Note: according to Baer, there are some small mistakes in my retelling of his bio. As I find them out I will change them.
It was like pulling teeth trying to get Ken Baer, candidate for the City Council in the Brooklyn's 33rd district, to talk about his childhood. Not because he has any secrets, it's just that Baer is awfully private for a politician.
Baer faced OTBKB's coffee cup in Cousin John's, a bakery/restaurant in Park Slope, where he ordered a three-egg breakfast and talked sparingly about his mother, who was a German Jewish refugee, his dad, who was a Harvard educated lawyer and almost nothing about growing up in Levittown, Long Island and later Huntington.
He did get a bit more verbal when I asked about his college years at Kent State during the height of the 1960s campus rebellions. In fact, Baer was attending Kent State, when four students were killed by National Guard during an anti-war demonstration in 1970.
At Kent State, Baer majored in psychology and sociology, lived with "a bunch of vegetarians" and tried to stay out of the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector (CO). It was during college, that Baer became aware of food and environmental issues: "answering questions on the CO form got me to thinking about killing humans and animals… I didn't want to kill animals and became a vegetarian," he told me. He is still a vegetarian.
Baer got a second bachelors degree at Kent state in accounting and economics and later returned to New York to work at the Dime Savings Bank on DeKalb and Flatbush Avenue. I asked where he lived and quickly got the feeling he thought I was being nosy.
"That's what I do. I ask questions," I told Baer.
"I'm not big about talking about myself. I'm a doer," he said.
In 1972, Baer volunteered for George McGovern's presidential campaign. He also got a job as a budget analyst at the City's Agency for Child Development. Sometime later he received a mayor's scholarship available to city employees and went to Baruch College to study computer methodology.
During this time, he joined the Park Slope Food Coop, an organization that he is still a proud member of. "I became a Sunday coordinator; I deal with various strong personalities well," he told me.
In the 1980's Baer went to night school to earn an MBA and worked as an accountant at various firms. In the 1980's he also joined the Sierra Club and ran for a seat on the Executive Committee of the New York City group. He won by one vote in a fractious campaign. "I steer a center path between factions. I don't make enemies," he told me.
His volunteer involvement with the Sierra Club is, I think, the foundation of Baer's political activism. Clearly, Baer is genuinely dedicated to the core values of the largest, and most influential
grassroots environmental group in the United States, and has had various roles within the organization.
At this point in our conversation Baer had to walk over to the Food Coop to meet one of his petitioners and I decided to tag along. Once there, we sat in the busy orientation room and spoke more about Baer's work with the Sierra Club.
He told me that he is proud of his work helping the New York State state and city chapters of the Sierra Club through a very difficult and fractious period in 1999 as the result of a misguided fund-raising effort by the NYC group. Due to this mistake, the NYC group's existence was in question. Mediation, a retreat and careful resolution techniques were required to help the parties heal and realize that they needed to stop fighting and start working together again. "To bring together a national organization when they're having problems is significant," he said.
Our conversation zig and zagged but Baer did tell me that in 1996 he decided to throw his hat into the 52nd district Assembly race against Eileen Dugin, who wanted to introduce a bill "to allow more smoking in restaurants." Dugan died before the Democratic primary and Baer ran, unsuccessfully against Joan Millman, who replaced Dugin in that race.
"I am not a typical politico but I love meeting people, I'm out on the sidewalks, I love people and seeing so many infants and toddlers. These young people deserve a quality education."
Baer was an early opponent of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. In 2004, he attended one of the very first meetings organized by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn at a local school and instantly had a bad feeling about the over sized project, which left the community out of the development process.
He continues to be an outspoken opponent of the project and has been endorsed by the highly respected Eric McClure, who runs the group Park Slope Neighbors. For Baer the overarching issue for Brooklyn and NYC are development. He believes that community-based planning must be the basis for all new development in NYC.
Baer and I walked downstairs to wait for one of his petitioners; we sat on the bench out front and I asked him to name his heroes. He thought for a long time and finally said softly, "Ted Williams. He was a great hitter. Because he was a World War II and Korean War pilot he lost five or six seasons in his prime," Baer told me emotionally. "He did it out of patriotism."
When I got home, Baer called me and told me to add Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. to his list of heroes. But I told him I was going to lead with the Red Sox hitter.
"A very domineering man, he wouldn't let anyone pick up a check. But he was a very skilled player and I admire that. A great ballplayer, a very humble, down to earth and approachable person," Baer told me.