To-do over Niou nods: Winning some more key endorsements in her campaign for Assembly, Yuh-Line Niou last week received the backing of state Senator Daniel Squadron, whose Senate district includes more than 95 percent of the 65th Assembly District, and Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh, who represents the adjoining district to the north. Niou, who is running on the Working
Families Party line, is one of four candidates in the April 19 special election for former Speaker Sheldon Silver’s seat. “Yuh-Line Niou has the energy, progressive ideals and focus on reform to make a big difference in the district and in Albany,” Squadron said. Added Kavanagh, “Yuh-Line will be exactly the kind of legislator we need to join the fight for affordable housing, stronger rent laws and proper maintenance and security in public housing. We know that corrupt landlords were at the heart of the scandal that created this vacancy; we need to change the way Albany works and nothing would be more appropriate than electing a truly pro-tenant reformer to fill this seat.” Niou called Squadron and Kavanagh “models of what we should expect from all our legislators. I’ll be proud to stand with them as we work to make Albany more effective, transparent and responsive to the people of this community,” she said. The endorsements definitely ruffled the feathers of local Democratic politicos, among them Sean Sweeney of Downtown Independent Democrats. He accused some politicians of making the crass calculation that it’s better for their careers to back Niou since it would help them win Asian votes in the future if they run for higher office. The reasoning, Sweeney said, is that “there are more Asian voters in the city than Downtown voters.” Sweeney is also suspicious of Brad Hoylman backing Niou, wondering if the reform-minded state senator — as some rumors are saying — would want to run for state attorney general if — make that when — Eric Schneiderman runs for governor. “I’m pretty annoyed by this,” Sweeney told us. “They’re ignoring the people who put them into office and gave them a job in the first place, and are pandering to advance their own career and secure their next job. Unlike a lot of the Democratic electeds who are not loyal,” he declared, “the local Democratic rank and file are loyal to the Democratic nominee and the Democratic Party,” meaning they’ll vote for Alice Cancel come April 19. Told of Sweeney’s angry comments, Matt Rey, Niou’s campaign spokesperson, fired off a blistering response: “Insulting Lower Manhattan’s leading progressives is a sad tactic from a desperate campaign trying to deflect attention from their decades of support for Shelly Silver. Senator Squadron and Assemblyman Kavanagh are supporting Yuh-Line because she’ll stand up to wealthy special interests and reform Albany’s broken ethics laws, while Alice Cancel calls Shelly Silver a hero. Lower Manhattan voters are smarter than that.”
It’s a go-go for Gigi: We’ve been hearing from reliable sources that Gigi Li will be running in the Democratic primary election for the 65th Assembly District in September. On Wednesday, after the press conference on Rivington House, the Community Board 3 chairperson confirmed, with a broad smile, that she will be. “I fully intend to run in the primary,” she assured, adding, “I think I have a track record that speaks for itself.”
The gang’s all there: Among those spotted at last Thursday’s candidates forum for the 65th A.D. special election on April 19 was Ti-Hua Chang, the veteran New York City TV news reporter. Chang, who seemed to be listening quite intently to what Yuh-Line Niou was saying, is known to be supporting Don Lee, who, like Li, also plans to run in the September primary. Some say Chang is actually Lee’s campaign manager. Also checking out the special-election candidates at the forum were District Leaders Jenifer Rajkumar and Paul Newell. They, too, both plan to run in the Assembly primary in September. Is anyone not running in that primary? Newell was smart, leaving no butts about whether people would see his campaign literature: He put his trilingual fliers on all the audience seats. We saw Rajkumar stand up and listen very carefully when Niou was asked about the Democratic County Committee vote in February, when Niou — calling it a “flawed” process — dropped out of the running when it was clear Alice Cancel would win the nomination. Asked if she would have accepted the nomination if she had won the vote, Niou basically said she wouldn’t have been able to because, well, at that point, she wasn’t in the running anymore.
Soldiering on: Speaking of Niou, she is still showing some visible effects of the scary February accident when she was riding in an Uber car to pick up her mom at the airport and it was rear-ended. Last week, Niou was sporting a big black brace over her right knee, and she told us that she is still wearing makeup to camouflage a large black bruise — her face hit the back of the driver’s pushed-back-too-far seat — that goes across her forehead and down her face along the side of her nose to the corner of her mouth. After she mentioned it to us, we could faintly see it through the makeup. But she was in her usual good spirits during the event — perhaps because she was getting a contact high from pro-pot Green Party candidate Dennis Levy sitting next to her? Just kidding!… We think!
Committee crew: A race is also shaping up for Democratic State Committee in the West Side’s 66th Assembly District, where incumbent Buxton Midyette, who was elected last year to fill the seat left vacant by Alan Schulkin, is not running for re-election. The candidates include former District Leader John Scott, Deley Gazinelli, Dodge Landesman and Ben Yee. The Village Independent Democrats club might have a tough choice in this one. One would expect leading V.I.D.’er Assemblymember Deborah Glick to push for Scott. But Yee, who is the club’s treasurer and also the vice president of Young Democrats of America, is being honored by V.I.D. at its 59th Annual Awards Reception on Thurs., April 28, at Tio Pepe on W. Fourth St. And don’t count out Landesman, who previously was outmaneuvered for the state committee seat by the veteran labor honcho Schulkin. V.I.D. will also be honoring Steve Herrick, executive director of the Cooper Square Committee, for his work on behalf of affordable housing, and Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York.
