Governor Cuomo today set an April 19 special election for the 65th Assembly District in Lower Manhattan. The seat has been vacant since Sheldon Silver was found guilty of federal corruption charges Nov. 30.
Here’s the announcement from Cuomo’s office:
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today issued a proclamation setting an April 19th special election date for the 59th, 62nd and 65th Assembly Districts, as well as the 9th Senate District. This date – which coincides with the presidential primary election in New York State – was chosen in order to both maximize voter turnout and minimize the cost to taxpayers.
Democratic County Committee members in the 65th Assembly District will choose their nominee at an upcoming meeting. That candidate is almost assured of victory in the special election since the downtown district is overwhelmingly Democratic. The victor, however, will face a regular Primary Election next fall.
Just yesterday, the Daily News urged the governor to leave the seat open until the fall, rather than allowing a small number of party insiders connected to four downtown political clubs to hand pick Silver’s successor. The editorial board wrote:
The governor has 43,597 reasons to stand aside and let the contest be in the fall and just 100 to act and set it in April — 43,597 being the number of Democratic voters who would get a say in the fall and 100 being the rough number of party insiders who otherwise will be empowered to, in essence, anoint Silver’s successor in the spring… He should accept a delay in filling the post for a few months after April (a span over which the Legislature will be largely inactive) so as to empower primary voters to choose among a healthy field of at least five serious candidates. The victor of a boss-picked special election would unfairly have an advantage in a primary. The governor should also be mindful that the Board of Elections, paragon of inefficiency, may not be capable of combining a special election in Silver’s district with the presidential voting. Cuomo can take a stand both for democracy and for a workable electoral process by letting Silver’s seat be up for a fair vote in the fall.
Several candidates are already competing for the job. They include: Paul Newell, Jenifer Rajkumar, Don Lee, Yuh-Line Niou, Alice Cancel, Gigi Li and John Bal. Christopher Marte is running as an independent.
Let the people decide!
Special elections that do not include the general populace is NOT DEMOCRACY at work!
Who gets to vote then?
How do we contact the people who get to vote?
Gigi Li are you serious? Get those 13 year olds campaigning now for you girl.
Contact your,district leader, only if you are registered Democrat
I contacted Manhattan Democrats (ben yee?) and no response yet also udo (Chinatown) but I want to be able to contact EVERY one who is supposed to make this decision over the heads of the rest of us because I did my best to not act like a spazz and handle my family’s problems in a private and peaceful way but if a candidate injures and torments us without correction – then we cannot let that go. It’s not like John Liu (whom I met yesterday – what a coincidence) who said not a peep after elections. NOT A PEEP.
huh if they think that only a registered Democrat’s opinion counts or because Sponsored Content prevails on the blogs and press, then they really are shameless. We’ve been tortured for decades by the dirty journalism including the NYTimes that insist on misdepicting my murdered father as a “gang member” while glossing over the killers and if the Democrats proceed to hand over a six figure salary and the spotlight to business as usual professional minorities ever more cynical in their designed history of altruism, it will be even more traumatic for my family.
This is exactly why the special election should be open to public.
Sponsored Content got the Democrat run city where it is today and it controls press coverage so that emboldens/deters candidates from being real candidates.
I don’t like the way Sponsored Content press allows bad guys to look clean while smearing the innocent and genuinely clean.
Was your father, Johnny Eng, former head of the Flying Dragons?
no, my dad was not in any gangs – he was the immigrant who watched the sons of his father’s buddies go to Columbia University and casually take money from their dad’s cash registers and not get into any trouble for stealing coca cola stored in the hallway.
The only thing he had to do with Pell Street was that he lived in a bunk bed there for many years until the tenant told his bunk mate that he was “evicted” because he had just lost his waiter job but Dad in the other bed could stay because Dad was good with the rent and known for getting on buses to places like Cleveland and Buffalo if he heard there was work so he never owed rent.
Also, he took Mom to Nom Wah for her first Chinatown meal because they were famous for their ribs.
The gangsters didn’t like him. The young ones on the street didn’t like him – I saw them give him a dirty look behind his back when I was a toddler after they stopped him in front of Mayflower and asked him for a light. He had once when he was a waiter had to turn over his savings in the basements to pay for his stranger of a father’s gambling debt otherwise they were going to hurt the old man and Dad told them he was never ever going to do that again probably in a way that let them know that he would make trouble. He also flat out said no when anyone wanted to leave a black duffel bag in the gift shop to be picked up by someone else. Friends of friends from out of town who made it to Manhattan’s Chinatown to load up on groceries from Kam Man were welcome to pile up their bags in the gift shop throughout the day and pick everything up before closing to make the long drive back to wherever including Toronto but not a black duffel bag. Even people who wandered in and started chatting could leave stuff but not those black bags.
They don’t like us and never have. They slashed Mom’s tires after she had been waiting for a parking space in front of the gift shop so her spare tire wouldn’t be enough and told Dad that they did it because they THOUGHT that SHE … THOUGHT that she was better than everybody else.
And they sat in an otherwise empty restaurant and Applehead got up after he said something to me when I walked in to get dry fry broad noodles with beef and I said something to him – very simple and not offensive – and he got up and stood next to me and said that he could make one phone call and a van would drive up and take me away and my family would never see me again.
Dad was watching them when I came in and he didn’t say anything when Applehead did that.
Years later – two days before they killed him, he told me to never look hard at them because he felt sorry for their parents, that it was hard on THEM that this happened to their kids.
They beat up other people’s kids and we have to feel sorry for them.
Something has to change.
It’s not true that they are gone and over with because after I started writing about them, Mom saw Applehead AND Wing in front of her car in Flushing when she was tranporting my brother.
That guy Wing told my father a sad story about wanting to change and he had no problem coming up to the office on the day of the murder with the blood still on the floor in front of the elevators and just sitting on the sofa (it was Dad’s honeymoon sofa) and watching all of us – no one said anything to him – he just walked in and started spying.
I’m sorry his wife was murdered whoever he is but why was he deported? None of my father’s killers were deported and nobody shoots them or their family members.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-TW&u=http://nyyp.worldjournal.com/bookmark/14768222-%25E6%2583%2585%25E6%25AE%25BA%25EF%25BC%259F%25E8%25B2%25A1%25E6%25AE%25BA%25EF%25BC%259F-%25E9%259B%2599%25E5%25B1%258D%25E6%25A1%2588%25E8%25AC%258E%25E9%259C%25A7%25E9%2587%258D%25E9%2587%258D&prev=search
This article indicates that he was not deported whoever he is – they should leave ordinary people alone and then they won’t get into so much trouble.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://ny.usqiaobao.com/spotlight/2012/09-06/6360.html&prev=search
IF my dad’s killers weren’t treated like regular criminals like this Johnny Eng, doesn’t this mean that the American government wanted this message sent about nonKMT opinions being intolerated in Chinatown?
They never nominate an outsider like my dad for On Leong and he NEVER got his bakery lease renewal and NO he was not an informant – he was complaining about the FBI visiting his office right until the end.
It looks more like the FBI was working with KMT triad because KMT is most important because they are not Commies. That’s how the Chinese Democrats run Chinatown. Raymond Chow insists on saying nice things about Leland Yee after being convicted of killing a KMT rep – what does that tell you about KMT power and influence.
There’s no incentive to play fair and exercise rule of law – the most important message to all these new Mainland immigrants is that in this New World, KMT is endorsed. You can’t have an opinion. Even now for all her ostrich ways, Mom doesn’t understand why it was so bad that Dad said that naturally the Mainland flag would hang from Chinatown not KMT – she subconsciously drank the American kool aid that you have a right to your own opinion and she doesn’t feel like a Commie nor that Dad was a Commie – I think Commies probably would feel it’s nothing to be proud of to not be a Commie and nothing to be ashamed of so it is a presumption for Overseas Chinese like me to make a big deal about it – but it was nothing about affiliation – it was about meanness and exercising the power to torment and murder. Wow, you’re all in on it. How impressive. How laudable.
But for a total stranger to double back for you, to do you a favor on a cold night – that’s my father – it wouldn’t matter who you were – he would have helped you – even if you had slashed his wife’s tires years before. You can’t get that usually. So you murdered one extra set of helping hands in a world where that is not the standard. You must be so proud of yourselves. It’s so impressive how you got the newspapers to lie for you and KMT is stronger than ever in NYC.
Wow I WISH I was a capitalist tiger cub who knows how to play it smart like all of you. Aren’t you fancy? It’s just good business, right?
When you need help and you can’t buy it – I hope nobody ever helps you. Because that is what you deserve for murdering a good man just to punish him when he never had an easy life despite being a business owner and owning a house and a car – oooh big deal – the message is that he sucked and was “arrogant” because none of it came from drug money. His killers told him he had no taste and no class because he didn’t own a rolex and he didn’t know anything about foreign cars.
Chan Wing Yeung took off his belt and threw it at Dad and said PICK IT UP IT’S WORTH MORE THAN YOUR COAT.
Dad took off his own belt and put that one and only said but my wife bought me my coat.
That’s the murder victim that the Chinese FBI agent who looked like he didn’t like Dad said his killers believed was “arrogant.”
We still have the belt.