Calling the race the culmination of his career, Brennan prepares to take on several high profile Council members
The race to replace Bill Thompson (D) as New York City comptroller is already well under way, with a slew of high profile, term-limited Council members raising money and coyly campaigning.
Into the mix, and making no bones about his intentions, comes Assembly Member James Brennan, a well-respected six-term Democratic legislator from Park Slope, Brooklyn.
He has before him the tricky task of running for a citywide office that few people really understand against younger, better known upstarts at a time when his day job in the Legislature puts him in a body more unpopular than ever. Plus, that day job means that he spends much of his time in Albany, 160 miles away from the media glare and voters of New York.
“Any local official [running citywide] faces a major challenge because they are local and this is a city of eight million people. It’s huge,” Brennan said when asked about his chances. “Is it more difficult because I’m in the Assembly? I don’t know. I think it’s pretty difficult for everyone.”
Brennan was ready to jump into the 2005 race had Thompson decided to run for mayor instead of seek reelection. As past chair of the Assembly’s Mental Health Committee and current chair of the Cities Committee, he believes his record and experience would make for a snug fit for comptroller. Known for being something of a firebrand, he was involved in the unsuccessful 2000 coup to oust Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan).
“Fiscal matters have long interested me, holding government agencies accountable for their performance has long interested me,” he said. “I’m a veteran lawmaker with a broad background in and immersion in the fiscal details of state and city budgets. People who know me recognize that I have a powerful fiscal mind and, in combination with my experience, I think I would do well in that job.”
This is all in addition to what Brennan sees as a deeper connection to the work of a comptroller.
“It’s a natural fit for my personality,” he said.
That may be part of his problem. He has the methodical, bean-counting, full-paragraph-speaking personality that is ill-suited to capture the attention of the electorate on a down-ballot campaign in a crowded field.
“The problems he faces are called Yassky, Felder, Weprin—and that’s just the start of his problem,” said longtime Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf, naming some of the expected 2009 field. “My advice: raise money and stop sleeping.”
The first part he has started to do. He has raised $261,000 from more than 1,100 donors so far, adding approximately $38,000 at the July filing, he said.
And he has rustled up some media coverage recently for authoring a bill to put tougher penalties for building abuses and, in a move that landed him on the front pages of several newspapers, for his part in successfully filing a Freedom of Information lawsuit against Forest City Ratner to force the company to disclose its financial plans for the Atlantic Yards project.
But he still remains a relative unknown even to many political observers.
“Others have been working at this for a while, they have increased their ID in voters’ minds, and he’s been seen a lot less, so he’s got a lot of work to do,” explained Sheinkopf.
Harrison Goldin, who served four terms as comptroller, from 1974 to 1989, after serving in the State Senate, disagreed that Council members are somehow better suited for the job or the campaign, noting that he defeated a Council member himself in his first race. Goldin conceded, however, that being away from the city so much during the legislative session will likely add an extra barrier.
“When you are in the Council, you have a physical presence in New York, so there isn’t the huge strain of having to go back and forth all the time,” he said.
Goldin added that state legislators must put in additional effort to be noticed by the small neighborhood newspapers that frequently highlight the work of their local Council members.
The field is far from set yet, but Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), along with Queens Democrats David Weprin, Melinda Katz and John Liu, seem likely to get involved, and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr. (D) is being talked about as a possibility for the race as well, if he decides to drop down from his current all-but-announced run for mayor. One consultant suggested that Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum (D) might enter the comptroller’s race, if she decides that a mayoral run will prove too daunting.
No major Republican has expressed much interest in the race to date.
“I will make one prediction: that there will be a lot of people in the race,” Brennan said.
Unlike some of the others, Brennan sees being comptroller as the culmination of his career. While most of his likely opponents will try to use the office as little more than a stepping-stone to a higher profile position, Brennan vows that if he wins, he’ll retire at the conclusion of his second term. And if he loses, he will still have his seat in the Assembly.
Yet most see the kind of race he ends up running depending greatly on who else gets in the race and how different ethnic and borough loyalties fall. As a white progressive, Brennan has to get a substantial portion of the vote in Manhattan, where a disproportionate number of people vote in down-ballot elections, as well as in the so-called Brownstone Belt in the wealthier enclaves of Brooklyn. In a race some are already predicting will go to a run-off, Brennan would likely need to peel off some minority voters as well.
So far, few other than the prospective candidates themselves are expressing preferences in the race, despite the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s June 21 backing of Katz.
But Brennan says he still sees the race as being at a very early stage, and he remains undaunted.
“My decisions about what I do are unaffected by other people’s decisions. I’m not calculating who will or will not do what,” he said.
For Brennan, that is the only way to approach what he sees as a crucially important job which he believes he needs to do.
“I want to count what I think is important. I am a liberal and a progressive and I am interested in holding city agencies accountable in what I think is important in terms of public safety, in terms of jobs, in terms of health care,” he said. “I’m running because I want that job. I’m not bailing out of Albany because I don’t like being a state legislator or something.”
Calling the race the culmination of his career, Brennan prepares to take on several high profile Council members
The race to replace Bill Thompson (D) as New York City comptroller is already well under way, with a slew of high profile, term-limited Council members raising money and coyly campaigning.
Into the mix, and making no bones about his intentions, comes Assembly Member James Brennan, a well-respected six-term Democratic legislator from Park Slope, Brooklyn.
