Tenant Activist Wins Upset in Council Primary

by Steven Wishnia

Housing activist Margarita Lopez's upset of Sheldon Silver aide Judy Rapfogel in the Democratic primary for the Lower East Side City Council seat came largely from voters mobilized over housing issues and a strong grass-roots organization.

Rapfogel had been widely expected to win. With backing from the Assembly Speaker, she had drawn endorsements from such key Democratic players as Ruth Messinger and Local 1199. But Lopez, with the help of over 450 volunteers and thousands of new voters registered in the multitudinous housing projects along the East River, took the Second District nomination by 210 votes out of almost 15,000 cast.

"We showed the Democratic party that if you deal with the issues, you can go up against Goliath," says district leader Armando Perez.

Lopez says affordable housing was her number-one issue -- and it resonated with Lower East Side voters. In the last four years, rents for vacant apartments in the area have almost doubled, and tenants in place have been threatened by attempts to deregulate public housing and destroy rent controls. In the area east of Third Avenue between Delancey and East 14th streets, she won 70 percent of the vote.

"My record on housing is well known," she says. She was one of the main organizers in defeating Rep. Rick Lazio's bill to deregulate public housing last year, as well as similar moves by the Giuliani administration. In the process, according to Perez, they registered at least 4,000 new voters since 1994. In contrast, Rapfogel tried to appeal to tenants by linking herself to Silver and the Albany agreement that "saved rent control." Lopez says her other priorities are education, creating jobs and support for small businesses like bodegas, and preserving community gardens and open space. (Community gardens on the Lower East Side and in Harlem are currently suing to block the city's plans to demolish them to build housing for people making $43,000 a year and up.)

She calls Mayor Giuliani's record on housing "shameful," criticizing him for practicing the "politics of exclusion," selling "the biggest lie" that he's revived the city -- while unemployment is still at 10 percent. Democrats who endorse Giuliani, she adds, "are not supporters of tenants." If elected in November, she will replace one such Giuliani Democrat, Antonio Pagan. Pagan won in 1991 and 1993 with an odd coalition of landlords, Latinos, and yuppies, but alienated many in the neighborhood with his anti-tenant politics and vituperative, occasionally bizarre style. (Last spring, when Met Council sent Councilmembers a letter urging them to strengthen the city's rent-stabilization laws, Pagan ripped it up in public.) Judy Rapfogel will be on the Liberal Party line in November. Her office did not return phone calls about whether she will campaign actively.

Election Roundup

Primary Day (September 9) was a very good day for tenants, and indicates that the mobilization to save rent regulations this spring may translate into increased political clout. In addition to Margarita Lopez, other Met Council-endorsed winners were Civil Court candidates Rolando Acosta and Lucy Billings.

In the Manhattan Borough President race, Councilmember C. Virginia Fields, one of Met Council’s two "preferred" candidates, and Assembly-member Deborah Glick, the other, finished second. Anti-tenant Councilmember Antonio Pagan gave up his seat to run and placed a distant fourth. His departure from the City Council housing and buildings committee is a welcome gain for tenants.

City Council races turn out well

Councilmember Guillermo Linares, a battler for tenants’ rights on the Housing Committee, won a spirited fight to keep his Washington Heights seat. In the district next door, a threatened primary against Met Council’s longtime ally Stanley Michels did not materialize. Community activist Bill Perkins won the nomination for the Harlem/Upper West Side seat being vacated by Virginia Fields, and Phil Reed topped the field seeking to fill the East Harlem/Upper West Side seat vacated by Adam Clayton Powell IV, who finished a distant third in the Borough President race.

The Democratic mayoral race, won by Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, received an unexpected shot in the arm from the strong showing of the Rev. Al Sharpton, sparked by anger about police brutality. Both candidates took the high road and focused attention on Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s shortcomings on education, the economy, welfare and race relations. Giuliani, typically, took the low road by insulting both Messinger and Sharpton and distorting their records.

While Giuliani remains a formidable candidate, we do not share the cynicism of a few Democratic leaders who have embraced the self-fulfilling prophecy that his re-election is inevitable.

— Kenny Schaeffer