Who Ya Gonna vote for Millman or Biviano for Assembly in the 52nd AD?

Because I was away for much of the summer I haven’t been following the campaign for assembly in the 52nd AD. However, I interviewed Doug Biviano when he ran for City Council in 2009 and you can see that interview below.

Biviano has been running a “throw the bums out” kind of campaign. He has also accused Joan Millman of “double dipping” i.e. collecting her pension as a retired NYC teacher and receiving a $79,000 (plus $12,000 lulu) salary for the Assembly job.

She’s freely admits that what she’s been doing and claims that she had no choice. On video Biviano asks: “Where’s the leadership in that?. You guys make the rules, maybe you should change the rules…”

Truth be told, I don’t know much about Millman, except that she’s a respected politician in these parts.

But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we need some fresh energy and outlooks in Albany. Could be Biviano is the man for the job, even though he has no experience in public office.

That could be a good thing.

Even the New York Times recommends voting against the incumbents in Assembly races:

In the Assembly, there are not enough real contests. And in New York, that means one thing: the Democratic Party has given some of Albany’s worst legislators a free ride. Here’s the only solution: vote against the incumbents.

Here is Millman’s bio from her website:

Assemblywoman Joan L. Millman was first elected to the Assembly on February 18, 1997 in a special election. Since then, she has diligently served the 52nd Assembly District, now a unified “brownstone” district, which includes the neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope, Columbia Street Waterfront, and Prospect Heights. A life-long educator, Millman spent over three decades working on behalf of New York City’s children. From 1964 to 1984, she taught elementary school and served as the school librarian at P.S. 10 in Brooklyn. From 1985 to 1996, Millman served as an educational consultant to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy and State Senator Martin Connor and served as a facilitator for Comprehensive School Development and Planning. Millman also served as a member of the Citywide Advisory Committee on Middle School Initiatives from 1995 to 1996, where she assisted middle schools in District 15 in Brooklyn. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, a Master’s in Library Science from Pratt Institute and a Professional Diploma from Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. Since being elected to the Assembly, Millman has authored and sponsored legislation that has saved lives, protected consumers, and improved the quality of life for New Yorkers. Millman has been a leading advocate on senior and education issues and for consumer rights. She was recently appointed Chair of the Commission on Government Administration, where she continues to advocate for budget reform, and for greater oversight of government administered programs. Millman is also a sponsor of legislation to reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the Women’s Health and Wellness Bill and the Safe Weapon Storage Act. Assemblywoman Millman was an early advocate for the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge Park and has worked to revitalize all of Brooklyn’s waterfront. She has been on the forefront of the struggle to clean up the Gowanus Canal and adjacent properties, and leads the fight to re-open Engine Company 204. She has been a strong advocate for our schools and has worked to protect our senior centers. Every year, Assemblywoman Millman sponsors numerous initiatives to bring needed services to her constituents. Assemblywoman Millman is Chair of the Assembly Committee on Election Law. She is a member of the Assembly Standing Committees on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions; Education; Labor; Transportation; and the Assembly Majority Steering Committee.

Here is my Breakfast-of-Candidates interview with Doug Biviano from May of 2009 when he was running for City Council in the 33rd District.

Doug Biviano, a City Council candidate in the 33rd district, met me for breakfast at Theresa’s, a Polish coffee shop on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights.

In 1969, Biviano was born in the Mill Basin neighborhood of Brooklyn. Biviano’s dad was a Transit Authority carpenter and his mom a nursing assistant. The family later moved to Brentwood, Long Island. But his parents separated soon after and Biviano and his brother spent weekends at his father’s apartment in the Ex-Lax building on Atlantic Avenue. Biviano came to love Brooklyn Heights on those trips especially when he and his father would take long walks to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and the Fulton Ferry Landing.

Biviano attended Cornell University, where he received a B.S. and a masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Math and science always came easy to me. I am a conceptual thinker,” he said.

Clean cut in a blue blazer and a neat button down shirt, Biviano ordered a bowl of fresh fruit and coffee. I ordered a toasted, buttered bagel, which arrived toasted and dry. But my conversation with Biviano was anything but dry.

Unexpected is a word that Biviano likes and I can see why as his life story takes all kinds of unexpected twists and turns. After a post-graduate stint at an engineering firm in Buffalo, NY,  Biviano followed his girlfriend (who later became his wife) to Colorado to live the skier’s life. Seasonally he got work as a soil consultant at Geo Technical and Vail Associates.

“They pay you 20% in the view,” Biviano told me. He enjoyed the work which involved driving to the mountains and doing foundation excavation and track rigging. Later, he got his professional engineer’s license but was frustrated by the low “mountain pay” in an area, where it’s very expensive to live.

Another unexpected turn: Biviano decided to start his own construction business with a friend while his wife cleaned houses. They worked hard and managed to save enough money to embark on another adventure.

The couple bought a sailboat and packed up their belongings and headed for Annapolis, Maryland to pick up their Morgan Outlander and set sail on the Inter-Coastal Highway.

Biviano and his wife knew nothing about sailing.  “I figured I’d learn. You figure it out. Like running for City Council,” he joked. “It’s the journey always the journey,” he added.

For nine months the couple lived “off the grid.” On the sailboat Biviano designed and installed a solar power system with controllers and battery bank, which utilized sun, wind, rain water and a reverse osmosis water maker. He loved the sense of community he found in Freeport where hundreds of sailors dock in the winter.

It was on this sailing adventure that Biviano developed his appreciation for the “goodness of people around the world. The people I’ve met are good, decent and hardworking.”

When the couple realized that they were expecting a child, they sold the sailboat and headed to New York City. A job as a superintendent in a Brooklyn Heights coop provided Biviano with a job and an apartment in the neighborhood he learned to love as a teenager. Biviano is proud of the fact that he works as a laborer and an engineering professional because it gives him a broader perspective on the world.

And then 9/11 happened. Biviano watched from the roof of the Brooklyn Heights coop where he is a superintendent and wondered why someone would want to do that.  “Instead of thinking ‘let’s go get ’em’ I found myself wondering why. I wanted a deeper answer.”

“I reject the ‘Axis of evil.’ The people I’ve met where I’ve gone are good and decent. Start there.”

This revelation set Biviano on a path that has led to his candidacy for City Council. It was his subsequent discovery of WBAI on the radio dial and Amy Goodman’s show Democracy Now in particular that helped him refine his humanistic and progressive beliefs.

He also discovered Dennis Kucinich, who is now one of his heroes. “I love his politics. Peace as an organizing principle of society,” Biviano said. In 2004 Biviano made a monetary contribution to Kucinich’s presidential campaign but in 2008, he donated his time and energy becoming Kucinich’s New York State coordinator. From Kucinich he learned “the possibilities of politics” and traveled to many forums where he spoke as Kucinich’s surrogate. In this capacity he discovered an ability to connect with an audience and communicate political ideas in a humanistic way.

“I learned from Kucinich to put a human face on politics. Iranians are beautiful people. They love their children. If you start from there, put a human face on it, it’s different.”

With two kids at PS 8 (and another child too young for school), Biviano is a regular school yard dad. A year ago, he found out that a friend was out of a job and would be paying $1,600 a month for COBRA.

“There are 400,000 people in Brooklyn without health insurance,” he told me incredulously. Biviano advocates a single-payer system supported by a group called Physicians for a Single Payer Health Plan that would cover all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs.

When Biviano realized that that City Council Member David Yassky was vacating his Council seat, he decided to throw his hat into the race with a focus on Medicare for all, a livable city that respects its institutions like public schools and big picture ideas like reducing the budget for war as a way to fund cities.

“I’m a dreamer. A little kid,” Biviano told me. And in a way it’s true. It’s his background in engineering that taught him an important maxim: “if you can think about it you can build it.”

We were talking for 90-minutes when I realized I had to leave to see a friend on a panel about search engine optimization at the Brooklyn Business Summit.

“Do you know where Polytechnic Institute is?” I asked Biviano.

He volunteered to walk me over to the school which is in the Metro-Tech complex not far from Theresa’s. This gave us a chance to continue our conversation while we walked speedily in the light rain.

Biviano is running for City Council because he believes that the City legislature is a powerful position on the world stage. “It’s such a powerful platform for a massive Democratic voice.”

At the candidates forums Biviano has been an unexpected and sometimes refreshing presence. He talks about bringing fun to politics. But he’s very serious, too about the ways that war spending takes away from our cities.

“Let’s take a slice of the trillion-dollar war pie and feed investment in our communities,” said Biviano. “There are structural problems at the city, state, and federal levels where there are funding processes that are not connected to community interests. I want to think big,” Biviano told the Brooklyn Star.