And the winner is…
Congrats to Buxton Midyette, who was recommended unanimously by the 66th Assembly District’s quartet of Democratic district leaders — John Scott, Jean Grillo, Keen Berger and Arthur Schwartz — to fill the vacant seat for state committeeman.
Alan Schulkin, the previous state committeeman, recently vacated the post after getting tapped to be deputy chief clerk at the Manhattan Board of Elections.
Midyette, a V.P. in marketing, lives in Tribeca and got involved in community activism when he headed the successful grassroots campaign to keep P.S. 150 from being moved out of Tribeca.
Midyette then co-founded Build Schools Now, an organization advocating for more schools to alleviate Lower Manhattan’s school overcrowding. A father of three, he is also known as a very dapper dresser.
Other candidates interviewed for the post included Jonathan Geballe, Dennis Gault and Delay Gazinelli. The leaders’ pick will be submitted to the State Committee, which will consider it closely at their next meeting. Like district leaders, state committee members are unpaid volunteers who serve two-year terms.
Berger, a member of Village Independent Democrats, said “We expect Buxton to represent us well, and to add new energy to the political power of Downtown.”
A crush on Downtown?
UnderCover welcomes an old friend, Danny Weisfeld back Downtown. Weisfeld, a former staffer to U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, has just started working as communications director for State Sen. Daniel Squadron.
Readers with an encyclopedic memory might recall that Weisfeld, who plays in a band under the stage name Danny Ross (his middle name), hooked up musically in 2008 with the “Obama Girl” after her famed video — yes, we too almost forgot about the lady who had a crush on the president to be, Amber Lee Ettinger.
#FastCorrection
The Notify NYC alert system started as a pilot program in Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of the fatal 2007 fire during the demolition of Deutsche Bank building across from the World Trade Center, so we’ve taken more than a passing interest over the years.
Now that it’s citywide, we end up getting a lot of texts and emails we’re not interested in, so we didn’t know what to think last week when the city’s Office of Emergency Management sent us one about an overnight exercise without a location.
It turned out the N.Y.P.D. and F.D.N.Y. were planning to show up in our ‘hood, Vesey St. and North End Ave. last week. Notify quickly sent updated messages soon after we pointed out the omission. You’re welcome, O.E.M.
Jews & ‘Mad Men’
As “Mad Men” fans well know, Jews needed not apply for Madison Avenue jobs in the early ‘60s. Matthew Weiner, who created the show about a fictional ad firm, will be talking about Mad’s Jewish plot lines at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Sun., March 29 at 4 p.m.
The talk ($20-$25, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4202) is being presented with a new museum exhibit “Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism.”
