Now Underdog, Crespo Says Momentum Shifting

Santos Crespo says he expected a tough battle in his bid for re-election as president of Local 372 of District Council 37 from the time that his main challenger, Shaun Francois, was joined in the June election by two other candidates who had previously run for the top spot in the 23,000-member union. Rather than counting on them to divide the anti-incumbent vote, he worried that the new entries could chip away at his support among a membership not known for political activism.

So he knew he might wind up in a runoff, he said July 16, sitting in the basement of a union hall on West 14th St., where he was about to meet with members of his political committee to discuss strategy after flying home early from the convention of his international union in Chicago. “Stay there too long, you don’t get re-elected,” he said with a newfound sense of his political mortality.