September 11, 2009 / Brooklyn news / Politics / Red Hook / Election Coverage

Challenger: Call her Sara ‘Gone’-zalez

By Gersh Kuntzman

The Brooklyn Paper

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Council candidate Robinson Iglesias hit hard at incumbent Sara Gonzalez in a new flier.

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Insurgent candidate Robinson Iglesias lobbed the ultimate hand-grenade in his longshot bid to defeat Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez in Tuesday’s primary for the Red Hook-Sunset Park seat — he’s gone after Gonzalez’s poor attendance record.

In a mailing that went out to Democratic voters in the 38th District, Iglesias laced into Gonzalez as a no-show councilwoman who has “forgotten that she works for us.”

The mailer features an empty leather armchair with the caption, “Our community has a seat in City Hall. But why is it empty?”

It then cites a Daily News story that reported Gonzalez’s attendance at “mandatory meetings” was a mere 70 percent.

Iglesias also focused on Gonzalez’s acquiescence to a rezoning for Sunset Park without a full analysis of its potential impact on existing tenants. Such a rezoning along Fourth Avenue has caused some displacement of lower-income residents in favor of luxury tenants.

He also cited another Daily News story from last year that revealed that Gonzalez spent more than $40,000 in public money on outside political consultants.

“She doesn’t represent the people in the district,” Iglesias said in an interview. “We have the hardest-working people here and she’s someone who doesn’t show up.”

Gonzalez disagreed, though she did not return a call from The Brooklyn Paper. A spokeswoman, Lois Marbach, offered an explanation for Gonzalez’s barely-passing attendance score.

“The councilwoman is one of the Brooklyn budget negotiators, and she represents all of Brooklyn, so she sometimes has to be at those meetings when other Council meetings are taking place,” Marbach said.

The campaign was asked to furnish records that could support that claim, but declined to do so.

Instead, Marbach attacked Iglesias, saying that he had not been involved in any of the community meetings leading up to the Sunset Park rezoning proposal.

“He never testified, never offered an opinion, whereas the councilwoman was there, listening to what the community wants,” she said. “If Mr. Iglesias doesn’t like the zoning proposal, he should have testified.”

Iglesias’s answer? “I’m not an activist — I’m someone who sees a problem with the representation in this district and I’m someone who could do better,” he said. “That’s why I’m running.”

Iglesias’s furnished his own investigation that showed that Gonzalez was the prime sponsor on only two bills that passed in her seven years in office — both changes to the administrative code. Of 16 Gonzalez-sponsored bills that did not pass, half were non-binding resolutions.

©2009 Community Newspaper Group