Term Limits Backlash:
Incumbents In Trouble

Chinatown — Over the past two decades, incumbent New York City Council members have enjoyed a 97.5 percent rate of re-election. Almost all the changes in the makeup of the city's legislature over that period have been due to the term limits law passed by referendum in 1993. So, after City Council voted in October to extend term limits, Council members might have looked at the 2009 election year and reasonably expected a smooth ride to re-election.

That is not the way the race is shaping up in several districts across the city, however. At least 12 incumbents find themselves in fairly competitive races. Several have lost the important backing of a party organization or union. A few have raised less money than their chief rival – a significant reversal of an incumbent's typical financial edge.

Of the Council's 50 current members (the 51st seat is vacant following the recent resignation of Miguel Martinez after pleading guilty to misusing public money), one is running for mayor, two are seeking the public advocate post and four want to be comptroller. Forty-three are hoping to retain their Council seats and certainly, many of them will stroll to victory. Brooklyn's Simcha Felder will for the third straight election face no opponent at all. Manhattan's Daniel Garodnick has an 18-to-1 fundraising advantage over his only rival.

But with a number of other incumbents in tough fights, 2009 could go down as a record year for insurgent candidates—which would stamp an ironic coda on a political season that began with Council granting itself and other municipal officers a chance to continue in power.

City Limits examined one race in each borough where an incumbent is now at risk. Broader sentiments—like outrage over the term limits vote itself—are certainly at play in several races, and the litany of other issues on candidates' lips sounds familiar (better schools, more affordable housing). But each contest is, in fact, shaped by issues and circumstances unique to that district.

Backlash in Manhattan

In the frenetic run-up to Council's vote last fall on a bill extending term limits from two to three consecutive terms, Manhattan's Alan Gerson spent a few days in the media spotlight as one of three Council members to propose a compromise—an amendment to the bill to create a charter revision commission that could have called for a referendum on the question. Along with fellow Manhattanite Gale Brewer and Brooklyn's David Yassky, Gerson argued that such a move would quell concerns that the Council's process for changing term limits had been undemocratic.

On the day of the vote, when the amendment failed, Brewer voted against the term limits change, but Yassky and Gerson voted for it. Gerson told his colleagues that he thought his constituents should have the choice between change and the "continuity" of keeping him.

Now Gerson, an attorney first elected in 2001 to represent District 1, covering the tip of Manhattan up to and including parts of NoHo and Greenwich Village, is finding continuity a tough sell. He could face as many as four opponents in the Sept. 15 Democratic primary—which, as usual, is the de facto election day in a city where Republicans are a distinct minority. At press time, it was not even certain that Gerson would be on the ballot because of a flaw in his petitions.