Please note: the original version of this article stated that Simcha Felder was backing David Greenfield in the Council race. Felder has not made an endorsement in the race. The article has been corrected to reflect that.
To all outside appearances, Assembly Member Dov Hikind had been something of a mensch for his former chief of staff, David Greenfield.
When Greenfield had gone to Albany to lobby elected officials, he had lunched in Hikind’s office. A couple years ago, Hikind’s political club, the United New York Democrats, held an event honoring Greenfield for his community service.
And only a few months ago, when the bris of Greenfield’s second son fell on a Jewish holiday, the conservative Orthodox Hikind walked miles to Greenfield’s synagogue for the ceremony.
Yet when Council Member Simcha Felder announced his resignation in early January to take a job in Comptroller John Liu’s office, Hikind, a longtime powerbroker in Boro Park’s Orthodox Jewish community, made clear he was adamantly opposed to Greenfield winning the special election to replace Felder.
“That’s the goal of everybody, to be united [against Greenfield],” Hikind said at the time.
Hikind maneuvered behind the scenes to ensure only a single candidate from Boro Park would run against Greenfield, since Greenfield is seen as the strongest candidate in the district’s other neighborhoods, Bensonhurt and Midwood.
In the end, Hikind succeeded, with Judge Noach Dear taking a pass on the race, leaving Hikind’s longtime friend Joe Lazar running as the sole Boro Park candidate.
In an interview, Hikind refused to discuss why he and others in Boro Park’s political establishment are so entrenched in their opposition to Greenfield.
Greenfield, meanwhile, chalks up their issues to generational and stylistic differences, and bashed Hikind’s efforts to consolidate the opposition against him.
“This is the exact type of backroom, smoke-filled-room politics that I’m running against,” Greenfield said.
Those close to Hikind and Greenfield believe the tension is more political than personal. Each camp cites the same basic facts, each running it through their own interpretations of what is good and what is bad.
In 2004, two years after the end of his brief tenure working for Hikind, Greenfield was tapped to run the newly formed Sephardic Community Federation, and helped turn the south Brooklyn Jewish community
into a political force. These connections also helped Greenfield develop a base of support separate from Hikind that helped him raise $177,000. Lazar, meanwhile, has relied on Hikind to line up fundraising and endorsements.
One political insider in the Jewish community who has spoken with Greenfield about the relationship believes the main source of the tension is that Hikind was not asked to play kingmaker by Greenfield.
“David didn’t go and ask for Dov’s blessing,” said the insider, noting that Hikind himself was once considering running for the Council seat.
Another factor in the split with Hikind appears to be the new—and by many accounts effective—style of lobbying that Greenfield has brought to local Jewish politics. Greenfield’s aggressive tactics and novel style of coalition-building, however, have rubbed some in the Boro Park political establishment the wrong way.
“When you’re Eliot Spitzer trying to steamroll everyone, that’s one thing—and even that didn’t work for Eliot Spitzer,” said one political insider in Boro Park. “When you’re just some young guy, that’s a totally different thing.”
In 2006, Greenfield formed a coalition of leaders across the religious spectrum called Teach NYS and launched an aggressive lobbying and mail campaign on behalf of a proposal put forth by Gov. George Pataki to give private school parents a $500 yearly tuition tax credit. For many parents who send their children to religious schools, the rising cost of tuition in recent years has proven crippling.
But the coalition faced strong opposition from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and his close ally, the New York State United Teachers, which balked at sending public money to private school parents. During the budget battle, Greenfield shook the Jewish political establishment when Teach NYS targeted the powerful speaker himself, sending mailers to Silver’s Lower Manhattan Assembly district questioning his stance on the tax credit issue.
Greenfield’s aggressive tactics, which mirrored those used by unions, were a departure from the methods used by powerful Jewish social organizations such as Agudath Israel, which instead has relied on building a close relationship with Silver, who is Jewish Orthodox, to get funding. Greenfield’s methods appear to have irked some within the organization.
As a non-profit, Agudath Israel itself cannot endorse in the race, but several key members of its leadership are on board with Lazar’s campaign. Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, Agudah Israel’s chief Albany lobbyist and a competitor of Greenfield’s, has been assisting Lazar. And George Weinberger, chairman of the board of trustees of Agudath Israel, held a major fundraiser at his house for him.
Lefkowitz declined to comment on the organization’s relationship with Greenfield.
But although he has made some enemies, Greenfield’s approach also brought results. Although Teach NYS did not achieve all of its aims, it did win an unprecedented $330-per-child yearly tax credit at an annual cost to the state of $600 million.
And Greenfield’s efforts also won a number of supporters for his Council race, including the endorsements of Kings County Democratic Party leader Vito Lopez and State Sens. Marty Golden and Carl Kruger.
“David is a young, aggressive guy who has brought a fresh perspective to lobbying members—and has obviously been successful,” said Kruger. “I think some of the negative reactions to him have been because he was so aggressive. But if he wasn’t, I don’t think he would have prevailed.”
So far, most of
Greenfield’s major endorsements in the Council district have come from
outside Boro Park, and whether he will be able to pull much of the vote in that
neighborhood remains unclear. Felder, who remains popular in the
district, backed Greenfield in the race against Lazar before the term-limits extension led Felder to run for re-election. Now, Felder is not expected to make a formal endorsement in the special election, given his new position in the comptroller's office.
The race is also seen by many as a referendum on Hikind’s influence. Traditionally, Boro Park has voted in a bloc, turned out in droves and relied heavily on guidance from Hikind, as well as religious and yeshiva leaders. But in the Council race to replace Bill de Blasio last year, Hikind’s chosen candidate, Brad Lander, took only 14 percent of the Boro Park vote, as the Hasidic community rebelled against the pro-same sex marriage, pro-choice candidate.
In recent years, political observers in the area say, much of the conservative Orthodox community has been moving to the city’s suburbs while the ultra- Orthodox Hasidic population has rapidly grown, leading to speculation that Hikind, who is conservative Orthodox, has lost some clout.
A further complication, meanwhile, could come if Seymour Lachman decides to run for the seat. The former state senator has the potential to siphon off votes from both Greenfield and Lazar’s bases.
In the end, Greenfield’s supporters are hoping voters will look at what he has achieved for religious communities in the district, noting that just last year, Teach NYS helped win $30 million of extra funding for special-needs schools in New York City, with much of that going to the Hasidic community.
Greenfield’s supporters believe his stylistic differences with much of the Boro Park political establishment will not determine the outcome of the race.
“Up until now, people in the religious community would ask for things very nicely, and, if they didn’t get them, walk away,” said Howard Beigelman, deputy director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs, and a member of the Teach NYS coalition. “David has ruffled some feathers. But in this process, he made more friends than enemies.”
