Question
by Joshua Malbin on Aug.11, 2009, under New York, Politics
There are two leading candidates in the race for the open City Council seat in my neighborhood: Brad Lander and Josh Skaller. Their positions are very close to one another. This has spawned intense and seemingly personal dislike between the two camps. (This was also the case with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I wonder whether it has to do with substituting personal identification for policy differences.) Endorsements are no help. Lander has many more of them, largely on the strength of his long history of community development work, but along with all the names I respect there are a couple I really hate.
The one substantive, nonpersonal, non-personal-slight-driven issue I’ve found so far to separate the two is the suggestion, buried in this long investigative article, that Brad Lander’s support from the Working Families Party may violate campaign finance law. It’s kind of convoluted, but it has to do with his hiring the WFP’s for-profit campaign services arm. That could be rather serious. On the other hand, the Skaller campaign’s release on the subject seems to me to massively overstate the case, and repeats stale accusations about Lander accepting money from developers that I already know to be basically discredited.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I made a donation to Lander many months back, mainly because a friend is working on his campaign.
Anyway, as a serious question, how do I choose?
8 Comments for this entry
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Tentative Primary Endorsements - Joshua Malbin
September 8th, 2009 on 9:53 am[...] Council District 39: Brad Lander. We went over this already. :Bill de Blasio, Brad Lander, Eugene Myrick, John Liu, Mark Green, Marty Markowitz, Norman [...]
August 11th, 2009 on 1:06 pm
a friend is working on his campaign.
Easy!
Seriously, if both the candidates are acceptable to you, vote based on the personal connection and expend no more energy on the campaign that you could spend on a campaign where you dislike one of the candidates.
August 12th, 2009 on 9:14 am
Fair enough.
August 12th, 2009 on 10:13 am
For months, Josh has been trying paint Brad as sleazy, while he, Josh, is the “progressive” reformer.
Most thinking people are coming around to realize that someone with Brad’s honesty, integrity, solid credentials and nerd-like knowledge of city government will serve us well when he’s on the council. Josh hasn’t actually DONE anything in the public service arena. Just because Josh volunteered for Dean’s campaign five years ago, doesn’t have anything to do with him being an effective councilman. But Brad’s REAL experience advocating for what everpy Brownstone Bklyn parent wants — smaller classes, less testing, neighborhood schools — makes him an ideal representative for us on the council.
August 12th, 2009 on 10:55 am
I truly appreciate your commenting, but for the record I don’t live in a brownstone and I’m not a parent.
August 12th, 2009 on 11:02 am
You’ll have to do something about that if Brad Lander wins.
Their positions are very close to one another. This has spawned intense and seemingly personal dislike between the two camps.
Heh.
August 14th, 2009 on 6:45 am
Hi Josh, funny to find your blog while trying to figure out more about this Lander-Skaller beef. Personally, I’m a little surprised that it’s hard for you to choose. Brad is the man! He’s done so much for this neighborhood and city (directing the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center) and he has, straight-up, one of the best track records of getting things done on the local level (with a city-wide eye towards equity and social justice) – and I mean in general for NYC, not just in this council race! Brad has these endorsements because he’s been invested in issues of social justice and doing the work, not because he’s a political operator.
August 14th, 2009 on 11:15 am
It was a moment of uncertainty. It passed.
August 14th, 2009 on 3:40 pm
Josh — The WFP “issues” is a phony issue invented by a blogger who is ignorant of campaign finance law trying to find law-breaking that doesn’t exist. Skaller is trying to make Brad’s WFP support by an issue, because it’s hurting Skaller. Brad is purchasing field services from the WFP’s sister organization DFS which makes its highly effective services available to progressive candidates across the state. Brad is by far the more seasoned progressive candidate most likely to bring progressive values to the City Council. Skaller is worried because the DFS field operation is VERY good and the combination of DFS with Brad’s volunteer force doing field work is tilting the scales heavily in favor of Brad.
Sancho Panza comes to mind — flailing at windmills.