Candidacy up in smoke? Nope! An herb-advocating candidate is set to spice up the special election in Lower Manhattan’s 65th Assembly District. Dennis Levy, 67, the fourth candidate, recently threw his tam into the race. An H.I.V.-positive grandfather and marijuana advocate, he will be running on the Green Party line in the April 19 election to select a successor to Sheldon Silver — for at least for a few months, that is, until the September Democratic primary.
Levy has lived in the district for 10 years, on Pearl St. near the Brooklyn Bridge in a New York City Housing Authority building. He previously lived in the Bronx.
He said he has spent 30 years working as a community organizer in efforts to help the poor — as part of which he founded the Black and Latino AIDS Coalition (Blac NY) — and also has worked in housing and employment.
He is also the founder and president of the New York State Committee to Legalize Marijuana.
“I’ve got 18,000 followers on Facebook,” he noted of the committee’s page.
A first-time political candidate, he was tapped by the Green Party to run.
“They said, ‘We want him,’ ” he said.
He discovered the Greens and joined them last June because of their support for marijuana legalization. He found out he was H.I.V. positive back in 1991, and started smoking pot, on a friend’s advice, to deal with the illness’s side effects, including nausea and disorientation. The pot helped where nothing else had, and the experience led to him become an activist for the drug’s legalization.
Levy said he’s “not happy” about the New York State medical marijuana law pushed through by Governor Andrew Cuomo, and instead supports replacing it with state Senator Liz Krueger’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, which, similarly to Colorado, essentially would legalize recreational pot use for adults over age 21. Levy would also lobby to add a provision to MRTA (pronounced “murta”) to allow people to grow their own, “up to a couple of buds,” he noted.
More to the point, he said, “Legalizing marijuana represents jobs to me — a way to make wealth. If we legalize in New York, we will be creating a new industry, from production to retail. I want to see it in poor black and Latino communities, creating jobs.”
The nascent U.S. legal weed industry raked in $5 billion last year.
He said he is also trying to partner with GMHC (formerly Gay Men’s Health Crisis) and Mount Sinai Beth Israel to set up clinical trials to see if cannabis can slow the progression of H.I.V. — and possibly even cure it. Indeed, he often wonders if his own ganja habit — he tokes faithfully every other day — is a factor in his own “long-term nonprogressor status.”
Asked what his other campaign issues would be, he said, “Real affordable housing. Close down that [nuclear] reactor Upstate; I’m for alternative energy, wind and solar. I’m also for community control of schools,” said Levy, a foe of charters. “I would advocate for federal infrastructure jobs.”
Although some of his supporters were urging him to slam Silver publicly, Levy resisted — or at least he was when he spoke to The Villager two weeks ago.
“Shelly was around long enough that he did some positive things for the community, bringing money into the district,” he said. “People are telling me to rail against Silver — I won’t do it.”
However, Levy subsequently released a campaign video in which he vehemently declares that Silver, convicted for graft last year, “disgraced himself” in office.
Levy, though, had his own run-in with the law, when — after falling into cocaine addiction and crime — he was convicted of robbery and sentenced to 15 to 20 years in jail. Yet, he was released after three years, after the police were found to have engaged in misconduct and “the case was reversed,” according to his Wikipedia page.
Asked whether he identifies as gay or straight, Levy said, “The term they use is ‘metro,’ ” apparently referring to “metrosexual.” “I’m a guy — I like people. I don’t want to be defined by labels that carry a lot of baggage — like ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual.’ ” His Wikipedia page, though, describes him as heterosexual.
The 65th A.D. is diverse, with large populations of Asians, Latinos and whites and a smaller number of blacks. Levy, whose own background is diverse, said he can relate to everyone. His father was Jewish while his mother was black and Indian. Growing up in Cincinnati, he got it from all sides.
“People didn’t know if I was Puerto Rican, Asian or what,” he recalled. “My last name was Levy. Some black guys used to call me ‘Jew baby.’ People are always yelling stuff in Spanish at me.”
But his elusive ethnic mix could be an asset in the 65th. For example, his eyes look Asian, he said, so “the Asians love me.”
He said he definitely wants to debate the other candidates: Alice Cancel, the Democratic nominee recently selected by the district’s Democratic County Committee; Yuh-Line Niou, the Working Families Party candidate, who dropped out of the County Committee contest when she saw she didn’t have the votes and Cancel would win; and Republican Lester Chang.
Asked if he would run in the September primary if he doesn’t win the April special election, he said, possibly.
“If I build a network and relationships,” he said. “I’m out there now, let’s see what happens.”
However, this Tuesday, Levy suddenly contacted The Villager to say he was not running, though could conceivably still decide to — though he was clearly running out of time to make a decision.
“I just got very sick. It’s my H.I.V., I think,” Levy said. “I have been under stress and maybe that is the reason for my illness. I haven’t informed the Green Party yet, but they do know I’m sick. A political campaign might be too much for me.
“I’m going to wait a few days and see what my doctor says about it,” he said. “If my health makes a run impossible, I will have to withdraw my candidacy and the Greens will have to nominate another candidate. I will keep you posted.”
But on Wednesday, he contacted us again to say he is still in the race.
“Put the article in the paper,” Levy told us. “I am going to run no matter what happens. My doctor said I was having an anxiety attack. That is not stopping me.”
Busboy aid: Local activist and Silver Spurs fan Sylvia Rackow led an effort on Saturday to collect donations for Bobby Barbot, the LaGuardia Place diner’s busboy who was viciously slashed by a Lower East Side teenager on Thurs., Feb. 18.
The teen, who was subsequently arrested, had reportedly been hitting up the place’s customers for cash for a bogus basketball league and Barbot had told him to leave. But the 16-year-old left, then quickly returned and slashed Barbot on the left cheek, requiring him to get about 120 stitches to close the gaping facial gash.
Since Barbot still isn’t able to work, Rackow and many others in her building, 505 LaGuardia Place, wanted to assist him financially, to help defray his lost salary and pay for his medical costs.
Rackow was in the place’s lobby on March 5 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., collecting donations.
“We are still collecting until Saturday,” Rackow told us. “Thus far, people have dropped off $150 to my door. I had hoped for $200 but I think we’ll get much more. Bobby’s a very nice fellow, as are all the Spurs workers. Paul and I have lunch at Spurs often, as do others in our building and the neighborhood. It’s also popular with tourists on weekends.”
In addition, the outspoken critic of the N.Y.U. 2031 development plan had a petition with her last Saturday for people to sign, asking the university’s new president, Andrew Hamilton, “to slow down the construction activities” on the South Village superblocks.
