With the news that Bo Riccobono has dropped out of the race for Community Board 2 chairperson, Terri Cude is running unopposed in Thursday’s election at the C.B. 2 full-board meeting. Only the board’s 50 members will be allowed to vote.
Cude is currently the Greenwich Village / Soho / Lower West Side board’s first vice chairperson. Tobi Bergman, who has led the board for the last two years, will be stepping down, per the board’s voluntary two-year term limit for chairperson. Riccobono ran against Bergman and Richard Stewart in a three-way race two years ago.
At last month’s full board meeting, Cude told her fellow board members she was running on her experience leading and co-leading important committees and on her track record of working well with neighboring community boards, which she would continue to do, if elected. Riccobono, reiterating a position he stated when he campaigned for the board’s highest post two years ago, said he would delegate some of the chairperson’s responsibilities to the vice chairpersons, and said the board should be more “proactive.”
Reached for comment on Monday, Cude declined to say whether Riccobono had scrapped his campaign, and referred questions to Bergman, as the board’s chief spokesperson. (Perhaps, in the current political climate, she didn’t want to risk having anyone say the election was “rigged” or that the media was trying to spin things.)
But Bergman confirmed, “Yes, it is true. On Nov. 6, Bo sent an e-mail to board members saying he could not serve due to personal time constraints.”
Riccobono did not respond by press time for a request for comment.
Last month, after Riccobono announced he planned to challenge Cude, board member Robin Rothstein told The Villager she was glad to see a contested election since it’s always a healthy thing for the board.
“Look, they’re both good candidates,” she shrugged. “It’s not like a Trump-Clinton thing.”
