Community Activist Running For State Assembly In District 44

To keep local voters in the know, DPC has been interviewing candidates running in the New York State Assembly Race for District 44.

So far, three Democratic candidates have announced that they’re running for Assembly Member Jim Brennan’s seat. Brennan has represented the district for 32 years, and whoever wins his seat also joins the large Brooklyn delegation to the legislature. Brooklyn’s 21 members make up around 14 percent of the entire New York State Assembly.

The 44th District includes sections of Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington, Victorian Flatbush and Midwood — stretching as far north as 6th Avenue and down to Avenue I. Of the roughly 125,000 people living in the district, 60,587 are active, registered voters according to the state’s Board of Elections.

Glenn Nocera, Republican District Leader of the 44th Assembly District, is reportedly running on the GOP, Conservative and Reform Party lines. The Democratic primary for New York State Assembly is September 13, and the general election is on November 8th.

Each of the three Democrats running for Brennan’s seat — Robert “Bobby” Carroll, Rob Curry-Smithson, and Troy Odendhal, identifies as a progressive reform candidate. But what does that mean for voters?

This is the third installation of our candidate interviews — see Robert Carroll and Rob Curry-Smithson — asking for specifics about their legislative agenda if they make it to Albany, and why they feel they are qualified to represent the 44th District.

Read our Q & A with Troy Odendhal below.

Community activist and educator Troy Odendhal is an upcoming contender for Jim Brennan’s seat in the NY State Assembly. He grew up within District 44, and now lives on Parkville Avenue with his wife Karah Woodward (who is also his campaign manager) — and his daughter.

Odendhal’s progressive agenda focuses on voter enfranchisement, affordable housing, criminal justice reform and fighting political corruption.

Odendhal has been working with civic organizations and local government for 25 years — including (but not limited to) NYC’s Native American Youth Council, United Puerto Ricans of Sunset Park (UPROSE), Occupy Wall Street Movement, the People’s Climate March, Hillary Clinton for Senate, and WBAI Pacifica radio (as a producer).

On the radio, he focused on policies relating to indigenous people, transportation and education. “Producing radio is like having a voice in the policy. Even though each opposing side has their agenda, getting the arguments out there is so important for people to make their own judgment,” he said.

Odendhal has also actively worked with the opposing party, working on Mayor Giuliani’s housing task force securing Single Room Occupancy (SRO) regulations for people living with HIV and AIDS. Odendhal said experiences like these makes qualifies him to work on progressive policies within the larger context of government. “I’m more prepared to work with the organizations in place,” he said. “I’m the policy person who would get measurable results.”

Odendhal identifies with his platform issues more than an alliance to any particular candidate or political party. He calls himself a Socialist Democrat, but not a Berniecrat, as he did not vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries. In fact, he abstained from voting because he disagreed with parts of both Sanders’ and Clinton’s message. “I’ve worked with Bill de Blasio to get Hillary to the Senate, but I won’t vote for her again,” he said.

“I’m not so in line with the party’s main machine — on the mayoral, municipal, or state level. We’ve had a Democratic governor and Democratic assembly for a while, and we’re still dealing with the same issues of housing, education, and access to healthcare,” Odendhal told DPC.

Why is State Assembly Member an important position in District 44?

“In the State Assembly we can actively advocate for working class families, in a situation where the second wave of gentrifiers are getting pushed out by the third wave of gentrifiers. It’s a really dynamic situation and there’s an opportunity for people who care about working families to actively do something positive,” responded Odendhal.

When we asked Odendhal what gentrification looks like, he said that the culprits are mainly investment bankers and developers erecting condos on every block, regardless of zoning laws. “Gentrifiers aren’t interested in creating community, but creating the zoning for their own profit,” he said. As an example, he said that on Parkville Avenue between East 8th Street and Ocean Parkway, row houses are being replaced with towering buildings that have been slapped with ‘stop work’ orders because they’re over the zoning limits. But instead of respecting the local laws, builders are asking politicians for a waiver to keep building higher.

What are the most important legislative issues in your campaign?

Affordable Housing: Affordable housing is one of Odendhal’s benchmark issues, and it’s one that he has a lot of personal experience with. “I’ve lived in five different apartments in the 44th District because the landlord kept chasing us out with either not fixing the apartment or raising the rent,” he told us. But he said that the neighborhood demographics are changing.

His goal is to create an emergency protection act for all tenants and expand rent regulation for all new housing being developed — including owners taking advantage of J-51 and 4-21a tax abatements. “We have an affordable housing crisis — not an availability crisis if you have the money, more people are being evicted by the same democratic judges and policies that we’re all voting for.”

Removing mayoral control from education: Part of the District’s problems are lack of services for children and overcrowding in schools, he said. “I’ve worked with Mayor de Blasio’s community schools program and got to see the utter disfunction of trying to use an old system when a new system is needed.” Community schools, he said, can’t just be for a certain few, they have to have a system of accountability and civic engagement.

Ethics reform in government: “On the municipal side and state side you’re seeing a lot of subterfuge,” he said, “I’d like to work with Cuomo to make sure that money is spent the right way and holds to the idea of accountability.”

Legislation for cases of abuse by Clergy members: legislation protecting people who have been molested by clergy has languished in the Senate and the Assembly this year, said Odendhal, but protections for the victims is one of his legislative priorities.

What do you think about Jim Brennan’s record?

“I voted for Jim Brennan. I think Brennan was progressive and did a lot of good work, but he became entrenched in the party system. [In my fight to get a lease on a rent stabilized apartment] I went to Brennan’s office five or six times in the first year to get his assistance with the housing court, but his office was always closed. He’s dissapeared from his influence over the district, and it has suffered because of that. Brennan also oversaw a lot of that red lining that was happening in Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Ocean Parkway and Kensington; people of color weren’t allowed in for an extended period of time under his watch,” said Odendhal.

Ballot challenge

Karah Woodward, Troy Odendhal’s campaign manager, filed an initial challenge to Robert Carroll’s ballot petitions. When DPC asked Carroll’s campaign for a comment in July, they said that he had “filed more than 7,300 signatures, collected by over 100 witnesses. This is almost 13-times the number of signatures required by law for this office.”

Odendhal told DPC that the challenge was not connected to his campaign, and that his wife took that on individually. We spoke to Karah Woodward, who told us that she filed the petition as a resident of District 44, in the interest of transparency for this election.

“When reviewing the petition [at the Board of Elections office], I saw a significant number of glaring errors in the petition that would make some of the signatures invalid,” Woodward said. For example, addresses listed from outside the district, names appearing more than once on different signature lines, dates changed, and witnesses scribbled out. “I thought they were so glaring,” Woodward told DPC.

“The thing that made me file [the ballot challenge] is when I saw that John Carroll signed it twice, on different dates. That concerned me,” she said.

The challenge, however, is now stopped in its tracks. In order for the challenge to be reviewed by the BOE, a general challenge must be filed, followed by another specific challenge. But since Woodward didn’t meet the deadline for filing the specific challenge, the review will not be going forward.

This is Woodward’s first campaign manager position, which she took on partly due to the abruptness of Jim Brennan’s resignation, only 8 days before the deadline. “It would have been difficult for anyone to mount a campaign on such short notice, unless they already had the apparatus in place,” she said.

Both Woodward and Odendhal mentioned their grassroots, self-funded campaign. “I’m not accepting anyone else’s money, I’m a working class man and it’s taking a large portion of my savings to get this message out there,” said Odendhal. “Even if I don’t win, I can push the candidate that does win to that area where I hope we can all get.”