The Syracuse Post-Standard today lauds the WFP’s grassroots campaign to unseat notorious anti-tenant State Senator Pedro Espada:
Get Pedro Espada: Campaign to unseat New York state senator should unsettle all incumbents
Published: Monday, July 26, 2010, 5:00 AM
The Post-Standard Editorial Board
Last year at this time, State Sen. Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, was still with the Republicans leading of a legislative “coup” against the Democrats who had won a narrow Senate majority in the 2008 elections. As a reward for his treachery, he was named Senate president by his GOP colleagues.
But the coup didn’t last. After Espada returned and Democrats regained their wafer-thin majority, he was rewarded again with the Senate majority leader’s post.
That might have been the end of the story — an unusual one, even by Albany standards, but hardly the stuff of legend. Some Democrats were disgruntled, to be sure. Just this month, the state committee urged Bronx Democratic leaders to revoke Espada’s membership. The chairman of the Bronx Democrats demurred.
But Espada’s troubles have mounted. In April, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued, alleging Espada squandered up to $14 million from a network of health clinics he controls on lavish living and campaign expenses. A federal probe of his clinics also is under way. Now the Working Families Party has mounted a grassroots campaign to weed him out of Albany. And the New Roosevelt Initiative, a statewide reform group, pledges to spend a quarter-million dollars to defeat him.
The WFP campaign includes a commitment to visit more than 10,000 voters in Espada’s district, hold at least 100 meetings with local leaders, and maintain a barrage of media communications. “Pedro Espada represents everything that’s wrong with Albany,” says WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor. The party has thrown its support behind Democrat Jose Rivera, 34, a community activist who was an aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Espada blames all his troubles on racism and bigotry. This still resonates in his largely Hispanic, lower-income district. “If you look brown and you’re an immigrant, you’re not supposed to have power,” says the Puerto Rican native, adding without any trace of irony: “You do not understand the level of our conviction.”
WFP launched its effort with an appeal for $5 contributions from at least 1,000 New Yorkers. Three days later, Cantor reported the party was collecting more than $1,000 per day. (If you want to help, go to the Working Families Party website.)
This suggests support for Espada may not be as widespread as he thinks. And as Albany stumbles toward the finish line of a particularly ignoble legislative session, there’s every reason to expect anti-incumbent fever to spread beyond the Bronx and Pedro Espada.
