ENDORSEMENTS
Chance for New Politics: Sonya Ostrom for City CouncilBrooklyn: Sonya Ostrom
Met Council enthusiastically endorses Sonya Ostrom for the City Council in Brooklyn’s 48th District, and urges tenants and supporters from around the city to volunteer in this campaign and to help out on Election Day, Nov. 2. Ostrom, the Green and Working Families parties’ candidate, is challenging Mike Nelson, who won the vacant seat in a special election last year after getting most of his opponents thrown off the ballot. Nelson promised to be a friend of tenants, but then betrayed that trust by supporting the terrible “Lead Poisoning Law” enacted in June with the backing of the real-estate industry, Mayor Giuliani and Council Speaker Peter Vallone. Nelson has been rewarded for that vote with campaign contributions from numerous landlords. He represents what is wrong with politics as usual in New York City.
Sonya Ostrom, a former teacher with the NYC Board of Education and at Brooklyn College, is the president of the Metropolitan Peace Action Council, and an environmental activist. She is a member of the Green Party, whose key values include social and economic justice, ecological responsibility, grass-roots democracy, nonviolence and transferring resources from the military to human needs.
She has also been nominated by the Working Families Party, a new political party formed last year by community activists and progressive trade unions. Because both the Green and Working Families parties received more than 50,000 votes in the gubernatorial election in 1998, they are guaranteed ballot status in all local elections through 2002. The Working Families support for Ostrom is noteworthy because, in order to gain ballot status last year, they endorsed the Democratic candidate for governor, Peter Vallone, and now they are supporting a grass-roots activist against Mike Nelson, a Vallone loyalist.
Sonya Ostrom is unequivocal in her support for rent and eviction protections, which must be renewed by the City Council in March: “I strongly believe that tenants have to be protected from unscrupulous landlords. Mike Nelson has shown by voting for the lead-poisoning bill, after promising not to, that he is not to be trusted on these issues. Mike Nelson is soliciting contributions from landlords, while I am looking for support from tenant organizations, unions, and women’s groups.”
The election in Brooklyn’s 48th District will have repercussions for tenants throughout New York City, because this is the only chance before the March renewal of rent regulations to show our response to someone who voted in favor of the “Lead Poisoning Law.” In addition, with both the Greens and the Working Families Party preparing to make a major impact in New York City politics when the state legislature is elected in November 2000 and term limits create massive turnover in the City Council in 2001, this race is an important early test.
We urge tenants and supporters around the city to get involved in this important campaign. Call Met Council at (212) 693-0553 to volunteer.
VOTE NO ON GIULIANI’S CHARTER REVISION
Met Council encourages New Yorkers to vote “NO” on the proposed revisions to the New York City charter.
This ill-conceived effort arose out of Rudolph Giuliani’s attempt to dictate who would succeed him if he leaves office before his term expires in 2002, in the unhappy event of his election to the US Senate next year. Under current law, the New York City public advocate, Mark Green, will become mayor if Giuliani departs. Because Mark Green has been a consistent and effective critic of Giuliani on a host of issues, Giuliani appointed his former aide Randy Mastro to head a commission to recommend changing the succession rules in midstream.
If Giuliani was counting on silence from Green’s Democratic rivals for the mayoralty, he miscalculated, because every major Democrat denounced the plan. At the end, Giuliani’s hand-picked panel withdrew the proposal and substituted one which would only apply after 2002. “They didn’t see the light, they felt the heat,” as Green pointed out.
Nevertheless, the commission has recommended 14 changes to the city charter, which voters must approve or reject on November 2. These ill-advised proposals received very little input—most of it critical—in a series of public hearing in August, in contrast to the charter-revision process in 1989 which was the result of dozens of hearings over two and a half years.
The Mastro commission’s recommendations would strengthen the power of the Mayor and weaken the power of the more representative City Council over budget and tax issues. We urge a loud and resounding rejection of the Mastro recommendations.
Eva Moscowitz for City Council
In Manhattan’s 4th Council district on the upper East Side, Met Council endorses Eva Moscowitz on the Working Families line. Moscowitz, who is also the Democratic nominee, has promised to support rent regulations and tenants’ rights if she is elected to succeed Republican Andrew Eristoff, who resigned from the seat when appointed city finance commissioner. The Met Council board’s vote for Moscowitz was not unanimous, because several members objected to the fact that Moscowitz admitted that she will accept campaign contributions from landlords in the district, although she admirably refuses contributions from the Rent Stabilization Association and other real-estate industry lobbyists.