PAGAN LOSES, YOU WIN!!
By A. Kronstadt + Chris Flash
In a rare victory of popular will over real estate money and machine politics, Lower East Side housing activist Margarita Lopez has won the Democratic Party primary in a hotly-contested race for the Second District City Council seat being vacated by poverty pimp and real estate stooge Antonio Pagan. Lopez edged out Judith Rapfogel, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's anointed successor to Pagan, by a slim margin of just over 200 votes. Albert Fabozzi, a bumbling half- psychotic busybody who briefly served as chairman of Community Board Three as Pagan's appointee, failed in his role as a spoiler against Lopez and garnered only about 600 votes. Lopez now faces a general election on November 4 in which she may be opposed by a much humbled Rapfogel, now on the "Liberal" line, and Betty Lugo, a little known Republican candidate. The Lopez victory was a welcome surprise for those who followed the primary results on the evening of September 9 and read the papers the next morning. The media reported Rapfogel as the winner by 168 votes, but there is a strange story regarding this piece of misinformation (or disinformation, depending on how you look at it). Poll watchers for Margarita Lopez' campaign kept a close eye on the counting of votes all night on September 9 and tallied pretty much the same figures as the ones now accepted, with Margarita winning by about 150 votes. However, after the votes were counted, the voting machines, along with duplicates of the inspector's report of the tally for each machine, were packed off to the local police precinct for safekeeping, with a report of the vote total sent to the Board of Elections central computer by the police officer assigned to that task. Somewhere along this chain of communication, the tally for Rapfogel on some unspecified machine was boosted from 35 votes to 350 votes. This is the number that got reported to the Board of Elections, so all night long and the next day, it was reported that Rapfogel was the winner. In spite of the obvious temptation to interpret this as some kind of conspiracy, Lopez campaign worker Michael Farrin told the SHADOW: "I don't think anybody was fooling around. It was probably a mistake. But the media are a little bit sanguine about these early numbers, which have endless possibility for error, and Rapfogel cynically claimed victory and the glare of publicity went to her anyhow." The Lopez primary victory is the mirror image of Pagan's City Council primary victory in 1991, in which he edged out then- incumbent Miriam Friedlander by 93 votes in a highly disputed vote count. SHADOW sources suspect that the tally had been manipulated in 1991 in the same manner that the vote was miscounted in Rapfogel's favor on September 9. Fortunately, the true vote was revealed this time around, preventing a repeat of the stolen 1991 primary, after which Pagan coasted to victory in the general election. Margarita Lopez will not have it so easy in the November 4 general election. Unlike Pagan, she is not kingmaker Shelly Silver's handpicked candidate. Margarita is an avowed opponent of real estate interests who has ridden buses to Albany with tenants to lobby for rent regulations and marched in the streets with neighborhood residents who want to save the Lower East Side community gardens from real estate developers. She also fought hard and successfully to stop the eviction of tenants in city housing projects under Giuliani's "Moving to Work" program. Mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger broke her initial promise to endorse Margarita and ended up backing Rapfogel, obviously under pressure from Sheldon Silver. The New York Times, in its finite wisdom (and loyalty to its real estate interests) stamped its seal of approval on Rapfogel's City Council bid. So, it seems, all of the forces of wealth and power are arrayed against Margarita Lopez, and all she has on her side are thousands of registered voters who enjoy living in their neighborhood and don't want to be displaced by yuppies and 70-story condos. There now appears to be a mass rebellion going on among Lower East Side voters, who now refuse to behave predictably. In the Baruch Houses [projects on Houston and Avenue D], Puerto Rican voters have snubbed their long-time political boss Roberto Napoleon, who was backing Rapfogel, and have gone massively for Margarita. Furthermore, the entire political alliance revolving around Antonio Pagan in the early nineties--composed of a mixture of Democratic fatcats and party hacks like Silver and Napoleon, landlords and gentrifiers like Christina Piorkowska and Howard Hemsley, and "quality of life" creeps like Elizabeth Acevedo and Nancy Sosman--has melted down. Pagan is now on the outs with most of the people who supported him in 1991. Interestingly enough, SHADOW sources reveal that Pagan had no real desire to run for Borough President, and that when he tried to keep his City Council seat, his political sugar daddy Sheldon Silver told him it was too late because he had already run Rapfogel for Pagan's seat. After his dismal showing in the September 9 primary, as predicted by the SHADOW, (8% of the vote), Pagan's political career appears to be over. But Pagan hasn't lost completely. Like most corporate officers who are removed from positions of power, Pagan has created his own "golden parachute" that will ensure his wealth and comfort for life. Barring his acceptance of a rumored offer by Mayor Giuliani for the job of Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), Pagan will once again openly head his poverty-pimp housing group Lower East Side Coalition Housing Development (LESCHD), and the city-owned properties it controls. As reported previously in the SHADOW, after a short term of providing symbolic "low-income" housing, the properties controlled by LESCHD will become market rate housing, with the ownership conveyed to LESCHD/ Pagan. After years of accepting cash from real estate interests and enriching his real estate portfolio during his City Council stint, Pagan now has nothing to lose. In the last few months of his City Council term, it is expected that Pagan will continue to use his position as the chair of the Land Use and Disposition Committee to hand city-owned properties to individuals and groups tied to and/or controlled by Pagan and his political contributors. In one current example, Pagan has facilitated the transfer of six city-owned lots from the community groups operating them as gardens to LESCHD in a scheme to create shoddily-built market rate city-subsidized condominium housing units that will be built by real estate developer and Pagan contributor Donald Capoccia and managed by LESCHD. (See related story in this issue--Ed.) Further insuring his future comfort, Pagan, using his influence on the Land Use Committee, has gotten his city-owned apartment building at 7 East 3rd Street placed in the city's Tenant Interum Lease (TIL) program, which enables tenants to buy their apartments for only $250. Pagan, who earns a declared $72,500 as councilman, was years behind on his $75 per month rent before buying his apartment through TIL, which has arranged for a $12 million renovation of the building at taxpayer expense. According to SHADOW sources, after members of the building's tenant association voted themselves expanded and double-sized apartments, a number of residents were made to leave. As a result, Pagan is among those who will get 2-3 times more space for himself and family members. After only ten years or so, Pagan will be able to sell the apartments for a fat profit. Whatever highly justified distrust we may have in the City Council, the electoral system, and the government in general, those of us who love the Lower East Side cannot help but rejoice at the prospect of Margarita Lopez replacing Pagan and his political allies on the City Council. To use Pagan's 1991 campaign slogan, "It's time for a change" -- to say the least!!