Gigi Li & B.P.C.
For a moment when we saw Gigi Li, chairperson of Community Board 3, last week we were confused. Were we at the wrong meeting? No, we quickly recovered, we weren’t — it was indeed Community Board 1’s Battery Park City Committee meeting.
It’s hard to imagine Li’s appearance was coincidental to her challenging Jenifer Rajkumar for Democratic district leader — Li is not as well known in B.P.C., which is a big part of Part C in the 65th Assembly District, where they are running.
As UnderCover reported last month, Li’s residency outside of Part C will be a campaign issue. Presumably she’ll be able to get more votes in the Lower East Side section of the part. (If district leaders commanded armies instead of rallying the political troops as volunteers, Part C would be hard to defend since the part itself is separated in….well yes parts.)
Rajkumar, a Battery Parker, has handily won the position twice, beating out neighbors Linda Belfer and Robin Forst, who as vice president for external relations for the Battery Park City Authority was at the meeting. Forst was doing her part last week, introducing Li around.
Committee chairperson Anthony Notaro was also friendly with Li during the meeting, which had no references to the campaign.
Li came prepared, giving helpful information about helicopters — the amount of takeoffs and landings for tourists spins has been a persistent problem Downtown — and offering advice about street activity permits, an issue C.B. 3 has written guidelines for.
How much this will help Li remains to be seen — it wasn’t a well-attended meeting — but we’ll see come September.
Nadler on Iran
The initial reaction to the Iran nuclear agreement from our man in Washington, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, is neutral. After the proposed agreement was announced Tuesday, he put out a statement saying he was studying the details, but he did not express the opposition or skepticism expressed by many Republicans and a few Democratic members of Congress.
“I look forward to evaluating the agreement in comparison to the other available alternatives for preventing a nuclear Iran,” Nadler’s statement read in part. “This agreement has no influence on the other serious issues that remain with the Iranian regime and its behavior.”
He reiterated his support for Israel, which opposes the agreement, and for sanctions related to Iran’s support for terrorism
This could be one of the few issues where the vote of Nadler and other Democratic House members may matter since in order to block the agreement, Congress will have to vote it down and then get a 2/3 majority to override a promised veto by President Obama. Nadler may have the largest Jewish constituency in the New York delegation, so he presumably could be a vote House Speaker John Boehner is hoping for.
