New York City Public Advocate Tish James won election to become New York State Attorney General, and a large group of Democratic Party candidates is now battling to succeed her as public advocate. On Thursday they’ll face off in a forum on the UWS.
FORUM FOR CANDIDATES FOR NYC PUBLIC ADVOCATE
on Thursday, November 29th, at 7:30 P.M.,
at the Goddard Riverside Community Center
at 593 Columbus Avenue.
We hope you will join us as West Siders to ask tough, pointed questions. Below please find a list of confirmed candidates:
- City Council Member Jumaane Williams
- Assembly Member and DNC Vice Chair Michael Blake
- City Council Member Rafael Espinal
- City Council Mmember Ydanis Rodriguez
- Assembly Member Danny O’Donnell
- Former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito
- Columbia University Professor David Eisenbach
- Young Turks Correspondent Nomiki Konst
- State Democratic Committee Member Ben Yee
- Attorney Dawn Smalls
- Bitcoin Businessman Theo Chino
- Attorney Ifeoma Ike
To RSVP, click here.
The forum is put on by the Community Free Democrats, in conjunction with Ansonia Democrats, Broadway Democrats, Park River Independent Democrats, Manhattan Young Democrats, the Manhattan Policy Forum, Columbia Law Democrats, Northern Manhattan Democrats for Change, and Hell’s Kitchen Democrats.
My question: why have this job at all? Aren’t our council members and Mayor supposed to be “public advocates”? If not, who do they advocate for?
Office of public advocate was created in the wake of NYC’s old form of government (Board of Estimate) was found unconstitutional.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/23/nyregion/justices-void-new-york-city-s-government-demand-voter-equality-in-all-boroughs.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Public_Advocate
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/05/opinion/mark-green-for-public-advocate.html
The office has no real statutory authority and serves mostly as a warming bench for those seeking election to mayor or other higher office.
Miss James is ample proof of this as she used role as PA to successfully maneuver herself into the next DA of NYS.
“Miss James is ample proof of this as she used role as PA to successfully maneuver herself into the next DA of NYS.”
Actually, she’s going to be Attorney General (or “AG”, if you prefer acronyms) of New York State (“NYS”).
As a state, New York doesn’t have a district attorney (“DA”). Only districts (usually counties) have district attorneys.
Question number 1: “Do you promise us, here and now, that if elected Public Advocate you will not run for any other public office until no sooner than three years after you have completed your service as Public Advocate?”
I would ask it only to assess the creativity of each candidate in dancing around the question to avoid making that promise. No one wants to be Public Advocate in order to advocate for the public; they want a taxpayer-funded platform (complete with staff) to run for other, usually higher, office.
What is the role of public advocate?
The role of the PA is to run for mayor.
Any frequent WSR posters on there? Everyone here seems to have lots of strong opinions on how to run the city, so they should try to put them into action!
You are my new favorite WSR commentator.
How will the new public advocate be selected? Will there be a special election?
It would be ideal to have ranked-choice voting in a wide-open non-partisan special election like this.
Bitcoin Businessman? I didn’t know of such a title or a trade.
Two things:
1. This useless office should be abolished.
2. See #1.
Cato, I agree with you 100% !
Get rid of the PA office, the resources would be better spent repairing NYCHA.
But the resources would NEVER be spent to repair NYCHA.
The flow of money is FROM the general population TO the government. From THERE, the politicians direct it to THEIR constituents (who, btw, are NOT the general population).
Follow?