BY PAUL SCHINDLER | Brad Hoylman, an openly gay attorney who served three terms as chairperson of Greenwich Village’s Community Board 2, easily captured the Democratic nomination for the 27th state Senate District seat currently held by Tom Duane.
Garnering more than two-thirds of the vote against Tom Greco, the straight owner of the Ritz, a gay bar on Restaurant Row in Midtown, and educator Tanika Inlaw, Hoylman is now guaranteed election in November since he holds the only other line on the ballot, that of the Working Families Party.
The 27th District runs from the Lower East Side to the West Village and then uptown to the Upper West Side. Duane, who has held the seat since 1999, announced his decision not to seek re-election in early June.
At an Aug. 20 debate sponsored by Citizens Union, a nonpartisan civic group, The Villager and its sister publications, Greco and Inlaw charged that Hoylman was handpicked by Democratic insiders to replace Duane. They also questioned his 12 years of work at the Partnership for New York City, a major business lobby that has taken some public positions at odds with those Hoylman advocated in the race –– for example, on legislation guaranteeing a living wage to employees of enterprises enjoying municipal subsidies.
The three candidates, however, agreed across the board on the substance of the issues discussed during the debate.
Hoylman enjoyed essentially unanimous support from elected officials in Manhattan, including Duane, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Congressmembers Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, and Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Dick Gottfried. He quickly amassed a campaign war chest of more than $200,000 that dwarfed those of his opponents.
He also won the endorsement of The New York Times, as well as of The Villager and its sister publications Gay City News and Chelsea Now.
Hoylman, 46, who was raised in rural West Virginia, graduated from West Virginia University, and became that school’s first Rhodes Scholar. After his work at Oxford University in England, he attended law school at Harvard University. He is engaged to his longtime partner, David Sigal, and the couple have a baby daughter, Silvia Verona Hoylman-Sigal, who is nearly 2 years old.
