Election Results Encouraging
by Glenn Rubinstein and Kenny Schaeffer

Brooklyn City Council candidate Sonya Ostrom garnered nearly 1,200 votes, or 14%, running against Democratic incumbent Michael “Put the Lead In” Nelson on the lines of two new political parties, the Green Party and the Working Families Party.

Ostrom’s showing, as well as the defeat of the Giuliani-backed city charter revision and the election of Democrat Eva Moscowitz to a previously Republican Council seat in Manhattan, encouraged tenant and third-party activists.

“The 1999 elections proved that people are receptive to our politics,” observed Danny Cantor of the WFP. “Now we have to put work and energy into specific projects.”

The tenant movement initiated the Ostrom campaign when it sought a candidate to oppose Nelson— who had just voted to let landlords off the hook for hazardous lead-paint conditions in their buildings, despite pledging that he wouldn’t. The Green Party responded enthusiastically by recruiting Ostrom, a longtime Brooklyn peace activist, and she subsequently received the Working Families endorsement as well.

The 48th District covers the Midwood, Sheepshead Bay and Manhattan Beach sections of Brooklyn. The district is relatively conservative—it gave the Greens and WFP about 1% each in the 1998 election—and many local tenants are not allowed to vote because they are immigrants. Still, in less than three months—and despite the city’s refusal to provide matching campaign funds, which the Ostrom campaign is challenging in court—Ostrom raised enough money to reach thousands of tenant voters by phone and mail.

She eventually drew 8% on the Green line and 6% on the WFP’s. Both the WFP’s Danny Cantor and a Green spokesperson expressed satisfaction with the results and surprise at a City Limits Weekly article depicting tensions between the two groups.

Representatives of both parties say the Ostrom effort can be a model for unifying progressives and pro-tenant groups for campaigns in 2000 and 2001, when most Councilmembers will not be allowed to run for re- election, under the city’s new term-limits laws.

The Working Families Party also helped elect Eva Moscowitz in Manhattan’s Upper East Side “silk stocking” district. She defeated a wealthy Republican by a substantial margin, with 10% of her vote coming on the WFP line. In the 3rd District in Chelsea-Clinton, Democrat Chris Quinn won re-election by a landslide, drawing more votes on the WFP line than the Republican candidate’s total.

Citywide, voters rejected a Giuliani-proposed revision of the City Charter by a 3-1 margin. The revisions would have greatly increased the mayor’s power and weakened the Council’s, and Giuliani spent substantial taxpayer funds to promote them as a referendum on the achievements of his administration.

After the mayor’s hand-picked charter-revision commission, led by former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, withdrew its principal raison d’être—altering the existing line of succession, under which Democratic Public Advocate Mark Green will become mayor if Giuliani leaves office before his term expires—public attention focused on the remaining proposals, which would have vastly expanded the mayor’s power over fiscal matters at the expense of the Council.

But the city’s labor movement—about to head into critical contract negotiations—pulled out all the stops to turn out the vote, and the 3-1 trouncing actually prompted an uncharacteristic apology from the mayor; although, like baseball’s Pete Rose, he didn’t actually say what he was sorry for.

Looking forward to upcoming elections in 2000 and especially 2001—when term limits will create open seats for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, four out of the five borough presidencies, and more than two-thirds of the Council’s 51 seats—the Greens and Working Families parties are actively planning to play major roles in local politics from now on, cooperatively in some cases and independently in others.

Glenn Rubinstein is active in the Brooklyn Green Party.