activist left, or a challenger on the left (banning fracking and the minimum wage increase were examples of that — when Teachout challenged him last time around). Blaming the city for the MTA’s woes when it’s really mostly his lookout. Tolerating (maybe even encouraging?) the Independent Democratic Conference, which gave him more power at the expense of Senate Democrats, until he was pressured to end it. Talking a big game about ethics reform and campaign finance reform and running the opposite direction.

It’s those last issues that seal the deal for me. In this time when our political system is more and more influenced by a smaller and smaller group of wealthy individuals and corporations, Cuomo has amassed a huge campaign war chest nearly exclusively from wealthy individuals. NY has one of the most lax campaign finance systems — allowing LLCs to donate at the individual limit ($60,800 for statewide offices, instead of the $5K corporate limit). It’s obvious this should be changed. But Cuomo has taken advantage of it, collecting millions from corporations and real estate interests and almost nothing from individual donors, so makes no effort to change it.

It’s clear that it compromises him: on issues like supporting for the 421a program which housing experts think creates little affordable housing and ends up giving away millions in taxpayer dollars to real estate developers, he pushed it through. Probably worst of all, he’s done nothing to clean up corruption in Albany, despite enormous power to do so. He disbanded the Moreland Commission which was set up to investigate corruption, and his own campaign manager was convicted in a bid-rigging scandal.

We need to send a strong signal to get that loophole closed and other ethics reform done, and we need someone who isn’t so compromised as Cuomo to do it. Cythnia can put smart experienced people around her to get things done. I hate saying this because it sounds cliche and by itself is really not a reason to vote for someone, but Albany really truly needs to be shaken up and Nixon would do that. The Nation gave a strong endorsement here which is worth a read.

Luitenant Governor:

I’m for Jumaane Williams. This NYT endorsement is a good read. I’ve also heard him debate with Kathy Hoschul and heard him interviewed a number of times. I’d like to see someone with an activist background like Williams in the top of state government, where he can be a thorn in the side of Cuomo (assuming he wins). I’ve heard concerns raised about his past positions on abortion and marriage equality, but he seems to have changed his positions there. I highly doubt he would get in the way of passing the Reproductive Health Act, which my understanding is the top thing we could do in NY to further reproductive rights. He’s been a productive member of the city council and has been a fierce advocate for tenants rights and against police violence. I’d like to see someone like him in statewide office.

Attorney General:

I’m going with Zephyr Teachout. This one is hard — all the candidates are strong. I like Tish James and want to support her as she’s from my neighborhood and would be the first African-American female NYAG. But it does concern me that she’s taking corporate donations, and it does concern me that she’ll owe Cuomo once in office if she wins. In a different time when we weren’t so corrupted by big money I might feel differently. I do think she’s qualified (as are Leecia Eve and Sean Patrick Maloney). I hope she’ll run for mayor or another office next time around.

But Teachout literally wrote the book on corruption. She hasn’t taken any corporate money and won’t owe anyone any favors once in office. In the many interviews I’ve heard with her and the other candidates she seemed to have the most specific and forceful ideas for reigning in corruption, Wall St. malfeasance, and has been out front of taking legal actions against Donald Trump, which she’ll be uniquely placed to do if elected. She seems like the perfect candidate for the perfect role at the perfect time. Here’s NYTimes endorsement of her.

Leecia Eve has a long career and is highly qualified, but her most recent job was with Verizon, and before that worked for Clinton and Biden. None of those things by themselves disqualify her in my book, but at this moment in time what’s needed more than anything is someone really independent and focused on reigning in corruption. Sean Patrick Maloney hasn’t made any particularly compelling case for why he’d be better than anyone else — he seems to repeat over and over that he’s beat Republicans in a conservative district, which is great, but has nothing to do with anything in this case. Moreover, he’s taken a lot of corporate money, has done some shady things with it, and is risking a Democratic seat in Congress by running for AG. I’m not a fan.

Hardest

Judges:

These are the hardest to get informed about, and I don’t know enough about any of these people to really make a recommendation. FWIW, I will vote for the two incumbents: Loren Baily-Schiffman and Ingrid Joseph, mostly because I can’t find any compelling reason to support their challenges over them. I received a letter from them pointing out that they’ve been approved by the Brooklyn Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, touting their involvement in the community and commitment to public service, and pointing out that they were both selected to serve as Acting Supreme Court Justices. They are also endorsed by the Brooklyn Democratic Party (which does not by itself inspire any confidence).

Since it is always surprisingly difficult to get information on these candidates, I’m linking to what info I was able to find for Brooklyn judge candidates here. If you know anything more about any of these people, please share!

Loren Baily-Schiffman

Loren Baily-Schiffman has been a judge since 1999 when she first was elected. Judges in Kings County have 10 year terms — she was re-elected in 2008 and now running again in 2018. She went to Oberlin College and NY Law School, went in to private practice, and also worked for Brooklyn Legal Services, which provides legal services for low income people. She appeared in a candidate forum yesterday.

Apparently she made headlines in the conservative press for releasing without bail three men in three different cases who’d threatened violence — once against a police officer, one against a nun in a church, and another — accompanied by racial slurs — against a Black man walking with his white girlfriend. The articles don’t really provide enough information to say whether the releases were justified. Nikole Malliotakis made an issue about Baily-Schiffman in her unsuccessful run for Mayor. I’d like to hear her reasoning, but especially given our general over-reliance on cash bail, I would need to hear more to feel convinced their releases weren’t justified.

Ingrid Joseph

Ingrid Joseph is the other incumbent, and also endorsed by the Brooklyn Democrats. She also got her JD from NY Law School. She was first elected judge in 2018. At the candidate forum, she described work she’s done to make the courts more user friendly, like improving signage and creating computer kiosks so you can fill out forms online. She’s the child of immigrants from the Caribbean and grew up in Brooklyn. In this profile of her she describes clerking for a judge, working on wills, and other legal jobs. She apparently visits schools to educate kids on what judges do. Very nice :) A Facebook post on her page describes her philosophy of treating everyone with fairness and seeing her role as helping to solve problems, as well as her efforts to clear backlogs of cases and expanding afternoon and evening hours for small claims court.

Sheryl Orwel

Sheryl Orwel is one of the challengers to the incumbents. She’s Associate University Counsel at Weill Cornell Medicine — here’s her bio. She went to CUNY City College for undergrad and NY Law School for her JD. She was the lead attorney for an unspecified not-for-profit and has worked on employment and discrimination law, according to this short statement on Facebook. I suppose if you are looking to support an insurgent candidate as a general principal, support Sheryl. I can’t seem to find any other information about her. Neither her nor Saul Cohen are approved by the New York City Bar, although I have no idea, nor do they same much about, what criteria they use to make that determination.

Saul Cohen

Saul Cohen is another challenger to the incumbents. He went to Rutgers undergrad and Seton Hall for Law School. This Facebook post focuses on his pro-bono work, his work against foreclosures and for tenants rights, and his expertise in commercial tenant law. He has a private practice. He’s the only judge candidate I’ve personally encountered — he was handing out leaflets at Grand Army Plaza 2/3 stop two mornings I passed through. His leaflet emphasized his work for tenants rights. This detailed profile gives examples of the pro-bono work he’s done, and his ties to the Syrian Jewish community. Like with Sheryl Orwel, if you feel like supporting an insurgent just for the sake of insurgencies, you can vote for Saul Cohen.

That’s all. I hope you find this useful. And whatever you do, don’t forget to vote on Thursday!!!