JO ANNE SIMON vs. PETE SIKORA vs. DOUG BIVIANO
The contested seat currently belongs to Assemblywoman Joan Millman, who is retiring after 17 years in office to take a job at the Department for the Aging. Her pick for a successor is Jo Anne Simon, who is in an even fund-raising heat with Pete Sikora. Sikora is enjoying support from liberal city pols and a myriad of unions. Then there is Doug Biviano, a dark-horse candidate who is running on a platform of ending machine politics, but has raised only about $7,000.
Doug Biviano
DEMOCRAT, Brooklyn Heights building superintendent and licensed but not practicing engineer
Biviano faced Simon and Steve Levin in a 2009 Council race and lost. In 2010 he lost to retiring Assemblywoman Joan Millman.
45, married, three children
Pete Sikora
DEMOCRAT, union lobbyist who has worked for the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Communication Workers of America
This is Sikora’s first time seeking office.
39, married, one child
Jo Anne Simon
DEMOCRAT, disability rights lawyer, adjunct professor at Fordham Law School.
Simon has served as the female district leader, an unpaid party position, since 2004. She and Biviano lost a Council race to Steve Levin in 2009.
61, married, two step-children and two step-grandchildren.
The Campaign
Simon boasts endorsements from outgoing Assemblywoman Millman, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–New York), congresswomen Nydia Velazquez (D–Bushwick) and Yvette Clarke (D–Flatbush), as well as Councilmen Anotonio Reynoso (D–Bushwick) and Carlos Menchaca (D–Red Hook).
Sikora has the support of Mayor DeBlasio, councilmen Brad Lander (D–Park Slope) and Steve Levin (D–Greenpoint), and the Working Families Party.
The candidates have shown little separation on the neighborhood’s major issues — the closing of Long Island College Hospital, development in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library branch — all of which they oppose in their current forms.
Simon and Biviano both attacked Sikora in debates over the transparency of his spending, which includes a $20,000 contribution to the Working Families Party.
Biviano has made much of Sikora’s campaign consultant Berlin Rosen and that firm’s connection to real estate developers, who he says are running city politics.
