POLITICS
Menchaca’s Uphill March for Progressive Change
Gay city lawmaker hopes to draw support in crowded mayoral race
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
Following a year of tumult in which
demonstrators turned out in record
numbers across the US to protest police
violence against African-Americans,
New York’s 2021 Democratic mayoral
primary is shaping up as a referendum on the
progressive demands that have sprung up from
activists — many of them young and from communities
of color — nationwide.
Among more than a dozen contenders,
Brooklyn’s out gay Carlos Menchaca, a twoterm
councilmember whose district centers
on Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Greenwood
Heights and who was the city’s fi rst Mexican-
American elected offi cial, is emblematic of the
major issues animating the striking political
energy on the left. Representing a district with
a signifi cant concentration of Latinx and Asian-
American immigrants, Menchaca has put forward
uncompromisingly progressive positions
on police reform, affordable housing, income
inequality, economic development and empowerment,
and transgender rights.
To be sure, others in the fi eld have embraced
issues that Menchaca is championing
— including a number who so far have raised
more money and therefore received greater ink
in the press. The challenge in the weeks and
months ahead of the June 22 primary facing
the Brooklyn councilmember, who only entered
the mayoral race in October, is to generate the
grassroots dollar support that will qualify him
for generous city campaign fi nance matching
funds and thereby allow him to bring his message
to a city of more than eight million residents.
During the heated city budget debate last
summer, Menchaca became one of the Council’s
most outspoken proponents of the controversial
“defund” movement. Activists demanded
that the Council cut an NYPD budget offi cially
pegged at $6 billion dollars in half, shifting
many functions — such as dealing with troubled
individuals publicly exhibiting signs of mental
illness — to non-law enforcement professionals
they argue are better equipped to defuse situations
without resorting to a violent solution.
At the conclusion of the budget process, the
Council claimed to have shaved roughly $1
billion dollars from the NYPD, a fi gure widely
disputed since many policing functions, such
as school safety, were merely shifted to other
departments without any change in how they
were carried out.
Asked whether he believed that the $1 billion
dollar fi gure was real, Menchaca, in an interview
this month, responded, “No way.”
Brooklyn City Councilmember Carlos Menchaca during a hearing in February of last year.
In fact, he argued, the true police budget far
exceeds $6 billion when police functions and
support already lodged elsewhere in city government
are factored in.
“I think the budget is actually a lot larger,”
he said. “We didn’t get to the end of that discovery.”
Menchaca’s dissatisfaction with how the
NYPD funding debate played out was “one of
the primary reasons” he joined 16 colleagues
on the 51-member Council in voting against the
fi nal budget that out gay Speaker Corey Johnson
negotiated with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Pointing to a Daily News analysis that showed
that opponents of the budget were penalized
in the allocation of discretionary and capital
funding by the speaker, Menchaca said, “It sure
as hell looks like I was punished. All of my district’s
items on the speaker’s list were zeroed
out.” Alone among the 51 members, Menchaca
received no funding.
Johnson’s offi ce, at the time, rejected the notion
that progressive dissidents were treated
any differently than their colleagues, with a
spokesperson arguing that with a $9 billion
revenue shortfall, “tough decisions had to be
made all around.”
In pressing for a huge cut in NYPD funding,
Menchaca acknowledged there was stark disagreement
among councilmembers representing
communities of color on the issue of police
funding. Nobody disputes that law enforcement
disproportionately penalizes people of color, but
many councilmembers argued that public safety
NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL/JEFF REED
remains a critical, and often inadequately
addressed concern in their neighborhoods. A
number of councilmembers also noted that a
signifi cant reduction in NYPD headcount would
fall unfairly on younger offi cers who come from
more diverse backgrounds than longer-term
veterans on the force.
Asked about that perspective, Menchaca
said, “Young people know that more police does
not equal greater public safety.” The NYPD, he
said, is a “paramilitary organization led from
the top down and bred by the premise of white
supremacy.” The policies and attitudes of the
force, he argued, are the same regardless of the
color of any one offi cer’s skin.
Menchaca discussed defunding and addressing
police reform as a part of “the urgency of
meeting all of a community’s needs rather than
criminalizing poverty — and of changing a
community’s relationship to government.”
In fact, he cited success in working with a
precinct in Sunset Park, which he said had a
longstanding bad track record but with “better
leadership” achieved a big difference in its relations
with the community.
Looking back at last summer’s budget debate,
Menchaca noted that Johnson committed
to listening to communities of color, but given
the divide there, “the loudest voices got their
way.” The divisions among councilmembers of
color “became the easy way out” for the speaker,
he said.
➤ MENCHACA, continued on p.15
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