In a 1993 referendum, New Yorkers voted to limit city politicians to two terms or eight years. Three years later, the city council tried to revise the law with a new referendum that provided for staggered terms not to exceed twelve years. The voters rejected it. Until Bloomberg, Quinn, and their soldiers in crime overturned it, the rule was up or out in eight years. That’s what this election is about:

Forcing Politicians to Respect The People.

The incumbents and their supporters want to talk about other things of course, and they will seek to distract voters from the only issue that matters in this election. For those who haven’t focused on how skilled most politicians are at this sort of thing — in other words, those folks who have a life — here are a couple of stories. I hope others will contribute theirs.

At Independence Plaza, we didn’t want politicians to gain credibility with the tenants so, although they often asked, we never allowed them to speak at tenant meetings. We were 3,500 people. Politicians wanted our support, but with rare exceptions, they would do nothing to earn it. They had too many other agendas.

Kathryn Fried lived in our complex. She had been a council member for almost eight years. Peter Vallone was the speaker. (His son inherited the seat and is one of the council members who voted to overturn the term limits vote.) Both Vallone and Fried were term limited. He was running in a Democratic primary to replace Giuliani. Fried was preparing to run for Public Advocate. I thought that she might be motivated to do something to help us save our homes. She had a very different agenda. Over dinner with my wife and me, she mentioned that she was one of several council members who were trying to pass a bill to eliminate the term limits law. “It will be a disaster for the city if the experienced council members are turned out,” she said. “Who will teach the new people the ropes? The staff will end up in charge of the council,” she argued. “The mayor will completely dominate.”

There’s always a public purpose rationale, and it has to have at least a surface credibility otherwise it wouldn’t be effective.

“Bullshit, the voters voted for term limits law twice,” I replied.

“The voters were fooled. Ron Lauder financed a huge propaganda campaign to get the law passed.”

“Look, I don’t blame you for wanting to hold on to your job, but if you try to engineer this scheme, I’ll organize a group of picketers outside your apartment.”

It was a snotty remark, but she was treating me like a naive constituent and I didn’t like it. An awkward silence ensued. My wife looked at me reproachfully, not for the politics of it — I knew she agreed — but we had invited the lady to dinner. Trying to soften things, I said something inane. The dinner ended on a sour note. Fried understandably wanted to keep her job. Either way, she would need the support of Democratic political insiders. Neither she nor they would ever help us.

The term limit negotiations between the council and Giuliani fell apart — Giuliani had other plans. Kathryn Fried would soon be out of a job.
Fried’s successor on the city council, Alan Gerson, is one of the people who voted to extend his own term. He is an outwardly affable lawyer. A round face, a broad smile, he hadn’t been in office long but he had mastered the art of the politician: an earnestness that implied total commitment to his constituents. Our cause was his cause—whatever that might be. Service to it embodied the very purpose to which he had dedicated his professional life. Rhetorical clouds of civic virtue seemed to billow around his head.

Gerson spoke of fearsome negotiations with high-level housing officials, of meetings on our behalf with deputy mayors. He issued press releases, wrote letters, posed for pictures in the local papers. Had we asked, he would have promoted a council resolution calling on the mayor to preserve Mitchell-Lama housing, or proclaiming “Mitchell-Lama Day in New York.” Meetings, letters, resolutions, hearings—standard gestures.

Commitments were hedged with contingencies. Too often tenants heard the commitments; those of us who knew him heard the contingencies. Gerson hinted at a successful outcome, but only if we followed his leadership. Many tenants believed him. A few of us knew he would take us right off a cliff.

We wouldn’t let him speak at tenant meetings so he distributed a letter under every door. He took credit for things he hadn’t done, talked about resolutions that he planned to introduce, of “vision statements,” of how he had “reached out” to the deputy mayor. Nothing ever happened. I responded with a strongly worded letter to the tenants, explaining that when politicians take credit, “ordinarily we would let this political posturing pass for what it is — political posturing. But this is your money that we’re spending … we aren’t going to be silent or allow you to be fooled: … our homes are at stake.”

I went on to explain why Gerson’s letter was misleading. He didn’t write any more letters, but he was angry. He had only narrowly won the Democratic primary. We were an important constituency, by far the strongest grassroots political organization in the area. We didn’t want anyone to represent us at meetings, at least not without our being in the room. “Not about us without us” didn’t originate with us, but it was a good rule of thumb.

Higher politicians and Bloomberg’s housing officials encouraged Gerson’s approach. They and he viewed the tenants through the same prism: we were outsiders, disturbers of the political peace. The only way to get our landlord, Laurence (“Call me Larry”) Gluck, to negotiate was to give him something to worry about. He would never worry about Alan Gerson.

Kathryn Fried

An earlier encounter with Gerson’s predecessor is worth telling about. Kathryn Fried lost her council seat and the race for Public Advocate. She was off the public payroll for the first time in years. At about the same time, the legislature was redrawing the state legislative districts. It appeared that they would be dividing Independence Plaza into two separate senate districts. Fried was agitated about it. She urged me to lead a tenant protest. “Kathryn,” I replied, “the only person who would be upset about Independence Plaza having two senators is someone who might be thinking about running for a senate seat with Independence Plaza as her base.” (With her base split into two districts, her chances of unseating the incumbent in a primary were poor.) She walked away steaming. It was the only encounter with her that I actually enjoyed. But we hadn’t heard the last of her. She still needed a job.

Diane Lapson, a board member, now the Independent Plaza tenant president, was a member of Gerson’s and Fried’s local Democratic club. Lapson was friendly with both politicians. She called me to say that Fried was meeting with Martin Connor, the state senator who would now represent part of Independence Plaza. Fried had told Lapson that she was going to see about getting Connor to pass Mitchell-Lama legislation in Albany. Lapson wanted us to meet about this new Albany approach. We met in Socrates, the neighborhood coffee shop, now gone. I didn’t like the smell of it and asked John Scott, another board member, to come along.

Lapson insisted that Fried was making a sincere effort to help us. “Albany isn’t going to do anything useful for us, especially not through anything Kathryn Fried does with a Democratic state senator,” I said. “It’s ridiculous. This meeting is about Marty Connor putting her on his payroll. She’ll tell Connor that she represents Independence Plaza tenants. Maybe she’ll threaten to run against him. Maybe he’ll give her a job to get her off his back. That’s fine, but it’s stupid to focus on Albany, and especially to rely on her or Connor to do anything. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.” Lapson said she wasn’t convinced. If Connor came up with something, I told her we’d look at it. We left it at that.

Connor’s housing expert, someone I’d known for years, called me a few days later. Connor had indeed put Fried on his payroll for $40,000. They were working on a legislative proposal for us, he said, and he wanted my comments. We both knew that the proposal would die a natural death from inattention, the fate of all such legislative proposals that are designed not to become laws but to deceive constituents into believing that their sponsors care. Had we pursued this Albany “opportunity” instead of focusing on New York City, our campaign to save our homes would have died right then. Eventually, Fried got herself a minor judgeship and moved out of Independence Plaza.

All’s well that ends well.

Shortly after Gerson took office, he put one of our newly elected vice presidents on his council payroll. I objected. She was adamant about holding onto her paying job and her board position. Some argued that she should keep the job because she would have better access to the councilman. Of course it was Gerson who wanted better access to us.
I tried to reason with this vice president. “If you owned a department store, would you want your buyer on the payroll of the company that’s selling luggage to your store? Well we’re the department store and Gerson will be trying to sell us his luggage. You can’t serve two masters: Gerson and the tenants. We can’t have anybody on his payroll.”

She was furious. I don’t know whether she believed it, but she told tenants I had made a racial slur with my “two-masters” remark. I was stunned. I had taught partnership and agency law, and the “two-master” comment is an age old legal principle that’s expressed in exactly that way. It’s just common sense. We couldn’t allow Gerson to compromise us. We were at an impasse. Eventually, she resigned and kept her job with Gerson. She still works there. She still lives here. She still doesn’t talk to me — or my wife.

After a number of meetings and a couple of nasty board elections, we were able to establish a well-motivated, capable tenant board. Most tenants seemed to believe in us. There are many good people on the current tenant board, but things have slipped. Some have mixed agendas. And now Gerson is back. I understand that he’s put more tenants on the public payroll. What will it take to get rid of him? If not a wooden stake and some garlic, I, for one, wouldn’t object to a minor judgeship. He would do less harm.

- Neil Fabricant