Manhattan Borough President Race: Mark Levine Candidate Profile

NEW YORK, NY — Voters in Manhattan will see three names on their ballot for borough president when they vote in this week's general election.

One of those names will be Mark Levine, who has represented the Upper Manhattan's District 7 on the City Council since 2014. His opponents will be Republican Louis Puliafito and Libertarian Michael Lewyn.

Patch reached out to all candidates in the election to create these profiles. Levine's responses are below.

Age (as of Election Day)

52

Position Sought

Manhattan Borough President

Party Affiliation

Democratic

Neighborhood of residence (i.e., East Village, Astoria, etc.)

Washington Heights

Family

My wife Ivelisse and I are proud parents of our two sons Alejandro and Daniel.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

Education

BS Physics, Haverford College
MPP, Kennedy School of Government

Occupation

NYC Council Member, District 7. I've served for 7.5 years.

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

New York City Council Member, District 7;

Campaign website

http://votemarklevine.com/

Why are you seeking elective office?

I’m running for Borough President because I believe that we can recover from this pandemic stronger, more equitable and more just than we were before.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Our recovery. We are facing a multi-front crisis in Manhattan -- affordability, underfunded public schools, climate change, small businesses struggling, unemployment -- and we must ensure our recovery makes us stronger, safer and more just.

This will be my first priority as Borough President, and I’ll be structuring the office to meet the substantial need. I’ll create a COVID-19 recovery unit, led by a deputy borough president that will be designated our Recovery Czar. I will work directly with this unit to ensure that our recovery advances health equity, supports small businesses, brings people into the workforce, brings back the arts, simplifies bureaucracy in government, and prepares for the next pandemic.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

Our campaign comprises a broad coalition of New Yorkers, labor unions and advocates because they believe in my vision and approach to our recovery. Alongside organized labor unions such as 32BJ, NYSNA, TWU Local 100, HTC, UAW 9A, the Teamsters Local 237, the Central Labor Council and many others, as well as advocacy organizations including Planned Parenthood, Voters for Animal Rights, the League of Conservation Voters and elected leaders like Congresswoman Velazquez and Congressman Espaillat, we are working to ensure our recovery makes us stronger, more equitable and more just than we were before.

My background and priorities prepare me for this office and this moment in our recovery. Prior to serving as Council Member, I was a bilingual public school teacher in the South Bronx, and then later the founder of a community credit union that provided $25 million in low interest loans to small businesses and New Yorkers who were struggling to gain access to capital. I was then elected to the Council, and most recently served as Chair of the Committee on Health, where I brought a fact-based and science-based approach to informing the public about the pandemic, and holding the City accountable during the pandemic response. This has included passing legislation to require a centralized website for scheduling vaccines, pushing the city to expand testing sites and vaccination efforts, and calling on more data transparency so that we could fully understand the impact of this pandemic.

I’ve been a creative legislator who has fought to protect tenants and our children. I passed a first-in-the-nation Right-to-Counsel, a law that now guarantees a lawyer to people in housing court who cannot afford one. I passed legislation to protect our children from unscrupulous tobacco companies that were using e-cigarette flavors to target young people.

I hope to earn your vote.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

I'm not a challenger. Borough President Brewer is term limited. Quite frankly, I don’t think she has. Borough President Gale Brewer has been an exemplary public servant and Borough President, working tirelessly on behalf of our communities, our schools and our small businesses. I will work to build upon her legacy and channel my priorities and experience into our recovery efforts.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

As the Chair of the Council’s Committee on Health, I’ve seen firsthand what worked and what did not during our pandemic response. While I believe New York City has managed the crisis better than many other parts of the country, I have not been afraid to call out shortcomings here. Areas of concern include:
1. Transparency: The City and State failed to communicate transparently with New Yorkers, putting legislators in a position that required legislative action to gain access to key data about COVID impacts. This is why I worked hard to provide fact-based information for New Yorkers, sharing what I knew the moment I knew it with New Yorkers online and through oversight.
2. Planning and collaboration: The Mayor and Governor showed that they could not put their political differences aside during this pandemic, looking for opportunities to score political points instead of collaborating in a time of crisis.
3. Vaccine distribution and equity: This pandemic has been defined by inequality, and unfortunately that has been true of vaccination as well. NYC must do much more to make vaccination easy and accessible for underserved communities.

What’s one policy you’d push for to make housing more affordable in Manhattan?

We should require any residential development on City-owned land to be 100% affordable. The value of providing New Yorkers with truly affordable housing outweighs any additional cost that would create for the City.

In your first year, what would be your top funding priority through your discretionary budget?

My top priority during my first year will be investing to support our recovery -- that will mean investing in HVAC systems in senior centers and arts organizations to keep people safe, investing in our schools so that we can address learning loss and keep kids healthy, invest in our healthcare system so that we can reduce inequities in healthcare and ensure that every New Yorker has access to primary care in their own neighborhood.

As Borough President, would you recommend approving or disapproving the following ULURP applications: SoHo/NoHo rezoning, the New York Blood Center tower, and the 250 Water Street seaport project?

I will evaluate each of these projects when they come before the borough president’s office based on whether their final scope achieves the following goals:

• Maximizing the production of deeply affordable housing, especially in neighborhoods that have seen little such housing created in the past
• Protecting landmarked buildings
• Discouraging big box and chain retail
• Avoiding out-of-scale mid-block development
• Minimizing shadow impact on parks

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

1. Affordable housing and tenant protection: We are facing an affordable housing crisis, and we must address it boldly. Every community must participate in helping to solve it, and we must push the City to invest heavily in projects to ensure that affordable housing is TRULY affordable. We must also expand important tenant protections like Right-to-Counsel to ensure that every New Yorker has representation if they are facing eviction, because we need to keep New Yorkers in their home.

2. Protecting small businesses and job creation: Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but you only have to walk across the Borough and see empty storefronts to know that they are struggling. We need rent relief, to end the commercial rent tax below 96th street, and provide more access to capital through a public bank. We also need to create more quality jobs in New York City, and supporting organized labor must be front and center. You can’t argue with the data, the stronger the labor movement, the stronger our economy.

3. Expanding access to healthcare: The pandemic highlighted severe inequities in our healthcare system and we must take steps to begin correcting it. From providing access to health professionals in every single public school and ensuring that our local community-based healthcare providers are not pushed out of our neighborhoods, to expanding NYC Cares to more providers so that everyone can get access to primary care, we need to invest in public health and healthy communities.

4. Supporting the arts: New York City is a cultural capital of the world, and our recovery must have artists and cultural organizations at center stage. The arts are essential to our identity and our vibrancy, as well as to our economy. I’ve released a plan to vastly expand funding for the arts, help arts organizations make ends meet while tourism slowly returns, and protect and expand jobs for workers in the arts.

5. Addressing climate change: Climate change must be addressed now, and we must take steps to reduce emissions and our carbon footprint in New York City. My efforts as Borough President will include reducing congestion on our streets, pushing developers to invest in renewable energy, banning the installation of new gas infrastructure that would expand gas capacity in Manhattan, and investing in solar energy on City buildings.

6. Addressing public transit and prioritizing people on our streets: We need to ensure that every New Yorker has access to clean, efficient, safe and reliable public transit. We need to reduce the reliance on private cars, create more space for pedestrians on our sidewalks, and expand protected bike lanes in our Borough, especially uptown.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

-- Introduced and passed legislation to create the Right-to-Counsel, which guarantees a lawyer to those who can’t afford one in housing court
-- Chaired the Committee on Health during the worst public health crisis of modern history
-- Passed legislation mandating a centralized scheduling site for vaccinations
-- Created hundreds of units of affordable housing in my district
-- Created a community credit union, which provided $25 million in micro-loans to small businesses and residents in Upper Manhattan
-- Passed legislation to protect children from flavored e-cigarettes designed to target young people
-- Secured a historic $43 million investment in NYC parks and helped create the Parks Department’s Community Parks Initiative

The best advice ever shared with me was:

I’ll share two:

First, hire a staff you trust and let them do their jobs. Building an effective and collaborative working environment requires trust, encouragement and allowing people to do what they do best.

Be an elected official, not a politician. Be brave enough to make the hard decisions, even when the politics is hard, because your personal identity and values will guide you and your community.