NYCivic

Preview of the 2005 Elections
Shows Few Contested Races.
Favorites to Get Big Subsidies
As Council Balks at Reforms.

By Henry J. Stern
November 9, 2004

The 2004 election one week ago signaled the start of the bell lap for the 2005 municipal election. There will be contests for the mayoralty and the borough presidency of Manhattan, since C. Virginia Fields is precluded from seeking re-election by term limits. This creates a vacancy which eleven potential candidates have expressed interest in filling. The other four boroughs will have incumbents running for re-election to second terms, and as yet, no serious challengers have emerged to Messrs. Adolfo Carrion, Jr. (Bronx), Marty Markowitz (Brooklyn) and James P. Molinaro (Staten Island), or Ms. Helen Marshall (Queens).

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum will seek re-election, and, unless he runs for mayor, so will Comptroller William R. Thompson, Jr. There will be two contests for the Democratic nomination for district attorney: in New York County, DA Robert Morgenthau, seeking his ninth term, will be challenged by a former assistant, Leslie Crocker Snyder, and in Brooklyn, DA Joe Hynes will be opposed by former assistant Arnie Kriss, Mark Peters, State Senator John L. Sampson, and quite possibly by Councilman David Yassky, in which case there will be seven vacant Council seats.

The terms of the district attorneys in the Bronx (Robert Johnson) Queens (Richard Brown) and Staten Island (Daniel Donovan) expire at the end of 2007, so there will be no balloting for DA's in three boroughs. With relatively few genuinely contested positions, there remain four major primaries, and one general election contest for the mayoralty: Manhattan borough president, and New York and Kings County district attorney, and mayor. As the great majority of you know, Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County and Staten Island is Richmond County. (We do have some out-of-town readers.)

As to the City Council, of its 51 members, 45 are eligible to seek re-election and six are precluded from doing so by term limits. Oddly, four of the six departing members are from Manhattan (Margarita Lopez, Gifford Miller, Bill Perkins and Philip Reed), just one from the Bronx, Madeline Provenzano, and one from Brooklyn, Tracy Boyland, who unsuccessfully sought to replace Congressman Major Owens in September. (Yvette Clarke, another Brooklyn councilmember who will now seek re-election, came in second in that race; Ms. Boyland ran third.) There are no open seats in either Queens or Staten Island. The remaining 45 councilmembers are expected to run for a second term, unless they seek higher office, retire, or encounter either the Grim Reaper or the Long Arm of the Law.

If the comptroller runs for mayor, it would create another citywide contest for his position, with one or more mayoral candidates possibly dropping down to what may be an easier and less expensive race and one or more councilmember competing for ten newly created vacancies. If Councilman Barron persists in his announced mayoral ambitions, that would create another seat without an incumbent. But his candidacy is more likely in 2009, because if he runs this year, he would lose four years on the city payroll at $90,000 plus his lulu.

It is too early to speculate on the relative strength of the possible candidates. The Daily News Monday ran a horse racing chart giving early odds (the chart is not on their website, but you can see the accompanying article). The News' estimate of the odds is subject to considerable dispute. Nonetheless, the calendar is inexorable (Rule 23-T: "Time and tide wait for no man"), and once we clear away the debris of the last campaign, we will find ourselves, bit by bit, drawn into the next one. The fact that there is a relatively short list of seriously contested offices may mean that more attention will be paid to each race.

One major failure of the 2004 campaign finance bill is its failure to limit the generous subsidy paid to candidates in elections that are, in fact, runaways for the incumbents. A law piously intended to provide a level playing field for real contests has become a boondoggle in which candidates who win lopsided majorities running in one party districts can receive a hundred thousand dollars in taxpayer dollars to match twenty thousand dollars in contributions, which may be from their friends and relatives.

The campaign finance board tried to restrict this abuse through legislation they have proposed, but the members of the Council were not inclined to limit their own greed in spending public funds under color of law to publish pictures and complimentary essays about themselves, even if their hapless adversaries did not have the remotest chance of election. Public financing of political campaigns is becoming one of those high-minded ideas that are twisted by low-minded moneygrubbers who want to pay off their printers, photographers, suppliers and staffers on the city's dime.

In principle, matching private contributions with public funds is a good idea, but when the ratio is changed for each election to suit the political and financial needs of particular candidates, as it was this year by the Council, the system becomes a travesty. Interestingly, included in the reimbursable expenses is a lawyers' fee to prepare and certify the forms needed, which in some cases amounts to $13,000 per candidate. While it is too early to say that we have created a Frankenstein, (actually, a monster, not Dr. F.), it is not too early to insist that the CFB stand up for what it believes is right, and speak out publicly for the reforms they have quietly advocated which the Council has failed to enact.

In politics, "wait 'til next year" doesn't mean having to wait very long. With the Democratic primary just ten months away and citywide elections coming up in less than a year, more people will focus on the city, its government and its problems, fiscal and social. People will want to see and hear what, if anything, the candidates have to offer as solutions. We hope that New York City's local elections will shed more light on issues than the 2004 national elections did, and that New Yorkers will make rational choices on the merits of the candidates.

In general, citizens, like juries, make reasonable decisions on the basis of the facts they know and the impressions they have of the contenders. New York Civic does not endorse candidates for public office. It is part of our mission to try to provide facts and ideas to assist people in making their own decisions, the sum of which will elect the next city administration in November.