Union Backers Revel In Williams’s Big Victory (free article)

The city’s largest municipal unions stayed neutral in the Feb. 26 election for Public Advocate, but top officials of two of the unions that backed him said the unexpectedly large margin of his victory in the 17-candidate race confirmed their judgment that he was the right candidate and gave him a mandate to aggressively pursue the initiatives he highlighted during his campaign.

“I think he’s a remarkable man,” Anthony Wells, president of Social Service Employees Local 371 of District Council 37, said in a Feb. 28 phone interview. “He’s shown what kind of person he can be, and the kind of voice he has.”

DC 37 stayed neutral in the contest, as did the United Federation of Teachers. There was some speculation that the two-largest municipal unions expected the contest to be tight, as most politicos did, and decided it wasn’t worth backing a candidate who might not win and alienating the Democrat who did.

Cuomo Grudge a Factor?

A more-intriguing theory floated by one prominent official from another union was that Governor Cuomo steered some unions away from backing Mr. Williams. The new Public Advocate last year ran for Lieutenant Governor against incumbent Kathy Hochul, and pledged that if elected, rather than acting as the Governor’s partner, he would serve as a check on policies with which he disagreed. Mr. Williams also had the backing of the Working Families Party, which earned Mr. Cuomo’s enmity when it bucked him last year by endorsing his challenger, Cynthia Nixon, in the Democratic primary.

While the Governor trounced the actress and activist by 30 points, Mr. Williams had a surprisingly strong showing in his first statewide race, getting 44 percent of the vote even though most unions backed Ms. Hochul as part of the Cuomo ticket. That performance, facing obstacles including a huge financial disadvantage, had made Mr. Williams the early front-runner to win the special election to succeed Letitia James, who was elected State Attorney General last November, necessitating a special election once she vacated the Public Advocate’s job Jan. 1.

Mr. Wells noted that his local had also endorsed Mr. Williams in the Lieutenant Governor’s race, saying that in both contests, “I thought he was the right candidate, fighting for people and fighting for the citizens of New York, speaking up.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Eddie Kay, a veteran union organizer who is Chief of Staff to District Council 1707 Executive Director Kim Medina, whose union represents day-care and child-care workers.

‘A Force for Progressives’

“I just think he’s a great force for progressives,” Mr. Kay said. “Nobody’s been as consistent as he has in trying to build on progressive causes, especially on rent. He might actually do something on rent and wages and incarceration.”

All of those are issues that Mr. Williams has focused on during his nine-plus years as a Brooklyn City Council Member, although he is best known for his advocacy on policing issues, beginning with his crusade virtually from the time he took office to curtail what he called unconstitutional use of stop-and-frisk against black and Latino residents.

Mr. Kay said one of the most attractive qualities Mr. Williams possessed was his willingness to speak out even when it might cost him votes or support among some unions.

“Most politicians play the game; Jumaane keeps to a straight line,” he said. "And there are so many areas that deserve a real breakthrough, and he offers a real possibility.”

Top 2 From Opposite Poles

One interesting aspect of the contest, which pitted 15 Democrats against two Republicans although they couldn’t identify themselves on the ballot by those party affiliations in the nonpartisan race, was that while Mr. Williams was among the candidates furthest to the left of the spectrum, the runner-up in the race, Queens Council Member Eric Ulrich, was the most-conservative one. There had been speculation that if the Democrats split their party’s voters, particularly the better-known ones including Mr. Williams, former Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Assemblyman Michael Blake and Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, Mr. Ulrich—who stood out from the pack with his opposition to the closing of Rikers Island and championing of the aborted deal to have Amazon build a headquarters in Long Island City—could win with less than 20 percent of the vote.

But while Mr. Ulrich did better than many expected, garnering 19 percent of the vote, Mr. Williams ran away from the crowd with 33 percent. Ms. Mark-Viverito, the outspoken ex-Council Speaker, didn’t generate much enthusiasm outside her old district and got just 11 percent of the vote, with the remaining 14 candidates all in single digits.

Political consultant George Arzt said that Ms. Mark-Viverito’s disappointing showing was consistent with the lack of success other former Council Speakers over the past two decades-Peter F. Vallone, Gifford Miller and Christine Quinn—experienced when they sought citywide or statewide office.

Other candidates who were using the contest to boost their name recognition, including Manhattan Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell and Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal, also failed to raise their profiles, he said.

Won’t Be Many Run-Backs

And so while Mr. Ulrich, who would not have to give up his Council seat to seek the Public Advocate’s job in the November election that will determine who serves out Ms. James’s term that runs through the end of 2021, did well enough to run back, Mr. Arzt said, he questioned whether any of the Democrats had a realistic hope of turning the tables on Mr. Williams in a smaller field in the June party primary.

“I think the margin was too great, even with the low turnout,” he said.

Mr. Ulrich told a NY1 interviewer shortly after he conceded the race, “Obviously, we’re disappointed in the result, but we put up some very good numbers” while winning both his home borough and Staten Island, the city’s most-conservative borough. He said his campaign, which was backed by three of the city’s police unions but was unable to get the endorsement of the one it valued most, the Police Benevolent Association, had tapped into “some pockets of the city that felt ignored, neglected by City Hall.”

He said he was not surprised by Mr. Williams’s breakout win, explaining, “I always knew this race was between he and I.” And he praised his former Council colleague, saying, “He hustled, he worked very hard.”

Mr. Williams won two of the most-populous boroughs, Brooklyn and Manhattan, while trailing Mr. Ulrich by six points in the other member of the city’s big three, Queens. He was far behind him in Staten Island, where he got 12 percent of the vote to Mr. Ulrich’s 61 percent, but lost The Bronx to Mr. Blake on his home turf by just two points.

In his victory speech, he thanked the WFP early on, and later gave credit to his labor supporters, which among public-employee unions also included DC 37’s Locals 420 and 1407, representing hospital workers and Accountants and Actuaries, respectively, and the Professional Staff Congress, which represents faculty at the City University of New York. Mr. Williams invoked the words of Martin Luther King Jr. about the need to move forward, saying he would focus as Public Advocate on areas like gun violence, affordable housing and reforming “a system of justice that criminalizes black and brown communities, and to give those who have been caught up in the system a second chance. Most of them a first chance.”

A Distinctly Personal Turn

Late in his speech, he spoke with remarkable frankness for a public official about spending the past three years in therapy, saying he particularly wanted to communicate that message “to black men who are listening. There was a time when the title I held was my identity, and that’s a dangerous thing. The best time came for me when I realized no matter what title I held, there’s a space in the world for me and I can make incredible change from it.”

He seemed to be talking about his younger self when he spoke of knowing “a young black boy somewhere, he’s trying to find a space in the world…nobody knows he cries himself to sleep sometimes.”

He seemed overcome by emotion, and his mother Patricia and sister Jeanine comforted him, helping him to regain his composure and conclude, “But I got something to say to that young man, who I think about very often: my name is Jumaane Williams, and I’m the Public Advocate of New York City.”

As punctuation, his mother leaned into the microphone and told the crowd gathered in Cafe Omar, “Jumaane will be the best Public Advocate you ever had.”

Mr. Arzt said of the speech, “He put it all on the table. Very touching, very passionate.”

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