"As our nation celebrates its independence," Siegel tells an audience of about 50, "we must continue the fight to preserve our basic freedoms. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has tried to label dissent 'unpatriotic.' But as most New Yorkers know, dissent is as American as apple pie."
The speech is boilerplate Siegelall red, white and idealistic blue. The crowd, sprinkled with Code Pink activists and former Deaniacs wearing Democracy for America buttons, is lapping it up. Drawn by the applause, curious members of a nearby tour group wander over. They arrive at the edge of the crowd just as Siegel wraps up his pitch to become the city's next public advocate.
That most New Yorkers know as little about the Office of Public Advocate as these tourists is one of the reasons Siegel is running. Indeed, he charges the current public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, with underutilizing the position to the point of invisibility. "I guarantee you one year after I'm elected, people will know what we do," he says.
The July 4 crowd may be modest, but it's exactly the kind of fiercely progressive, grassroots campaign cell that Siegel is counting on two months before the Democratic primary. Put enough of these groups on the ground to "get the message out," and Siegel is confident they can deliver victory against the incumbent Gotbaum, a former parks commissioner who trounced him in the 2001 primary, backed by a Times endorsement and a bursting war chest.
Four years later, Betsy Gotbaum might want to check her rearview. At the end of June, the Siegel campaign had collected endorsements from nearly 30 political clubs and organizations citywide, including a surprisingly strong nod from the Staten Island Democrats, which endorsed Siegel by a vote of 37 to 3. In 2001, he barely even registered in the borough.
Siegel has also racked up more than $125,000 in small contributions at private fundraisers, qualifying the campaign for 4-to-1 state matching funds. (As a result, television spots are in the works.) Add to these financial resources the kind of energy provided by activist groups like Dean's Democracy for Americawhose national committee endorsed Siegel in Juneand Gotbaum-Siegel is shaping up as center ring for NYC progressives, on par with Frank Barbaro's bid for Vito Fossela's congressional seat in Staten Island last November.
Like the Barbaro-Fossella match-up, Siegel thinks the race for New York's Public Advocate has national importance.
"If we do this terrifically in New York, other cities will use our model," Siegel told me recently at his private offices in Midtown, still sweaty from filing suit against the city's Cabaret and Dance laws. (He danced the fox trot at the press conference.)
"In my dream, 10 years from now, a federally independently elected public advocate will monitor the White House and Congress. The office could become a counterbalance to how America is drifting."
It's a bold vision; some might say a ridiculous one. But Siegel isn't joking. And in fact the 61-year-old lawyer's plan is fully in line with the potential of the amorphous and uniquely empowered office of public advocate.
Hatched during the city charter changes of 1993, the Office of Public Advocate was conceived as an unleashed watchdog to monitor city services and agencies. An ombudsman and insider-outsider, at once part of and opposed to city government, the P.A. can file suit against the city and introduce legislation, thus immediately and drastically raising the profile of any issue the P.A. deems important. Mark Green, the city's first public advocate, used the newly minted bully pulpit to throw light upon Giuliani's repeated attacks on the constitution, spending inefficiencies in government, and agency corruption and lawlessness, most famously in the NYPD.
Green's wide-ranging use of the office demonstrated the possibilities for a strong public advocate to place checks on otherwise unaccountable power. Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for his targets to launch a counterassault.
In 1998, Giuliani convened a charter commission in an attempt to destroy the office. He failed, but the mayor's tirades, echoed by the tabloids, contributed to the results of a 2002 referendum that nearly stripped the public advocate of its ceremonial seat presiding over City Council meetings, as well as the official order of secession that places the P.A. one heartbeat away from the mayor's office. Other attacks have come in the form of two budget cutsone in 1998, another after 9/11.
When the 2005 showdown between Gotbaum and Siegel was announced last December, new calls for the elimination of the office again rang out from the usual corners. Repulsed by the prospect of an effective progressive like Siegel controlling an official megaphone and a budget of $3 million, the Post editorialized, "The Public Advocateis the most pointless political position in the entire city. Does anyone need further proof of this job's utter uselessness than the fact that Norman Siegel aspires to win it? The position needs to go."
Siegel admits that calls to eliminate the office will become both louder and harder to dismiss if Betsy Gotbaum is allowed to keep her job past November.
"When the office is not used as it should be, then the argument to get rid of it has some credibility," he says. "I don't want that to happen. It's the one place where you can have an outsider, a gadfly, a troublemaker, a problem solver who doesn't really want to be part of the club. It is the quintessential whistleblower position. And every day there's a story that requires someone to blow the whistle."
Siegel's list of concerns is a famously sprawling one"Every morning I read the paper and there's a half-dozen issues I want to take on by nine a.m."but he rates his top four as public education, affordable housing, civil liberties and equal employment. This set of priorities reflects a law career that began in 1966 with civil rights work in the Deep South. When Siegel returned to his native New York City in 1978, he provided storefront legal services for poor people, a seven-year period he says strengthened his commitment to see the law not just through the prism of race, but also from a class point of view.
In 1985, Siegel assumed leadership of the New York Civil Liberties Union. From that perch he did heavy and high-profile battle with three mayors. His best-remembered moments came while taking on his old NYU law school peer, Rudy Giuliani. These heated legal scraps resulted in victories on everything from the censorship of public art to the right to hold press conferences on the steps of City Hall.
"A lot of people were afraid to speak up against Giuliani," says Siegel. "But when you run the NYCLU, you're the gadfly. I became more and more comfortable being the critic and challenging government. Also, I won a lot. But as public advocate, I won't just sue people as a knee-jerk reaction. I know how to get things done in other ways. I know how to speak and be respected without [politicians] thinking I'm there to be their friend."
Siegel is quick to note that official attacks on civil liberties and civil rights didn't end with the arrival of Michael Bloomberg at City Hall. He worries that since post-Giuliani attacks have drawn less attention in the press, the climate of respect for constitutional rights has actually degenerated further since his comic-book nemesis left office in January 2002. Siegel attributes this continued slide to Bloomberg's muted personal style and the political climate after 9/11.
"Starting with the World Economic Forum in February 2002, when Bloomberg put protestors in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he has violated people's rights," says Siegel.
"Because they got away with it, they did it again during the Republican National Convention. When people were being unlawfully detained, where were all the public officials? Where was the Public Advocate? Where was the press conference? The lawsuit? Sixteen hundred people were falsely arrested. I hold Bloomberg personally accountable for that."
Siegel singles out February 15, 2003 as a particularly dark moment in the city's history. As Public Advocate, he says he will hold a memorial service every year he is in office to remind New Yorkers that on Feb. 15, 2003, people all over the world were allowed to march against the warin every city except one.
Another example of Bloomberg's lack of concern for the rights of New Yorkers cited by Siegel is the recent clampdown on Critical Mass rides. Earlier this year, the City argued that any group of cyclists larger than three must first acquire a permit.
"Since last August more than 500 New Yorkers have been arrested for riding bikes," Siegel told the guests of a recent fundraiser hosted by two Critical Mass participants. "That's insane."
If Betsy Gotbaum agrees with that statement, she's been too busy decrying retail store profits on unused gift cards to say so publicly. That, and complaining about the size of her budget.
When asked about the funds available to the public advocate, Siegel replies that the potential of the office is not dependent on the number of dollars at its disposal. The key, he says, is to tap into the city's deep wells of idealism and civic concern, reserves of compassion and intelligence that currently go unused. To harness this energy, he proposes the creation of an Institute of Advocacy, run out of the public advocate's office.
"I'd recruit and train hundreds of volunteers," Siegel explains. "Once a week, a team of deputy public advocates would go out to senior centers, housing projects and public libraries, and interview people about their grievances, then come back next week same time same place with an action plan.
"I think I can get hundreds of New Yorkers to volunteer because it's a thoughtful, discreet program; it's not like saying you have to give us 20 hours a week. Just a few hours a week, use your skills to help other people who are less advantaged than you. From those individual cases come systemic issues. There are 185 neighborhoods in New York. If you link them through the P.A. office, then you can take on an issue like affordable housing. I think you can excite people that government has an affirmative obligation to help people. That's what this office is about."
It's also about finding local angles on national politics.
"We've got a Republican mayor, a Republican governor and a Republican president," said Siegel. "So when the president talks about privatizing Social Security, the war in Iraq, taking back $169 million of unused 9/11 funds, you don't hear our Republican mayor attacking the president. We need someone here who stands up for the interests of New Yorkers and connects the dots."
As one example, Siegel cites the contentious presence of military recruiters in New York City high schools.
"The public advocate should have the ability and willingness to speak out in opposition to this practice and connect it to the war effort. The P.A. has jurisdiction over the Dept. of Ed. So if the DoE is opening the door, and our students are being lulled into a program that's not factually accurate, you speak up."
Not even his worst enemies would argue that speaking up is something Norman Siegel has ever been afraid to do. New York could do a lot worse than hear his voice, loud and often.
