By Chris Fuchs
For the first time in the Green Party’s brief history as a bona fide party in New York, there will be a primary election in September for the city council seat in Flushing, a race between an ultrasound technician and an urban planning consultant.
It will be decided by a total of 88 registered voters.
With term limits forcing out incumbents in all the council districts in Queens this year, it is not uncommon in some races to find as many as a dozen candidates — typically a lopsided mix of Democrats with some Republicans — vying for a much-coveted slot on the Election Day ballot.
For the Green Party, getting onto the primary ballot was the easy part. The candidates — Evergreen Chou, the technician who works at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, and Paul Graziano, the urban planner — needed only five signatures, or 5 percent of the total number of Green Party voters registered in the 20th Council District in Flushing, represented now by Julia Harrison, an 80-year-old Democrat who must leave this year because of term limits.
The more difficult part will come in November, when whoever wins the primary will have to compete against a Democratic or Republican candidate. There are seven Democrats and one Republican now running for the seat.
To that end, the Green Party candidates say they must rely on name recognition while championing universal issues that the nearly 54,000 registered voters in Flushing, regardless of political affiliation, will have no trouble supporting.
“The Green Party is the biggest little party around,” Graziano said. “There is a tremendous spectrum of people in the Green Party.”
Chou, a 40-year-old Asian American, has made affordable housing and universal health-care keystones of his campaign, while Graziano, 10 years Chou’s junior, advocates stricter guidelines governing development in Flushing.
But in either case, the candidates say, the leitmotifs running through each man’s campaign reflect those of the Green Party at large: grassroots democracy, social justice and ecological wisdom.
“My personal hope is that we tap the people who usually don’t come out and vote,” Chou said.
Before 1998, the year the Green Party earned enough signatures to secure a line on the November ballot, Green Party candidates had no line under which to run. What if two or more candidates were running for office, thus forcing a primary? “The party had to work it out themselves,” said Naomi Bernstein, a spokeswoman for the city Board of Elections.
But in 1998, the Green Party obtained the necessary 50,000 signatures to get on the ballot, affording it the same rights and privileges bestowed on any other party, rights it will continue to enjoy provided that in 2002 the party again collects the same number of signatures, Bernstein said.
Still, four years as a recognized party is barely enough time to emblazon a lasting impression in the minds of voters, many of whom view politics in singular terms of Democrat versus Republican.
“The issues I’m talking about are pretty universal,” Graziano said. “My strength is going to be that I’m the only urban planner and someone who knows a lot about planning in an area overwhelmed with sub-standard speculative development over the last 20 years.”
Whatever causes their particular platforms consist of, both Chou and Graziano say they will have to depend largely on the reputations they have constructed over the years that they have lived in Flushing. For both men, this means drawing on their experiences in various civic organizations and at community board meetings, venues where residents can familiarize themselves with the tenants of their campaigns.
“When you look around, we’re all facing the same problems,” Chou said. For instance, with the addition of large retail stores, Flushing has evolved into a major commercial hub, but the workers employed by these stores are not making a livable wage, nor are they given adequate healthcare, he said.
In 1993, Graziano said, he was disturbed when he returned to Flushing from his college in Massachusetts and saw the sort of development under way where he had grown up. The downtown district had become more congested than ever, he said, and many of the beautiful homes he remembered were supplanted by what he called “shabby speculative development.”
“There is a certain quality of life expected in those neighborhoods, and it has been eroding because of this,” he said. “If that doesn’t have broad appeal, I don’t know what does.”
Neither Chou nor Graziano has the wherewithal of council candidate John Liu, a Democrat running for the Flushing seat who has raised more than $130,000 — more than any other council candidate in the city.
Chou has raised $393, according to campaign finance filings. What Graziano has raised is not listed by the city Campaign Finance Board, however, since he is filing under what is called a “small campaign,” reserved for candidates who intend on raising less than $7,000, said Frank Barry, a board spokesman.
And although money allows candidates to print literature, pay political consultants and in general run a more cohesive campaign, Chou and Graziano said they are undaunted by this, though Chou ultimately conceded that winning the race was indeed a long shot.
“If Jesse Ventura can do it in Minnesota, then why can’t a Paul Graziano or an Evergreen Chou do it in Flushing?” Chou said.
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
