By Tom Allon
It’s hard enough braving the wilting summer heat and standing at subway stations each morning shaking hands and passing out fliers. Then there are the endless public events and candidate forums that occupy every waking moment — when you’re not on the phone with potential donors pleading for money.
But perhaps the greatest ignominy heaped on the good citizens of New York running for public office in 2013 is that they are all being virtually ignored while the traveling Anthony Weiner circus and the occasional Eliot Spitzer caravan suck all the oxygen out of the political season.
There are two other important and competitive races going on: city public advocate and Manhattan borough president.
The public advocate is technically the second-highest office in the city and is akin to the vice president’s role in the federal government. If the mayor dies or is incapacitated, the public advocate ascends mayoralty.
As the first vice president, John Adams, famously said, “Today, I am nothing. Tomorrow, I may be everything.” Same is true of the public advocate, an otherwise toothless job with little staff.
But some people, such as Mark Green and Bill de Blasio, have used the office in the past to be a thorn in the mayor’s side and as a jumping-off point to launch a later campaign for mayor.
This year, four relatively unknown people are vying for this office: City Councilwoman Tish James (D-Brooklyn), state Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn) and two non-elected candidates, Reshma Saujani and Cathy Guererro.
Their debates and public policy ideas have largely been ignored by the mainstream media. All four are thoughtful and intelligent people who want to be one of the three top citywide officials in 2014, and it behooves us to start paying close attention.
One of them could, through succession or future elections, become mayor. No public advocate has yet moved up the ladder in city government, but that could change if de Blasio wins in November.
In the borough president’s race, there is a fascinating mix of geographically diverse candidates: Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), Lower Manhattan’s former community board Chairwoman Julie Menin and Councilwomen Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) and Jessica Lappin (D-Manhattan).
Each has represented a different slice of Manhattan and each has particular strengths that would make them worthy successors to current Borough President Scott Stringer.
Here, too, the media and the public don’t seem to be paying enough attention to an important race. The borough president has important land-use powers, as recently exhibited by Stringer’s conditional endorsement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed bold rezoning of the Midtown commercial district.
I have met, and in some cases worked with, these eight public servants and they deserve our attention and respect during this election season. They care about the important issues facing us in the years ahead — how we fix our public school system, save our city hospital system, balance the need to build and develop residential and commercial space while improving our infrastructure in a growing city and improve mass transit and other pressing issues.
These two races, unlike the mayoral and city comptroller races, have been free of personal drama, and I find that refreshing. No one is speaking about sexual peccadillos, failing marriages or other irrelevant topics when judging our leaders.
Perhaps this is because six of the eight candidates in these two races are women.
I hope over the next month my colleagues in the media give these two races the ink, airtime and digital space they deserve.
Issues and vision and management skills should trump personal issues and self-destruction when we decide who to vote for in September.
Tom Allon, president of City & State NY, was a Republican and Liberal Party-backed mayoral candidate in 2013 before he left to return to the private sector. Reach him at tallon@cityandstateny.com.
