October 21, 2019
City & State New York
21
RBLFMR, LEV RADIN/SHUTTERSTOCK; ARMAN DZIDZOVIC
From left, rumors have swirled about Melissa MarkViverito, Maya Wiley and Christine Quinn entering the 2021 mayoral race. None of them have officially declared.
Sharon Nelson, who worked for thenNew York City Mayor David Dinkins and now runs an organization for women entering politics called Civically Re-Engaged Women, added that private sector management experience could be an asset. She likes Moskowitz, who is CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools. “(As a CEO), you have to exercise management, ideas and leadership,” Nelson told City & State. “And I think that’s really the main issue when you’re talking about doing an executive job.” Abzug, who supported Quinn’s 2013 run, argued that the current president and CEO of Win, a nonprofit provider of homeless services, could also have a shot in 2021. Quinn has proven fundraising ability, thick skin and wide connections, Abzug said. (Another private sector manager, Jennifer Jones Austin of Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, has been mentioned as a possible candidate. “That’s a rumor,” she told City & State. “I operate a lot on signs, and I haven’t gotten the sign telling me that that’s what I’m going to do next.”) In the media capital of the world, being a strong public speaker and charismatic presence on TV also matters. For these reasons, Brewer said that she likes Wiley, a New School professor and former counsel to de Blasio and former chairwoman of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board. “She’s fabulous,” Brewer said. “She’s on CNN a lot, so she’s got a lot of
poise. She’s a brilliant attorney.” Michael Oliva of Sykes Global Communications, whose firm works primarily with female candidates and counts Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Yvette Clarke among its recent clients, agreed about Wiley’s potential. “She gets a lot of earned (media) exposure,” he said. Candidates like Wiley and Glen may suffer, though, as Quinn did in 2013, from being too closely associated with de Blasio. “We’ll see people shadowboxing the current mayor,” Gupta predicted. Oliva is also skeptical of the chances that Quinn and Mark-Viverito have, based on their unsuccessful campaigns for mayor and public advocate, respectively. In 2013, Abzug recalled, Quinn “was viewed as more under the wing of Bloomberg,” which harmed her in that year’s Democratic primary. Abzug argued, though, that Quinn was always independent-minded and could be perceived as such if she ran this time. Attributes viewed as assets by some are liabilities to others. To the left wing of the Democratic Party, résumés stacked with Wall Street and charter school credentials, and/or close ties to the real estate industry, are causes for concern. “In my personal opinion, any challenger who is taking money from the real estate industry is not a credible challenger in a city like New York where people are being evicted, pushed out
and made homeless every day by that industry,” said Mia Pearlman, co-founder of Lefty, a new consulting firm backing 2020 candidates for state and federal office. Morales, one of the two declared women in the race, told City & State that she will not be taking real estate money. But drawing more leftist candidates into the mayoral pipeline will require structural reforms as well, according to some activists who work on improving gender and racial diversity among elected officials. Cat Almonte, a de Blasio alumna and managing director of The Broad Room, a new nonprofit training women and nonbinary activists, ticked off some legislative priorities. “Things like public campaign financing,” she said. “It’s hard to take at least six months with no pay (to run), ‘Medicare for All,’ student loan forgiveness – just breaking down obstacles that are preventing marginalized New Yorkers from running in the first place.”
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Emma Whitford is a freelance reporter in Brooklyn.