Joshua Malbin

The New York City Democratic primary is in one week, and in every race other than Mayor, it’s the election that counts. Here’s my current thinking about who I’m going to vote for. If you disagree with any of these, please talk me out of whatever mistake you think I’m making.

Mayor: Tony Avella. This one matters very little, since Avella’s going to get crushed by Bill Thompson, who will in turn get crushed by Bloomberg. I just like Avella’s rabble-rousing rhetoric about luxury developers.

Comptroller: John Liu. Mainly on the strength of endorsements, in particular that of the Working Families Party.

Public Advocate: Norman Siegel. Mark Green has already shown he’s enough of an obnoxious publicity-hound to be good at the job, and Bill de Blasio seems like a decent enough guy. But I love me some fightin’ NYCLU.

Brooklyn Borough President: Eugene Myrick. A protest vote for the only other candidate on the ballot. I’m sick of Marty.

City Council District 39: Brad Lander. We went over this already.

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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?

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