By Lincoln Anderson
In one of this year’s most competitive and closely watched races, three candidates, Kathleen “Keen” Berger, Cynthia Smith [right] and Lois Rakoff [left], are vying for Greenwich Village female Democratic district leader.
The position was left open after Aubrey Lees decided not to seek reelection after serving eight years, saying she was burned out and that the district leader position ought to be abolished, since many of their responsibilities have been assumed by the community boards.
The lowest Democratic Party position, district leaders help turn out the vote, organize on local issues and bring these issues to the attention of politicians. It is an unpaid post.
The three candidates reflect the current state of Democratic club politics in the 66th Assembly District’s Part A — Greenwich Village — where Village Independent Democrats remains the largest club in terms of membership, but Lower Manhattan Alliance for Progressive Political Action, with state Senator Tom Duane and Councilmember Chris Quinn as members, wields considerable political clout, while Village Reform Democratic Club remains a presence.
Berger, a former community School Board 2 president, is backed by V.I.D. Smith, former president of Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, is supported by GLID and LaMAPPA. V.R.D.C. is behind Rakoff’s candidacy.
The male Democratic district leader, LaMAPPA head Arthur Schwartz, is running unopposed for reelection as Smith’s running mate. Schwartz had tried to get V.I.D., the club he split from several years ago to start LaMAPPA, to endorse his candidacy without a vote, but V.I.D. rejected this offer, saying a democratic vote was necessary. After the LaMAPPA-V.I.D. negotiations collapsed, Berger volunteered to run as V.I.D.’s female district leader candidate.
Berger can lay claim to having been a Villager for the longest of the three candidates, 37 years, having lived all but two of those on Bedford St. She has a political pedigree. Her father, Harold Stassen, was Minnesota’s governor when she was born, ran in the 1948 Republican presidential primary and headed the Foreign Operations Administration in the Eisenhower administration.
After graduating college, Berger came to New York City to teach, finding a job at a junior high school in Harlem. She met attorney Martin Berger, who was then V.I.D. president, at what she called a “huge party” on the Lower East Side for the Poor People’s Corporation, an organization that was helping fund small businesses in the Deep South. They found they shared an interest in civil rights. They got married. Soon after, Martin Berger was running for district leader, the position Keen Berger now finds she’s running for.
They had four daughters, now ages 21-35, all of whom attended P.S. 3 in the Village. They range from a lawyer for Native Americans, to a journalist, law student and current undergraduate.
“I’ve always been interested in political issues,” Berger said. “Now that my youngest child is in college and with Martin’s death in January, I look at all his old clippings and his life…. It’s part of his tradition. It’s part of my tradition.”
Berger said she’s concerned about quality of life issues like noise, trash and over-development.
“I’m very much a neighborhood person, having raised four children here, walking these streets, shopping in the stores,” she said. “I’m a member of the block association. I mean this is really my neighborhood, in hundreds of ways.”
Berger holds a Ph.D. and teaches developmental psychology at Bronx Community College, part of the CUNY system. The psychological textbooks she’s written are the world’s best selling.
Headed School Board 2
She was past president in 1994 and 1996 of Community School Board 2, which during her tenure passed the Rainbow Curriculum, which promoted an appreciation of black and Latino culture and sensitivity to gay and lesbian issues.
She is also the moderator, or leader, of the congregation at Judson Memorial Church. Though Martin Berger was Jewish, she never converted.
Berger says, if elected, she would try to help energize the local Democratic Party base.
“In this day, in this city, and in this nation, the Democratic Party needs a lot of help,” she noted.
Berger said she volunteered to run after being concerned over what happened when Schwartz tried to get V.I.D. to back him in return for letting V.I.D. endorse Smith. Smith came under criticism for staying out of the discussions, instead letting Schwartz’s negotiators, who included Duane, do the talking for her.
Said Berger, “My concern was if Cynthia was not coming to V.I.D. for the endorsement and if V.I.D. could only get Cynthia if we took Arthur, I saw that as a problem. I think the problem is — does she speak for herself?”
Berger is endorsed by V.I.D. and another influential local political organization, Coalition for a District Alternative, as well as Assemblymember Deborah Glick; Councilmember Margarita Lopez; state Democratic Committeewoman Rachel Lavine; Judson Church pastor Peter Laarman; former Councilmembers Carol Greitzer and Miriam Friedlander; current District Leader Lees; Keith Crandell of Community Board 2; former City Council candidate Rocky Chin; Herman Gerson, former V.I.D. president; Village activists Stu Waldman and Livvie Mann; and author Calvin Trillin — the latter which Berger added she was especially happy to have gotten.
Lesbian Candidate
Cynthia Smith has lived in the Village for 15 years on Jane St. An industrial designer, she specializes in designing museum exhibitions for family and children’s groups, her work having been showcased at the Museum of Natural History, among others. She grew up in Ohio and came to New York in 1987.
“I was brought up in the Midwest, but as long as I lived there, people told me I belonged in New York — and I take that as compliment,” she said.
Smith came out as a lesbian while 19 at Ohio State where she also got her first taste of activism, protesting against Anita Bryant’s fight against gay rights. In addition to having been a president of Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, a Manhattan-wide gay political club that counts as members Manhattan’s gay elected officials, Smith was recently appointed to Community Board 2.
Smith has a partner who she described a “talented psychotherapist” who lives in the Village.
She said being district leader is a “natural extension” of what she’s been doing locally for the last several years.
“I think the district leader has two main jobs,” she said. “One is to organize the local Democrats at a grassroots level and work at a grassroots level on issues that are important to the community, like quality of life, keeping the uniqueness of the Village; we need to keep our neighborhoods stable for middle-income residents and seniors and insure there is enough open space, parks, playgrounds.”
Asked if she thought it was important that a lesbian be elected as the Village’s district leader, Smith said, it represents a “seat at the table” for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or L.G.B.T., people.
“For an L.G.B.T. person to hold office, it’s important to have those people as district leaders because you sit on the executive committee for the Democratic Party for Manhattan County,” she said. “You can put forward names of organizations, like LeGAL [a gay legal project], for screening panels for judges. We waited eight years to have a good, quality, L.G.B.T. judge candidate nominated last year, Roz Richter.
“I’m not running because I’m gay,” Smith added. “I’m running because I care about our community, because I care about progressive issues and civil rights. Now more than ever, I think we need to elect progressive people to local office.”
Smith has worked on the national level as a member of the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.
Asked about the flap with V.I.D., Smith said she had hoped it would work out, but that she’s her own candidate, and not just Schwartz’s sidekick.
“The Village is often divided,” she said. “And if there is a possibility to bring everyone together, I wanted to be there — and so it did not happen. If I get elected, I will represent this whole community. With the Republican convention coming here, it’s very important for Democrats to be united.
“I’m running with [Schwartz],” Smith said. “Is he running me? No. It’s two separate seats. I can work with everybody. That’s what I bring to the table. That’s one of my talents.”
Endorsing Smith are LaMAPPA, GLID and 504 Democrats, a disabled club, plus state Senators Tom Duane and Liz Krueger and City Councilmembers Chris Quinn, Eva Moskowitz and Phil Reed. Her community endorsements include Jim Brennan, a West Village parks activist; Marie Dormuth, a loft tenants activist; Carol Yankay, former Horatio St. Association president; and Peter Zimmer of the Central Village Block Association.
Relocated teacher
The third candidate, Lois Rakoff, moved to the Village five years ago from Brooklyn after her son, whom she raised as a single mother, entered college. She’s a health teacher at a progressive, non-graded public school in Coney Island, which she preferred not to name.
Rakoff has a background as a quality of life activist, having participated in “civilian car patrols,” looking out for crime while living in Brooklyn. In the Village, she was one of the members of the Bleecker Area Merchants and Residents Association who advocated getting the Guardian Angels to patrol the Sixth Ave./Bleecker St. area.
A Thompson St. resident, Rakoff is an active member of the Minetta Gardens, two small gated, “vest pocket” parks at Minetta Lane and Sixth Ave., last year organizing a moment of silence in the gardens on the one-year anniversary of 9/11. She hopes to organize children’s activities in the gardens and get them opened to the public more.
She attends monthly meetings of the Sixth Police Precinct Community Council, a forum for local crime and police issues. Politically, she’s been a member of V.R.D.C. for a year.
Probably atypical for many local quality of life activists, she also enjoys and participates in the Village’s nightlife.
“I was culturally deprived and my son was moving on,” she said of why she chose to resettle in the Village. “N.Y.U. is here and theaters and movies. And this is the place. As a single person, I participate in the nightlife.”
Asked if she likes any nightclubs or music venues in particular, Rakoff said, “I try to frequent as many as possible. I’m eclectic in my taste.”
At the same time, she’s concerned about noise and sidewalk crowding caused by the new smoking law.
“The crowd control that’s happening — there is no crowd control,” she said. “Where do you put people?…. Christopher St., the people that work here, the people that come here to party — there has to be some compatibility.”
On how she views the role of district leader, Rakoff said it’s “to unify the clubs and be a liaison between the people and the politicians. As a teacher, I’m trained in peace intervention. And from what I’m hearing about the Village and the political clubs, I could be a very good peacemaker.”
Of the broader political picture, she said, “Democrats are the people, and we have to unify — or influence the current mayor, who is doing well.”
An issue Rakoff is concerned about is the public-access defibrillators that have been installed at various locations in the Village, such as the Village Lantern on Bleecker St. Though she and other BAMRA members received training to use the defibrillators, she feels a contact phone number would improve emergency response.
Rakoff is committed to preserving affordable housing, saying she benefited from it growing up.
“I come from that,” she said. “We were in a beautiful building — and it was subsidized. Affordable housing keeps families and the elderly in the neighborhood and doesn’t force children to change schools. Artists, writers, older people, we would be losing these people. It’s a myth that people are wealthy here in the Village. There are low-, middle-income [residents].”
Rakoff said she boasts one other advantage over her rivals: She’s the only native New Yorker.
“I have carbon monoxide in my blood,” she said. “My crib was over a bus stop. I’m a city girl.”
Rakoff is endorsed by V.R.D.C., Pride Democrats and Stonewall Veterans.
Enough lesbian leaders?
One noteworthy flap earlier in the campaign was over the “lesbian issue.” Speaking at LaMAPPA’s meeting to endorse candidates, Assemblymember Glick, a V.I.D. member and an out lesbian — who is supporting Berger, a straight candidate, over Smith, an out lesbian — said there were already quite a few lesbian and gay elected politicians in the Downtown area. However, in the version of events that Arthur Schwartz, LaMAPPA’s leader, who is straight, told The Villager, Glick specifically said there were enough lesbian district leaders in the city; Schwartz noted there are only about three, including Rosie Mendez in the East Village and Aubrey Lees in the Village. Told of Schwartz’s account of her remarks, Glick called The Villager in haste to set the record straight, so to speak. Told of Glick’s comments, Schwartz downplayed the difference between Glick’s version and his.
