Long an Ignored Minority, Speaker Candidates Woo Republicans

Thursday, November 28, 2013 8:53 pm | 2 Minute Read

By Yochonon Donn

The City Council’s tiny four-person Republican minority — reduced to three in the incoming 2014 term — has long been an afterthought in assigning committee chairmanships and divvying up the money pot.

But with seven Democrats vying for the post of council speaker, those three Republicans, and the forgotten borough that hosts two-thirds of them, is suddenly getting welcome attention.

At a speakers’ forum in Staten Island Monday night, the rhetoric in the race to replace Speaker Christine Quinn pivoted from who can be the most progressive to who will be most inclusive.

“I really believe that everybody wants the same thing,” said Councilman Jumaane Williams, a Flatbush Democrat. “My job as a speaker would be to make sure that colleagues could bring back the resources they need to represent those 160,000 people who are part of eight million people who live in New York City.”

Williams, an African-American member of the council’s Progressive Caucus, is somewhat more conservative than the other candidates, particularly on social and moral issues. That has gotten him a bad rap in the city overall, but during his talk with the conservative audience Monday, it may have given him an edge.

There are 51 council members who get to choose their speaker, a post made even more powerful by Quinn with her ability to reward lawmakers for their loyalty and sometimes punish them for voting against bills she supported.

Future speakers, however, may preside over more robust bodies. Bills before the council seek to strip the speaker of some powers to control which bills are put forth and how member item funds are distributed.

That would be a boon for a district like in Staten Island, the lone borough still sending Republicans to represent it. Currently, two of the three Republican councilmen are from Staten Island, Steven Matteo and Vincent Ignizio. Eric Ulrich, the only other Republican, hails from Queens.

At the forum Monday, speaker hopefuls each rose to promise a willingness to provide more funding for GOP districts and allow their councilmen to chair committees. It was a welcome dose of attention thrown in the way of the trio, magnified by a quip by Councilwoman Inez Dickens, who wondered, “There’s a minority party in the City Council?

Also attending were councilmen Jimmy Vacca, Mark Weprin, Dan Garodnick and Melissa Mark-Viverito. The latter, a co-founder of the Progressive Caucus and a close ally of mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, is seen as the race front-runner.

This article appeared in print on page 5 of the November 29th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.