Helen Rosenthal at a birthday celebration last month.
Helen Rosenthal won a landslide victory on Tuesday night in the race to represent District 6 in the City Council, locking up the seat that was held by Gale Brewer for 12 years. It covers almost the entire Upper West Side. With just under 70% of the precincts reporting, she had received 78% of the votes.
(via NY1)
Mark Levine, also a Democrat, will represent District 7, which covers Manhattan Valley, Morningside Heights and Washington Heights.
Rosenthal is set to join one of the most Liberal NYC governments in decades. In fact, new mayor Bill de Blasio may be to the right of a lot of the City Council and most of the other people who won office on Tuesday. New Comptroller Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Public Advocate Tish James are all quite Liberal too. What that means in practical terms for the Upper West Side is not yet clear.
Rosenthal has vowed to build more affordable housing in the neighborhood, which will be no easy feat given the skyrocketing cost of real estate. The city also needs to build more schools in the neighborhood, but the DOE has dragged its feet for years under Mayor Bloomberg. Not to mention controversies over homeless shelters, bike lanes, development and more!
Anyway, we’ll continue to follow those issues and many more, and we’ll be pestering her with questions shortly. For now…Congratulations Helen!
"New York’s resilience is legendary; our toughness is unmatched; and our will is unbreakable." #progress pic.twitter.com/l3ko7G2wDc
— Bill de Blasio (@deBlasioNYC) November 6, 2013
Ms. Rosenthal need not worry. When people start fleeing the City because of a rising crime rate, higher taxes, and a drop in investment and development, there will be more than enough affordable housing to go around. Congrats to those who got their wish for a return to the bad old days.
The Dinkins Era comes back with a vengeance. God help us.
I fear dark days ahead for UWS and New York City as a whole… Scary times…
This is why you have more than your fair share of homeless shelters, UWS. Enjoy!!
I fear for our city and community.
but there is such a thing as too liberal.
These folks now in power are not democrats, they are anarchists.
I hope I am wrong about this.
OMG mr. Lhota take an ambien!
Not Mr. Lhota., Just a lifetime UWSer who remembers the 70s and 80s and does not look back at them as the good old days.
BTW, I saw Rosenthal speak at event with all the candidates – there was around 10 of them – and she was the worst, absolutely clueless, pollyanna with far left wing views.
why are so many commenters on this web site so out of touch with the common sense economic concerns of the vast majprity of West Siders… and of New Yorkers?
congratulations Helen Rosenthal, who is off to a GREAT start… and is not a “clueless pollyanna” but highly informed about NYC govt. Helen is starting working with other Council members to instill TRANSPARENCY in the Council Speaker’s race.
Why are you Bruce so intolerant of others opinions that do not aline with yours?
Actually, I think here , with being anonymous folks are more honest in what they truly believe.
yes, Bruce , you use your name, we know know..
note; I am not the blog owner , just another westSider
I’m not “intolerant” at all, Mr or Ms Anonymous. (and why do you keep using the screen name of the writer… since you now have to write a disclaimer every time).
I am just curious as to why the comments on this web site are so badly aligned with the viewpoints of the vast majority of West Siders. Or perhaps they don’t vote the way “they truly believe?” We vote 80-90% for Gale Brewer and almost that high for Bill De Blasio.
there are an awful lot of ugly comments that surface on this site every day.
I agree with you thoroughly, Bruce. While I don’t look back with pleasure to the crime of the ’70s and ’80s, having been a victim more times than I wish to remember, I don’t see why so many of those commenting assume that that is the direction in which we are now headed. Most of the city’s voters wanted a dose of charisma. Lhota couldn’t deliver. As for Helen Rosenthal, I cheer for a woman who publicized the separate doorway for those entering the “affordable housing” side of a new building. Separate but equal, anyone?
thank you Martha. i have been trying to make realistic comments to balance against the nasty and superficial “haters.” like Cato, who i am confident does not know Helen Rosenthal but feels free to trash her as being a hypocrite. i have gotten a positive impression of her and the “hate” from these few commenters seems to extend to de Blasion and Brewer as well. so we can guess where that is coming from.
Linda Rosenthal (not Helen) was the one who spoke out against the “poor door.” And it was first revealed by this West Side Rag story: https://www.westsiderag.com/2013/08/12/new-uws-development-could-have-separate-entrance-for-poorer-people
“Separate but equal”? You mean like sending your kids to hoity-toity private schools and then claiming to represent the interests of parents with no choice but to send their kids to the City’s public schools?
Oh, right — that’s a matter of separate (I married a banker so I can afford it) but *not* equal.
I appreciate the “noblesse oblige” but would rather have had someone qualified take the job. I don’t really care where the next luxury condo puts its doors.
Bruce —
If you know her that well, perhaps you could enlighten us about where she sent her kids to school.
She’s carefully concealed that important information from her now-constituents throughout the time we were supposed to be getting to know her.
i couldn’t care less where she sends her kids to school. I care about access to her office, issues she champions, how she interacts with constituents — so far, all i’ve seen is good. No, i don’t know her. I’ve met her several times and seen her speak. She is an open, honest, well-informed person.
I’m sure if you don’t like Helen Rosenthal then like then you also don’t like de Blasio and Gale Brewer. More power to you, but most West Siders disagree with you. Saying that is not “speaking for everyone.” It is simply READING election returns.
End the hate!!
Stop the hate! Love Big Brother!
You got it, BB!
Well, Bruce I don’t know why you think you speak for everybody. because you do not.
Others are allowed to have opinions too. Here is one:The new mayor is a Red Sox fan. According to the rules of the New York I grew up in, I’d expect to see the Hudson turn into a river of blood and Zabar’s to close due to a locust infestation before that happened.
But if Bill de Blasio’s remarkable rise proves anything, it’s that the rules can change. A liberal’s crazy liberal, de Blasio still waxes nostalgic about the noble struggle of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, for whom he raised money in the 1980s. He violated the ban on travel to Cuba for his honeymoon with his formerly gay wife, and he often talks as if he’s handing out literature in Union Square for the former left-wing New Party, for which he used to work.
For conservative pundits, he’s the Austin Powers of pre-Rudolph Giuliani urban liberalism, a near perfect throwback thawed out for our amusement. Social justice is his bag, baby.
But for those of us born and raised in pre-Giuliani New York, he can also conjure images of Charles Bronson in “Death Wish,” the gritty vigilante flick that symbolized the city in that era.
Vincent Cannato, a historian at the University of Massachusetts, wrote the definitive book on John Lindsay, the mayor of New York from 1966 to 1973. Cannato’s book “The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York,” tells the story of liberalism’s now-forgotten golden boy. Charming, improbably handsome, resolutely liberal and Republican (until he switched parties), Lindsay had the dubious distinction of overseeing much of New York’s horrific decline into legal, fiscal, racial and moral chaos.
Lindsay’s defenders are legion in New York. In their minds, everything was going great and then, suddenly, when Lindsay left office, the place went off a cliff overnight. Cannato says that whenever he appears at an event to discuss his book, the Lindsayites swarm to defend their hero. One of their primary talking points is the fact that Lindsay fulfilled his vow to “throw open the city to producers from Hollywood,” ushering in a renaissance in New York filmmaking.
And it’s true. But just look at the movies born of Lindsay’s efforts: “Taxi Driver,” ‘‘The French Connection,” ‘‘The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” ‘‘Panic in Needle Park” and other films depicting a rotting Big Apple — a “voluptuous enemy” with “the stench of Hell,” to borrow a phrase from Pauline Kael’s review of “Taxi Driver.”
Hollywood may have exaggerated the extent of New York’s Stygian gloom, but you can only exaggerate the truth. And anyone who lived in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s can recognize that while “Death Wish” may have been a caricature, like any good caricature it captured the likeness better than the subject would have liked.
When I was a kid, street crime was a given, rationalized by many liberals as the price one had to pay to live in such a wonderful metropolis.
De Blasio comes from a wing of liberalism that looks nostalgically on the days when New Yorkers were immeasurably worse off but urban liberals had more confidence. He has promised to get rid of the “stop-and-frisk” policies that helped make New York City the safest large city in the world. (There was an average of more than six murders a day in 1990. This year, the city is on target to average less than one.)
He talks as if all of New York’s problems stem from the fact the rich find it too hospitable. This despite the fact that city spending went up nearly 50 percent on Michael Bloomberg’s watch alone, fueled by ever-higher tax burdens on the city’s wealthy (the top 1 percent account for 43 percent of city revenues).
Maybe a de Blasio mayoralty will be constrained by the successes of the last 20 years and the expectations of New Yorkers. But there’s an irony here. A city with a better memory would still surely be liberal, but it would not be defrosting someone like de Blasio.
He would be impossible without the successes of the Giuliani administration (and Bloomberg’s willingness to sustain them), just as Giuliani would have been impossible without the accumulated failures of his predecessors.
De Blasio’s success proves the one eternal rule of the game in politics: Victory is never permanent, nor is failure.
Well said, with provocative detail.
I’m just waiting for Mr. DeBlasio to announce that his director of New York City Transit will be the current darling of the oh-wow-aren’t-we-cool set, Banksy. After all, why waste the canvases that are the sides, walls, windows, interiors, exteriors, tops, bottoms, and other bits of the City’s fleet of subway cars?
And his chief of Transit Police will undoubtedly be one of the young gentlemen ruthlessly victimized by that violent racist felon (and now low-level drug dealer), Bernhard Goetz, all for innocently and politely requesting a small financial donation.
Yes, we seem destined to return to the days of “Death Wish” and “Taxi Driver”. So I guess having a wealthy bankers’-wife private-school mom now managing the city’s public schools won’t be so bad, right?
what a hate filled, venemous rant!!! no wonder you hide behind a false name — the name of the main WRITER of this web site. shame on you.
I don’t claim to speak for “everyone”. But your brand of gloom and doom Giuliani style conservatism — including the hated racial profiling of the current “stop and frisk” — just got soundly defeated, especially on the Upper West Side. People knew EXACTLY what they were voting for. All i’m saying is that you represent about 10-15% of West Side voters. Bill de Blasio / Gale Brewer / Helen rosenthal, all of whom you trash day in and day out, represent the vast majority. Facts are facts, my angry friend.
by the way, the Sandinistas are in power in Nicaragua today. and we get along just fine with them. de Blasio and others who supported them were on the side of LEGALITY. It was the Reagan / Ollie North conservatives who were breaking the law. Remember Iran / Contra? and the contras were TERRORISTS. no ifs, and, or buts about it.
One of our most popular Council members from the West Side, Ronnie Eldridge, was a stalwart of the Lindsay administration. Oh, I’m sure you like to pour your venom on her as well.
1. love Ronnie.
2. use this name originally not knowing that others use it – not surprising given the site.
3. I use it now just to annoy you.
4. All Democrats win big on the UWS. big deal, it doesnt mean everyone likes them. most people are not informed at have no idea what they stand for, they just knee jerk vote Dem.
5. everyone is incognito on this site, it is the sites policy if you want it. All except you. I think it creates more honest discourse.
6. you do not speak for everyone , especially me.
7.thanks
Mr/Ms Anonymous WestSider says:
“1. love Ronnie.”
so you do know that Ronnie Eldridge is Helen Rosenthal’s mentor, neighbor, and was her earliest and strongest supporter, right? and you love Ronnie but want to trash Helen relentlessly, in the ugliest possible way? nice.
MA says:
“2. use this name originally not knowing that others use it – not surprising given the site.
3. I use it now just to annoy you.”
well, it doesn’t “annoy” me. I think it is unfair to the other readers and to the writer / site editor, as your right wing venom frequently gets confused with his non-partisan (for the most part) comments. it’s pretty childish to do something like that in a vain attempt to “annoy” another reader / commenter.
MA says:
“4. All Democrats win big on the UWS. big deal, it doesnt mean everyone likes them. most people are not informed at have no idea what they stand for, they just knee jerk vote Dem.”
actually, all Dems DON’T win big on the UWS.. for example, Bloomberg carried it in the last 2 elections. but your disdain for the intelligence and awareness of UWS voters is pretty shocking. i think UWSers know EXACTLY what they are voting for — obviosuly there are exceptions.
MA says:
“5. everyone is incognito on this site, it is the sites policy if you want it. All except you. I think it creates more honest discourse.”
actually, not everyone is “incognito.” you certainly have the right to be incognito, as i’ve often said, although you have no right to adopt the pseudonym of the editor. but perhaps your remarks would be a little less on the hatemongering side if you were using your name. if that’s your “honesty”, i feel sorry for you.
MA says:
“6. you do not speak for everyone , especially me.”
I never claimed to speak for “everyone.” and i don’t WANT TO speak for someone like you.
what i DO claim is that my mainstream progressive viewpoints are far closer to the vast majority of West Side voters — as proven in the last election — than many of the right wing commenters we see here. And I wonder why that is. it might be the “talk radio” effect.
if one just read this site’s comments, one would think the UWS is a conservative Republican community.
Bring Back Stop & Frisk .. Is makes a difference !
When we bought our 73rd street apartment in 1993 I would see vandalized cars on our block 2 or 3 times a week. Now I see BMW’s spend the night without a scratch. We bought our 2 bedroom 2 bath for half of what a small studio goes for today in our building. The City was quite awful 20 years ago. I hope we are not in for bad times again.
(1) Legalize drugs and prostitution to end gang culture profitability.
(2) Substitute remote passive x-ray truck scanners for stop & frisk discovery of handgun maniacs.
(3) Support clean low emissions fracking as liquid money provided to our state by Nature.
(4) Avoid the political suicide of Global Warming “science” that’s so obviously a scam, merely, akin to the diabetes promoting Food Pyramid.
(5) Ship unproductive addicts out of cheap UWS housing and let inventive artists move in, based on portfolio submissions. Both will keep voting Democratic, but only one will end the UWS Shopping Mall.
(6) Sell Riverside Park to Donald Trump.
(7) Rezone to allow UWS strip clubs, to shorten the subway ride burden of female Ivy League students in paying off their inflated loans.
(8) Dig a mile deep below the street, steel girder supported, to build new city scapes for Manhattan proper, hanging gardens, all nuclear powered.
-=NikFromNYC=- For Mayor
Looks like her affordable housing plan consists almost entirely of more rent-regulation.
In an article that appeared in The New Yorker a while ago the author makes this statement: “In America we have the right to voice our opinions, but if you don’t know what you’re talking about, keep your opinions to yourself.”
I doubt that any of the responders know Mayor DeBlasio;can comment unequivicabley on what either he or Helen Rosenthal will or won’t do; what our city will or will not look like in 4 years, but you’re willing to voice your foundless opinions. Worse, you’ll do everything you can influence others just to be able to say “I told you so.” And if it turns out that you were wrong, you’d have an excuse.
Like far too many UWSer’s you love to complain, but when it comes to doing something, “I dont have the time” or “that’s how it’s always been.” Grow up and take responsibility for what’s going on in your neighborhood.