Sunset Park pol eyes Gracie Mansion
If elected, Councilman Carlos Menchaca says he will be ‘the people’s mayor’
BY ROSE ADAMS
Sunset Park Councilman
Carlos Menchaca says he’s
jumping into the 2021 mayoral
race, hoping his experience as
an on-the-ground community
activist will leapfrog him atop
a crowded Democratic fi eld of
candidates.
“In a democracy, the community
is where the power is.
They control the vote, they control
the next leader,” Menchaca
told Brooklyn Paper. “And I
feel that tension with government.
Government has failed
to meet that and refl ect that.”
Menchaca, a Texas native
whose parents immigrated
from Mexico, worked for former
Borough President Marty
Markowitz and City Council
Speaker Christine Quinn before
unseating longtime Sunset
Park Councilwoman Sara
Gonzalez in 2013.
If elected to the city’s top offi
ce, Menchaca will be the fi rst
openly gay mayor in the city’s
history, as well as the fi rst Latino
mayor since 1917.
Menchaca’s candidacy
comes just weeks after he
played an integral role in stopping
the Industry City rezoning
in September, which would
have allowed for a $1 billion
redevelopment of the 35-acre
campus in Sunset Park.
Proponents of the proposed
rezoning lauded the plan for
potentially bringing thousands
COURIER L 6 IFE, OCT. 30-NOV. 5, 2020
of jobs to the area as the
city faces a multi-billion dollar
budget shortfall, but local
activists worried that the revamped
space would accelerate
gentrifi cation.
Menchaca, who held outsized
power over the rezoning’s
approval as the area’s
city legislator, initially issued
a series of conditions for the
developer to meet before he
would support the land use
change — but ultimately ushered
a complete denouncement
of the project following
pressure from advocates.
The term-limited councilman
said he opposed the rezoning
proposal because it
supposedly failed to address
community concerns about
rising rents, and because there
was no enforcement mechanism
to hold Industry City’s
developers to account for their
promises.
Many political observers
likened the death of Industry
City’s rezoning and the adjoining
promises of economic opportunity
to the withdrawal
of Amazon’s deal to build a
new headquarters in Queens
— which would have created
an estimated 40,000 jobs in the
city, according to Amazon.
But Menchaca sees the
death of the Industry City project
as jumpstarting a citywide
movement that prioritizes local
voices over corporate interests
— and one that could propel
him to Gracie Mansion.
“Sunset Park was at the
forefront of the battle that
bought a developer to their
knees,” said Menchaca, who
added that the city’s land use
approval procedure, known as
ULURP, must give locals more
of a say in the development of
their neighborhoods. “ULURP
must be different. It must give
capacity to communities to
confront these global corporate
projects.”
Menchaca will face off
against fellow progressives
Maya Wiley, Scott Stringer,
and Diana Morales, as well as
more than 20 others in the 2021
mayoral race. To prove he’s
most in touch with the people,
Menchaca will travel to each
neighborhood to speak to locals
before drafting most of
his policy positions, he said.
“The fi rst thing is listen
to the people. It seems pretty
simple, but it’s one of the most
common things that this administration
hasn’t been able
to do very well,” he said. “My
fi rst phase of this is to engage
people at the most local level,
and build policy from the
ground up.”
Brooklyn Councilman Carlos Menchaca. File photo by Rose Adams