The race for Queens Council District 22, the next phase of Astoria's political evolution

Six Democrats are vying to replace Councilmember Costa Constantinides, a progressive Democrat who represented Queens Council District 22 after the moderate Peter Vallone Jr. City Council photo

By David Brand

Just over eight years ago, the ex-prosecutor representing Astoria in the city council penned an op-ed to defend the controversial police strategy then roiling New York and shaping its political future.

“Stop and frisk works,” went the headline.

“I have worked closely with Commissioner [Ray] Kelly to make our city safer, fight for more police officers, and defend stop, question and frisk — which is the only method of getting the gun before the toddler playing in the sprinkler can be shot in a ‘drive-by,’” then Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. wrote in the Queens Chronicle in 2013, the final year of his three-term tenure.

Yes, not too long ago, the councilmember from Astoria — epicenter of modern New York City lefty politics, the neighborhood that last year elected a Democratic Socialists of America organizer to the state Assembly — wanted more cops and more stops.

Today, five of the candidates for Vallone’s old seat say they want to cut funding to the NYPD and reimagine policing in New York.

It’s safe to say the political landscape has shifted in Western Queens as demographics change, leftwing political stars emerge and progressive organizers continue to drive the vote and achieve milestone victories.

“I see this as a natural progression sparked by voters becoming more engaged rather than letting career politicians make all the decisions without significant community engagement,” said attorney Andy Aujla, former president of an Astoria Democratic club and executive secretary of Queens Community Board 1. “Astoria serves as a beacon to the necessary nationwide shift away from over-policing … to a community-based model of violence prevention.”

The next phase of Astoria’s political evolution is coming up in June, with public safety emerging as a key campaign issue.

Six candidates are running in the Democratic primary for Queens Council District 22, a seat recently vacated by Vallone’s successor Costa Constantinides, a progressive Democrat and the former chair of the council’s environmental committee. 

Tiffany Cabán, the candidate with the most name recognition and high-profile endorsements, has crafted a series of policies that describe how New York City can eliminate the NYPD and jails and reinvest in social services, particularly in low-income communities of color.

“At its core it’s about setting people up with the things they need to be healthier, more whole, safer human beings,” Cabán said. “If you throw policing at every problem what you get is what lives in my district: Rikers Island, and it does nothing to create and stabilize more safety in our communities.”

Cabán, a former public defender, made her name during her radical reform campaign for Queens District Attorney in 2019. She came 60 votes short of winning the Democratic primary (She lost to Melinda Katz, who also defeated Vallone in the 2013 race for Queens borough president. So Cabán and Vallone have something in common at least). She leads the fundraising with more than $92,000 in private contributions and another $160,000 in public matching funds.

Another top candidate, Community Board 1 Housing Chair Evie Hantzopolous, says she would have opposed last year’s city budget because the council didn’t “meaningfully defund the NYPD.” Hantzopolous has raised more than $51,500 and received over $160,000 in matching funds.

Tiffany Cabán in 2019. AP file photo by Frank Franklin III

Cabán and Hantzopolous reflect the new prevailing perspective in Council District 22, which also includes parts of East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Woodside, but there are still moderate Democrats around. They’re just getting out-organized and outnumbered, says attorney John Ciafone, a perennial candidate for elected office in Queens.

Ciafone is banking on those old-school Democrats to hit the polls and protest the candidates calling for NYPD cuts at the same time as shootings rise in the overlapping police precinct. He said he got into this race to counter the “frenzied lunatics” calling for radical justice reform.

“This was always a moderate neighborhood,” Ciafone said. “And now we have a far left communist radical agenda to destroy our community by demonizing the police and stating that we don’t need jails.”

Three other candidates are also in the mix: former Daily News reporter Catherina Giono, who is focused on improving transportation for the district; education expert Leonardo Bullaro, who helped found a high school and later worked for the Department of Education; and Nick Velkov, a yoga studio owner focused on improving mental and physical health outcomes for New Yorkers. 

It’s not just policing

Public safety has remained an important issue in the district, as well as a way to assess candidates and lawmakers along the spectrum of “progressive” politics, but there are plenty of other issues affecting Council District 22 and weighing on the minds of voters.

Affordable housing is one. About 37.4 percent of households are considered rent-burdened in Queens Community District 1, which largely overlaps with Council District 22. That means those tenants spend at least 35 percent their income on rent.  

Just under 50 percent of residents in CD1 are white, 26.6 percent are Latino, 15.5 percent are Asian and 6.7 percent are Black, according to city data.  Just over 18 percent of residents fall below the city poverty threshold, a measure with more real-world application than the federal rate. 

Queens Community Board 1 identified affordable housing as the district’s top issue in an annual statement of need compiled this year. Progressives tend to clash with typically conservative community boards, but here seems to be an issue on which most Astorians will agree:

“Increased rents for those living on a fixed income are forcing many seniors and disable[d] residents to move from their homes and out our community. A community that they have lived in for many years, some a lifetime,” the community board wrote. “Truly affordable housing needs to be an option.”

New luxury complexes are going up all over the district with supposedly affordable units set aside to renters in certain income brackets, as mandated by the city. But local publications frequently use quotation marks around the word “affordable” to highlight the absurdity of that designation. One building recently went on the market with “affordable” studios priced at over $2,000 a month.

A proposal for a 1,400-unit complex at the reclaimed Hallets Cove peninsula is the latest controversial project. Hantzopolous, the CB1 housing chair, opposes the plan and says it offers no benefit for residents in nearby NYCHA apartments.

“People in the Astoria Houses are not even going to be able to apply for those apartments because they won’t meet the minimum income requirements,” she said.

Evie Hantzopolous, left, with volunteers who provided meals for tenants without cooking gas inside the Astoria Houses last year. Eagle file photo by Brenna Holland

She said developers throughout the district have exploited the rezoning process without building anything that helps the community; and sometimes, not building anything at all. 

“We’ve approved all these rezonings and not a single project has broken ground,” she said. “Developers get these upzonings, property values skyrocket, they use that to borrow more because they have an asset, and they’re getting tax breaks for 20 years.”

Hantzopolous said she would seek to create community land trusts and more supportive housing in the district. She would also seek 100 percent “truly affordable” development, she said.

Most other candidates oppose what they consider developer-driven rezonings and the creation of more luxury complexes.

Cabán has called for a citywide “Homes Guarantee campaign” and is promoting the development of social housing. Under that model, common in European cities, governments buy land and sell it to private developers who consent to certain design mandates and price restrictions, like tenants paying no more than 25 percent of their income on rent. 

The social housing concept is at the core of Dianne Morales’ campaign for mayor, but Cabán declined to say who she would vote for for mayor and has not made a public endorsement. (Comptroller Scott Stringer, another mayoral candidate, endorsed her for Queens DA in 2019. She has yet to return the favor, and bristles at the suggestion of such “transactional politics.”)

Cabán and Bullaro, an education official who has raised more than $43,000 and received $160,000 in matching funds, both say they support a Comprehensive Planning framework, like the one put forth by Speaker Corey Johnson. 

And Velkov is a founding member of the Justice For All Coalition, a group of Astoria residents who formed in 2016 to advocate for the rights of NYCHA tenants and organize to shape or resist rezonings and development.

Transit and public space

Gioino, a former reporter with a masters in urban and social policy, has positioned transit and public space at the heart of her campaign. Look no further than her logo: a stylized bike that spells out her name.

She told the Eagle in February that she would hone in on day-to-day life in the district, creating more greenspaces, implementing community dumpsters, protecting open streets and, of course, building a larger network of protected bike lanes. “It’s public space for the public good,” she said. 

Catherina Gioino. Campaign photo

On her first day in office, she said, she would allocate $1,000 to place large concrete planters at the beginning and end of Astoria’s open streets to keep cars out once and for all. 

She also wants to add more bus-only routes in the district and turn Western Queens into a destination for travelers with layovers at LaGuardia Airport via more convenient bus service.

Bullaro is also orienting his campaign around what he called “community development — transit, infrastructure, business and opportunities.”

He, too, wants more dedicated bus lanes and protected bike lanes. He also said he would encourage “third-party companies with scooter programs to scale across the city.”

Bullaro said he would also introduce a measure in the council to study zoned parking to prevent people from outside the district from parking their cars in Astoria to avoid tolls into Manhattan. 

“With Congestion Pricing set to begin next year, our neighborhood will be a breeding ground for people leaving their vehicles parked to avoid tolls and fees for entering Manhattan,” he writes on his campaign website. “Many cities have implemented successful residential parking programs.”

Health and mental health

There are countless other local issues crucial to the district — a proposed overhaul of Astoria’s polluting peaker plant, which pumps out emissions while generating  electricity during times of peak use; nearly 6,000 homes located in the city’s 100-year floodplain, meaning there’s a 1 percent chance of Sandy-style flooding every year; persistent overcrowding at local schools that remain over 100 percent capacity even as the population increases.

Leonardo Bullaro. Campaign photo

The district was also hit-hard by COVID-19, particularly in northern Astoria, where the Astoria Houses are located, and where the community has earned the nickname “Asthma Alley” for the high rate of respiratory illness near the massive power-generating campus. The death rate in zip code 11102 has outpaced the averages in Queens and New York City, according to city Health Department data. 

Immigrants, meanwhile, make up about 40 percent of the population in the local community district and about a quarter of residents have limited English proficiency, illustrating a need for culturally relevant, language-specific medical services. 

Velkov, the yoga business owner, said he was motivated to run by the need to increase preventive services and improve health outcomes in the district.

“Toward the summer of 2020, I started to see the writing on the wall,” he said. “People were getting physically ill, not from covid but from stress, alcohol consumption, sedentary life. And there are huge costs to living a quarantine life.”

Velkov said physical and emotional health problems have been compounded by COVID isolation. He plans to introduce measures to increase access to exercise, wellness and support services.

“One day, I think we should have Medicare for All, but I don’t see us balancing that math when 600,000 people are dying every year from heart disease,” he said. 

“We have to get physically and mentally healthy and then we can build a better world,” he added.

Nicholas Velkov. Campaign photo

And that brings the analysis back to Cabán’s exhaustive plans to, essentially, transform New York City society to deliver services to the people who need them.

Her plan calls for Community Mental Health Centers that serve as one-stop outpatient treatment sites and an emergency responder corps for mental health crises that does not include the NYPD. 

“We need to establish an alternative — a non-police responder corps that includes de-escalation experts, gender violence experts, healthcare providers and peer support for healthcare-related situations, as community advocates and elected leaders have called for in New York and across the country,” she said. 

There, too, Ciafone takes issue.

“Instead of police responding to emotionally disturbed people, they want to have social workers. You’re going into a dangerous situation holding a weapon,” he said. “This race is a question of, Do we continue on this path of, I see, destruction, or do we continue this path so we don’t continue these mistakes?” 

John Ciafone. Photo via Ballotpedia

Council Countdown is a partnership among the Eagle, City Limits, City & State and Gotham Gazette offering coverage of the 2021 New York City Council races.