Stephen Levin faced OTBKB's coffee cup at Ozzie's on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. At 9:15 in the morning, the humidity was already high but Levin arrived good-natured and cheerful after campaigning at the Borough Hall subway stop. By way of an introduction, he handed me a campaign brochure, a button and a campaign pen, which I needed because the pen I brought was out of ink.
We ordered coffee and talked easily for 90 minutes or so.
I had to be honest. I told Levin point-blank that he was being portrayed, disparagingly, as "Assemblyman Vito Lopez's guy." And Assemblyman Lopez is probably one of the most demonized—and powerful Democratic figures in Brooklyn.
"At your first candidates forum I expected you to come in wearing a black cape or something." I told him.
But Levin has something like wonky good looks. Small framed and skinny, he's got a boyish, friendly face and in a blue button down shirt and a tie he has a disarming, low key manner.
Still, there's no denying that Levin is Lopez's chief of staff. But where some see Lopez as a Darth Vader figure with a sometimes corrupt approach to politics, Levin sees Lopez as "a great teacher and someone who taught him strategy and the value of running an on-the-ground campaign."
Levin has other important mentors, too. His father's cousin is none other than Carl Levin, the Senior United States Senator from Michigan and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And his father's other cousin (and Carl's brother) is Congressman Sander Levin, Democratic representative from the 12th congressional district in Michigan, where he has served since 1983. In fact, when Levin was first contemplating his run for City Council he called cousin Sander (and his wife) for advice.
"We talked about the district. The issues. He wanted to know my chances of winning and what I've been doing. After listening for about an hour they said 'Yeah, do it. Sounds like a good idea.'"
Born in 1980 (no, that is not a misprint), Levin grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey. His father is a lawyer, who served in Vietnam as part of the Marine Corps and his mother is an art teacher. At home, Levin and his brother "were encouraged to be curious, open and to follow our interests. My parents encouraged hard work and intellectual curiosity," Levin told me.
History was also a topic that was often discussed at home. "My dad always emphasized the back story, the importance of history and getting the full facts. If we were talking about the Vietnam War, he'd bring up French colonialism. There's always more to the story."
So it's no accident that Levin majored in classics at Brown University. "Classics gives you a perspective. There are many parallels with modern life. History is a great teacher," he told me.
The attacks on September 11th, which occurred when Levin was a junior in college, convinced him that he wanted to be involved in public life. After graduation from Brown Levin came to NYC and searched for a job in politics or the non-profit sector.
That's when he landed a temporary stint working on Lopez's re-election campaign where he "basically went out for coffee and did clerical work." But over time he learned Lopez's approach to campaigning which involves "knocking on doors, talking to as many people as possible, the importance of having a command of the issues, and having empathy for the people," Levin said.
After Lopez's successful run, Levin got a job with a lead safe house program in Bushwick. He looks back very fondly on that experience, where he was an advocate for families whose children's blood tests revealed high and dangerous levels of lead. The law requires that these families move out of their homes immediately until the problem is rectified. The safe house was needed as a temporary refuge for families who faced this temporary dislocation. "I got very involved in people's lives and helped to walk them through the bureaucracy."
Around that time, Levin also ran an anti-predatory lending program in
Bushwick, where, he says, he helped to organize homeowners and teach them about lending practices that were "decimating the
neighborhood with foreclosures."
In 2006, Levin became Lopez's chief of staff. "Vito trusts me and lets me flourish on policy. He's been a tremendous help and a great teacher." Clearly, Levin was expecting the negativity about Lopez going in to his City Council run but he refuses to speak disparagingly of his boss and mentor.
Levin has been canvassing the 33rd district, "from Grand Army Plaza to Newtown Creek" since January and has learned that there are "no short cuts to talking to people and learning what they care about."
When Levin talks about meeting senior citizens, his empathy for people's lives really comes through. "It's heartbreaking. They live on fixed incomes and pensions. There's a long waiting list for Section 8 housing. When a city is run like a business it loses its human face. I want to help people," he says. "I see a lot of people out there in need."
Levin describes himself as a very practical person. "I believe that for every problem there is a solution that is not readily apparent."
Suddenly Levin stands up and walks to a bookshelf across from where we're sitting. He pulls out a book called Breathing for a Living: A Memoir.
"This is my good friend from college," he says of the author of the book, Laura Rothenberg, who died while at Brown of cystic fibrosis. The coincidence of finding this book at Ozzie's provides Levin with an opportunity to talk about what he learned from his friend.
"Life is precious. Time is limited. It really puts thing in perspective. Laura was fearless not shrinking. She had an inner strength."
Clearly, Levin has an inner strength, too. He's smart, well educated and very, very young. But he knows a lot about history and like his father and his relatives Sander and Carl, Levin wants to extend the family legacy of politics and public service. I don't get a very ideological feeling from Levin or the sense of a strong, political agenda. He strikes me as someone who wants to fix things one problem at a time as he believes, pragmatically, that there's a solution to every problem.
At the end of 90-minutes it was time for me to run as I had an interview scheduled with Ken Baer over at Cousin John's on Seventh Avenue…