A Second Date?

A dapper lesbian, known to wear custom dress shirts and blazers, Kurland has been going door-to-door and bar-to-bar throughout the West Side of New York City looking to woo as much Sapphic support as needed to defeat Speaker of the New York City Council Christine Quinn in the September 15 Democratic primary.

Also working hard to get some of that electoral lesbian love is Maria Passannante- Derr who—despite being a confirmed heterosexual—casts herself as a champion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and is also hoping voters will dump Quinn in her favor.

To understand why the politics of sexual identity factor into this race you first have to understand a little something about the Council district Quinn currently represents—it’s gayer than a picnic basket.

Sure, the gays may have left their traditional ghettos and been busy buying apartments and opening up small businesses across the five boroughs for years—boldly gentrifying where no queers have gentrified before—but the center of LGBT politics (and money) still resides in the neighborhoods of the West Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, all encompassed by Quinn’s District 3. Not only was the person to hold this seat before Quinn—current State Senator Tom Duane—also openly gay, but the modern LGBT rights movement started here. Any politico not willing to pay homo-homage to that history is going to end up with some very hurt feelings come Election Day.

Second, Quinn is not just any gay politician: She is Queen Bee to all the queens. As the Council’s leader, she is routinely described as the second most powerful person in NYC, right behind Mayor Michael Bloomberg. When number one is a two-term mayor with high approval ratings and a net worth estimated to be close to $20 billion, being number two can be seen as quite an accomplishment; and Quinn is indeed accomplished. She is both the first woman and the first openly gay person to lead the Council.

In a town as old as New York—which has never had a woman or gay person serve as mayor—the historical significance of Ms. Quinn shouldn’t be understated. To run against Quinn is not just running against a powerful incumbent, it is running against the strong, emotional connection many female and LGBT voters have toward Quinn’s achievements.

The next point can be summed up in an old joke: What do lesbians bring on a second date? Answer: a U-Haul.

The humor, while dated in its gendered view that women are a little too quick to commit to a relationship, applies here in that ever since her Council colleagues selected Quinn in January 2006 as Speaker, she has positioned herself as a future mayoral candidate. Her most obvious move was her decision to allow Mayor Mike to use the Council to overturn a law, put in place directly by voters, limiting elected NYC officials (including herself) to serve a maximum of two terms. It was a surprising decision since, if Quinn had left the limit in place, not only would Bloomberg have been barred from running, but Quinn—as the highest-profile Dem in a city where 66 percent of voters register as Democrats—would have had an almost unshakeable claim to Gracie Mansion.

It’s also surprising because it’s not as if Quinn is the scion of some august political family with the luxury of being able to dilly dally when it comes to the pursuit of higher office (here’s looking at you, Caroline Kennedy). In fact, in case New Yorkers have forgotten, Quinn’s path to the center of power began on the fringe, carving out a name for herself as an activist fighting on behalf of the LGBT community, tenants’ rights and people living with HIV/AIDS—three causes that in the 1990s would have placed her definitively to the left of the City’s then center-right political machine.

It is because of this background that in 1999 Quinn was able to win election to the Council in the first place, representing a district renowned even in liberal New York for its progressive political streak. Yet by backing Bloomberg in his quest for a third term, Quinn caved into the idea that it was better to go along to get along. It was a cynical calculation that Bloomberg, given his political clout and inexhaustible wealth, would have gotten his way regardless of Quinn’s support, and so it was better to not risk the ire of a man known for holding a grudge. Having prematurely married herself to the idea of becoming mayor, Quinn forgot that when it comes to progressive politics, questions of process— inclusion, transparency, accountability— matter a great deal.

The term-limits issue lent credence to a pre-existing criticism that Quinn’s mayoral hopes had led her to increasingly side with influential real estate developers—many of whom are ardent Bloomberg supporters— against the interests of everyday citizens. And therein lies the major problem for Christine Quinn: Someone who relied on an image of being a grassroots, do-it-yourself, Home Depot kind of gal has now switched to the more polished strategies—and without a doubt upper-income interests— of the Crate and Barrel crowd.

Passannante-Derr, an attorney and member of the West Village’s Community Board 2, bluntly states that Quinn has become “disconnected” from her constituents (who in poll after poll have consistently opposed the term-limit extension). She points to a Quinn-endorsed sanitation garage proposed for Spring Street that would increase traffic and pollution, despite the existence of an alternative plan that has proved more palatable to the community. She also says that the “out-of-control” development of high-end condos—which has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the amount of schools—has resulted in the lack of enough available classrooms for the District’s—and indeed the entire City’s—incoming kindergarteners.

Kurland, a civil rights attorney and educator, asserts that an absence of “thoughtful… community-based” planning, done with insufficient input from parents and teachers, is leading to an “absolute crisis” in New York’s schools. And then there are the challenges to Quinn’s support within the LGBT community.

For a straight woman, Passannante-Derr has some serious queer bona fides. Her uncle,William Passannante, is credited with sponsoring the nation’s first statewide gay rights bill in the New York State Assembly in 1971. She belongs to a coalition of small businesses that works to reverse the erosion of gay nightlife—an important aspect of New York’s economy and cultural scene. She has also helped steer funds to the Ali Forney Center, which provides services to homeless LGBT youth, stating that “29 percent of the runaway population are gay youth…They’ve been kicked out by their parents, bullied in school, and they deserve to grow up and be proud of who they are.” When asked why she is such a strong advocate for gay men and women, she frames it as a community issue, noting that being a Council member is an “in-the-trenches” type of job where serving constituents is the priority.

The fact that Passannante-Derr even hints at better representing the interests of the district’s LGBT community speaks not only to her authenticity but is also a sign that Quinn’s support among her base isn’t as solid as it could be. To put it another way: Imagine if Donald Trump said he understood the challenges faced by black folks more than Al Sharpton does, while the audience at Amateur Night at the Apollo nodded in agreement.

Kurland goes beyond hints and takes the fight directly to Quinn. She states the Speaker’s decision to extend term-limits “extinguished the opportunity” for several LGBT persons who at one point were hoping to run for open Council seats but instead opted out because of the difficulty of running against incumbents—something Kurland has learned firsthand. Early on, Kurland tried to secure the endorsement of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee that provides campaign finance support to openly gay candidates. Instead, the Victory Fund endorsed Quinn, citing (in Kurland’s words) the “inherent power of incumbents.”

The Victory Fund declined to comment on its reasons behind not endorsing Kurland—in line with its organizational policy—but one of its endorsement criterion is that a candidate must have “a realistic plan to win,” which in political-speak means raising campaign cash. Denis Dison, vice president for external affairs at Victory Fund echoed this by writing in an email that if a candidate can “raise the money to get [their] message out,” then he/she can win.

For Quinn, the possible erosion of her support among gay men and women— which may or may not lead to an electoral victory for either Passannante-Derr or Kurland—could go a long way toward determining whether or not her colleagues in the Council view her as politically strong enough to be re-selected as Speaker. If she proves unable to win the backing of her fellow Council members, her chances of becoming mayor anytime in the future may get prohibitively smaller.

With seven weeks to go before the Sept. 15 Democratic primary, it’s hard to gauge the exact impact Kurland and Passannante-Derr will have on Quinn’s future. But the weaknesses in her political persona—exposed by the candidacies of an obviously butch lesbian with a strong record as a civil rights activist and an admittedly straight community leader with a personal and family history of fierce LGBT advocacy—have made it clear that Christine Quinn may not want to show up on that planned second date as Speaker with her U-Haul in tow just yet.