Throws down gauntlet: Backing up his tough words against Assemblymember Deborah Glick in recent years, District Leader Arthur Schwartz has finally bitten the bullet. An article in the New York Observer last week announced that he has decided to challenge the longtime incumbent in this September’s Democratic primary election. Keep tuned for our coverage of this Village political throwdown in next week’s issue.
Cancel running: District Leader Alice Cancel was nominated to run for Assembly at the Three Kings party at Southbridge Towers on Wednesday evening, with her co-District Leader Pedro Cardi making the announcement at the party. That would pretty much lock up the key County Committee members from the Lower East Side Democratic Club, who — representing one-third of the district’s nearly 200 County Committee members — are the coveted swing votes to pick the nominee. Despite repeated rumblings that Cancel would be running, her husband, State Commiteeman John Quinn, had repeatedly told us that she wasn’t interested…but, well… . “If my community wants me to serve, I’ll serve,” she said Wednesday night. (We should also mention that the tables of food, much of it cooked up by local gourmet residents, was out of this world!) From the sound of it, Cancel would also be a favorite at Grand St.’s Truman Club, where District Leader Paul Newell is still on the outs for running against Shelly Silver back in 2008. Meanwhile, yet another candidate has thrown his hat into the ring for the special election in the 65th Assembly District. John Bal, a longtime resident of Kenmare St. in Little Italy, says he wants to succeed the deposed Assembly Speaker Silver in representing Lower Manhattan. A former new York City police officer and Queens community board youth services coordinator, Bal ran against Silver about 25 years ago and said he got about 1,000 votes. Like others, he said he’s very dissatisfied with the County Committee process that is unfolding to pick the Democratic nominee for the expected April 19 special election. He called us from, of all places, Thailand, where he said he hopes eventually to help out the locals. First, however, he is learning Thai in order to do that. “This is how I spend a lot of my vacations,” he said of his altruistic globetrotting. In addition, a meeting on Thursday about the County Committee process, which we’re told was to be closed to everyone except the eight local district leaders and the hopeful candidates, has abruptly been canceled — perhaps due to outrage that it was so closed and secretive! And, finally, another possible candidate, Don B. Lee, just back from a trip abroad — apparently not Thailand! — told us he is still testing the waters. The Battery Park City resident assured us that, despite rumors, he was not once a registered Republican. “I never was — that’s just a myth,” he said, adding, “I’ve been labeled worse.”
Corrections: The original version of last week’s Villager article “The dark side of Purple” contained a photo of a young woman who was identified as Anne (a.k.a. Eve No. 2), the mother of Adam Purple’s son, Adam David. The shot was of her in a photo booth with Adam Purple. However, while the woman in that photo was an acquaintance of Purple’s in the 1970s, she was not Eve and not the mother of his son or of any of his children. She did not give permission for the photo’s use. The photo has been removed from our online edition. The Villager apologizes for the error. Also in last week’s issue, an article on the Community Board 3 monthly meeting referred to a spokesman for the public advocate as Tommy Lin, but should have said Adam Chen. A Tommy Lin may have worked for Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum a few administrations ago!
