David Pechefsky, Green Party candidate for City Council in the 39th district, is the hardest running candidate in Brooklyn. With a tiny staff and limited funds, he has made himself a household name in parts of the district and has earned the respect of many locals.
So how'd he do it?
Pechefsky, who was virtually unknown before the race, did it with creativity, a sharp mind, indefatigable energy, humor, a rickshaw bicycle, a fun web site, great t-shirts, events like documentary film screenings, debates, and a croquet match. Again and again, Pechefsky was willing to be out there and audible about reform and democracy in local government.
A few weeks back, it was Pechefsky's idea to enlist Republican candidate Joe
Nardiello and Democrat Brad Lander to sit at school desks outside of MS 51 on Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street and take a standardized test. It was a creative way to protest the Campaign Finance Board
(CFB), which printed an error in their Voter’s Guide that
identified Democratic nominee Brad Lander as the only parent in the
race with children in public school.
Since the spring, Pechefsky has proven that he has the determination and the stamina to run a creative campaign that educates voters about the need for reform in the City Council and a more democratic approach to city government in general. He has reached out to the other candidates consistently to engage them in substantive discussions and debate. All part of an effort to give the voters a larger perspective.
That said, it hasn't t been easy convincing citizens in the 39th district to take seriously the candidacy of a Green candidate. Even one with ten years experience as a general staff member in the City Council.
And nothing irks Pechefsky more than the fact that the winner of the Democratic primary in the 39th district is considered the defacto winner of the general election. That's been the prevailing wisdom and it serves to derail what could be a more democratic (i.e. multi-party) race for a local seat.
Indeed, the air went out of Brad Lander's campaign after he won the primary. And that's when the Pechefsky campaign really heated up. Pechefsky and his supporters, in their green t-shirts with a caricature of Pechefsky on them, have been on the streets for the last month educating voters rather than attacking the other candidates.
In the process, locals have learned that Pechefsky is a very smart, likable progressive with a good heart and excellent ethics. He knows the ins and outs of the City Council and understands a great deal about local government. When he's not running for City Council he's a legislative adviser to governments around the world.
In other words, Pechefsky is no slouch and he should be applauded for for bringing grassroots and imagination to a local campaign.
When I interviewed him back in the spring for Breakfast-of-Candidates I was very impressed. And I learned a lot from our conversation. All these months later I'm even more impressed by David's accomplishments in this campaigns.
Like many voters, David was outraged by Mayor Bloomberg's decision to overturn term limits as he says on his website:
The Mayor and the Council acted in an entirely unprincipaled way in passing legsialtion to undo the two term limit imposed by voter referendum to allow themselves to run for a third term. Bloomberg's arguments about the City needing him in a time of fiscal crisis are an affront to democracy. This kind of logic is employed by dictators and tyrants all over the world who claim that they and only they can save their country from whatever threatens it.
David is also irked by the shape of the 39th district:
Redistricting for Council Districts occurs after the census. It’s a political process run by a commission composed of representatives of the Mayor, the Speaker of the Council, and the Minority Leader of the Council. It has to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, the City Charter, and no doubt some arcane state law; and then the districts have to be almost equal in population – no easy feat. I don’t know the whole history of the 39th District, but I think its peculiar shape is an issue. Why shouldn’t Park Slope be in one district? Why shouldn’t Borough Park be in one district? Of course, once you start looking to move things around you quickly run into a whole series of thorny issues – political, ethnic, religious, legal, technical.
About the Atlantic Yards, Pechefsky doesn't mince words:
The project proposed by Forest City Ratner should never have been supported by the City and State to begin with. In general, public subsidies for sports stadiums are a bad idea and this is just one of the issues in this case. When I was working at the City Council, I looked at the numbers on the affordable housing component of the project and they didn't add up then, in 2006. Even with just a cooling down of the real estae market let alone the kind of downturn we are experiencing, based on the information I had it looked like the affordable housing was unlikely to get built without additional and wasteful public subsidies. The fact that a rigorous real estate investment analysis was never done, or least not made public, is part of the problem.
On other issues like education and transportation, Pechefsky has interesting and thoughtful views. Before you vote on Tuesday take a good hard look at Pechefsky's website (where the above quotes are taken from) and see if he's the person you want to represent you in the City Council.
Photo of Pechefsky at the Halloween parade by Don Wiss: http://donwiss.com/pictures/Halloween-2009/
