The voters in this district covering Maspeth, Middle Village, parts of Ridgewood, Glendale and Rego Park, want an activist and have elected legacy community organizers in the past. A legacy activist is someone who has been active in a civic for a decade or more. Civic membership is high here, with organizations like The Ridgewood Property Owners, COMET, Juniper Civic and Glendale Civic. But the current councilman, Bob Holden, while giving the constituents what they want, as someone who has their social values and does the constituent service part of the job better than most, is an outcast in the city council. That might not necessarily be a bad thing, but with this city council, they dump on districts of council people that they see as weak inside the chamber. Case in point, this district is targeted to have a lithium battery storage facility, have had an extra-large ‘problem homeless shelter’ dumped in Glendale and all our council sources tell us that the 30th is considered a district that the council body ignores.
While there is no clear legacy activist running, there are three contenders on the democratic side that are clearly different. While Holden staffer Phil Wong would not come to meet with us to tell us all about his platform, candidate Paul Pogozelski has fully engaged with the media, has walked the district for a few months now, has even gone as far as becoming active on park issues as well as bringing attention to what he sees as a plight on the quality of life – those nasty campers that sit on some of our more industrial streets. He is a newbie to politics, and we find his engagement with internet-trollers troublesome. The territory comes with detractors, and most of it just distracts a POL from doing their job effectively. Since he has little experience and few friends in politics his endorsement list is empty, so he touts he is endorsed by ‘the people.’ Very creative indeed! He has put together a pretty lively youth hockey program in Juniper Park, which means he is an effective community organizer.
Queens’ UFT government relations veteran Dermot Smyth has gotten endorsements from anyone who matters. Not only did he get the UFT and a host of labor organizations, he also has a host of influential legislators who have told us that Dermot has always been ‘the adult in the room’ when the UFT has been at the negotiations table. Although endorsements from politicians don’t typically matter to us, there is an overriding issue with the city council that makes it vital Dermot gets this spot. District 30 has been an outsider in all city council votes for a decade now. Support around Manhattan Councilperson Julie Menin to be the next council speaker is important. The city council has moved so far to the left that the movement by a group of ‘common sense’ council members (which happens to be more than just Republicans) to have a moderate speaker is more important to this district than anything else. The stage is set to have Menin become the next speaker. Menin and her supporters have helped Dermot. Smyth will be part of the leadership fairly immediately.
Dermot first broke the news that he was running for this seat with our newspapers a year ago. He has lived in this district for decades and has spent the past year learning the ins and outs of constituents’ needs, knocking on doors. He was quite impressive in our editorial meeting a few weeks ago, in that he learned a great deal about the neighborhood’s priorities while campaigning. He listened, and that’s crucial for our endorsement. Vote early.
