Our Weirdly Cordial City Council Race
by Avi - September 8, 2009 at 9:19 am -
Who says the scion of a notorious conservative family and an Upper West Side Liberal can’t get along?
Unlike other City Council candidates, the people running for the West Side’s District 6 seat seem to like each other, maybe even a little too much. Gale Brewer, a Democrat who is running for her third term, calls Joshua Goldberg, the Republican candidate and the brother of conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, “cordial” and “a very nice man”. Goldberg, for his part, praises Brewer’s constituent services and calls her bill to make city employers pay for sick days “entirely reasonable.”
Joshua Goldberg
Goldberg even sent Brewer an email letting her know how much he admires her.
“I got an email from him where basically he said he’s heard great things about me but the Republicans asked him to run,” Brewer said in an interview.
Goldberg, who edits his mother’s website lucianne.com, said the party has been “bugging me to run for years”, but now that he’s a candidate “I’m in to win.”
To be sure, the candidates have very different positions on certain issues. Goldberg, for instance, opposes any form of rent price regulation such as rent control and rent stabilization, while Brewer has voted to maintain the rent stabilization rules and protect affordable housing.
Gale Brewer
Goldberg hasn’t attended community meetings in recent years in part because he worked as a tour guide from 2 to 11 pm every day, he said. He says the neighborhood is filled with middle class people who are being driven out by high taxes and fees and who are tired of chain stores pushing out local businesses. He wants the city to reduce spending, mostly by cutting perks given to city employees.
Obviously, a Republican candidacy is a huge longshot in the neighborhood, and it doesn’t help that Goldberg’s mother helped sink Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal and that his brother Jonah doesn’t exactly love Barack Obama; he recently called the administration “astoundingly incompetent.” Joshua said he “generally agrees” with his brother’s political views.
His family connections, in fact, probably explain the vitriol he’s inspired in commenters on political humor website Wonkette.com, which picked up our story last week. (boxing image from Library of Congress via flickr)
Here are the two candidates’ videos on why they are running:
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