A Chelsea resident since 1976, Tom Duane (D) has been representing the neighborhood in some capacity for nearly 20 years, first in the City Council and, since 1998, in the State Senate. Today his district stretches as far north as the Upper West Side and includes Greenwich Village and parts of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.
Duane recently sat down for lunch at one of his regular haunts, the Ninth Avenue diner Dish, to talk about his former staffer Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D), the Senate culture and his big cat bill.
What follows are selections from an edited transcript.
City Hall: I like your tie.
Tom Duane: Thank you. I bought this tie in Albany when we had to stay over a weekend to do the budget. And so I went to a Marshalls or a TJ Maxx. And look—[FLIPS OVER TIE TO REVEAL MICHAEL KORS LABEL] it’s my little ode to Project Runway.
CH: Are you in a rent-regulated building?
TD: No, I’m in Penn South, which is an equity co-op. We buy our apartments. There’s a waiting list. Nobody moves out, they get carried out. That will be true for me. My maintenance is so much lower than people in market rate co-ops. I finally have money in my pocket to spend.
CH: So what are you buying now? Michael Kors neckties?
TD:This is what my mother asks me, “What do you spend your money on?” I was like, “Mom, I haven’t gotten a raise in 10 years, and therapy because of you.”
[WAITER ARRIVES]
TD: I should eat a salad but I know what I want.
CH: What are you wrestling between?
TD: Well, I should have a salad, but the breakfast burrito is calling me. I’m going to tell you something else that I spent my extra cash flow on: My partner and I bought a fixer-upper in Sullivan County in 2002.
CH: Are you dealing with things like a locust infestation or badgers digging up your yard?
TD: We have a lot of deer actually, which I love. I know they’re bad and they eat up all our flowers. They’re beautiful. Sometimes you’ll see 20 of them on the lawn.
TD: You know, when I went to Albany, I gained about 80 pounds my first two or three years there.
CH: Really? Why is that?
TD: I was lonely. I didn’t have fruit. There are a lot of receptions in the beginning. I don’t want to say that there were always pigs in a blanket, but that type of food. Little quiches. But the problem was that I would eat all that, and I would eat dinner too. My whole routine has changed. Over the last three years, I’ve lost 60 pounds.
CH: Are you and your partner married?
TD: No.
CH: Do you—this is a personal question—want to get married?
TD: We are not going to make a decision until New York legalizes. We’ve talked about it with Massachusetts and California. We’ll wait for New York. We want the right to decide to get married and the right to decide not to get married. We can’t be domestic partners because we don’t live together. Louis has a rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper East Side. I have a one-bedroom apartment here. So, it works perfectly. There are many, many, many sleepover dates.
CH: So you’re kind of an Upper East Sider, too.
TD: Well, I almost never stay there.
CH: Is the Senate kind of like junior high school in terms of the competition and the egos?
TD: Anyone who studies sociology might be interested in how it is. Because we’re all very competitive of each other, but competitive as a party. We have to work together and we actually develop relationships with each together.
CH: How does the Council compare?
TD: The City Council wasn’t partisan, even though we had Republicans, it was rarely partisan. I think when I first got to the Senate, my anger about some of the bills being on the floor that I so vehemently disagreed with—my anger about that and the sarcasm came across as arrogant or—I’d say arrogant and know-it-all. So actually, it was Senator Bruno that told me how I came off when I did that. I tried to tone it down with everyone. I’ve always encouraged people to tell me when I’ve hurt their feelings and not hold back and let me know.
CH: Your Senate office seems like a very touchy-feely, caring, talking-about-how-we-feel type place.
TD: Yeah. I think I could have better boundaries.
CH: Christine Quinn is poised to be a mayoral front-runner. Which of her qualities that do you feel responsible for fostering?
[TAKES A LONG PAUSE AND CHEWS HIS FOOD]
TD: A long time ago, I like to think that I helped her with her self-esteem. I don’t think she knew how great she is. I mostly think about what she’s given me. You could have a big political fight with someone about something and it’s absolutely not personal. I think I helped her to come out.
CH: When did that happen?
TD: During my campaign for City Council in ‘91. I was in an endorsement interview. The discussion was around, “Why is it important to be out in politics?” My answer was that I thought it was important to be out because not being out meant it was something you didn’t want to be. And being gay, or lesbian, or bi or tranny—it’s not right to give the message that it is something you want to hide.
CH: I wanted to ask you about a seemingly random bill that you sponsored which dealt with large cats and keeping them out of contact with the public. I didn’t realize this was an issue in New York. Was this a Siegfried and Roy reaction?
TD: It did happen to a girl in California. Haley. The humane community was obviously very concerned about it. It was at, like a photo-op kind of thing. Have your picture taken with a—
CH: —Rabid tiger.
TD: It was that kind of thing, where someone wasn’t trained to work with big cats. And that happens when you bring them to children’s parties or to a bachelor party.
CH: A big cat?
TD: Yes.
CH: How big of a cat?
TD: There’re people with big cats in their backyard.
CH: There was that guy with the tiger in Harlem.
TD: So this bill says that only if you are accredited by the national zoo association can you handle big cats. People can get killed, like Haley. And also when a big cat does that, and it’s in their nature, they have to be put down. So it’s tragic across the board. Though the bill is very worthwhile—obviously, or I wouldn’t have introduced it—I think that the Republicans knew that they could get some humor out of it in the public realm. I think that’s why—many bills pass the Senate without much debate at all—they debated for like 45 minutes. I’m not sure if it was to buy time or whether it was for fun.
CH: Was there a big cat lobby?
TD: Well, the Humane Society was very interested and happy about it. It was unexpected, but [the Republicans] may have thought I wasn’t prepared to defend it, but I was. It passed with only two negative votes, which means people really had to think about it.
Duane recently sat down for lunch at one of his regular haunts, the Ninth Avenue diner Dish, to talk about his former staffer Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D), the Senate culture and his big cat bill.
What follows are selections from an edited transcript.
City Hall: I like your tie.
Tom Duane: Thank you. I bought this tie in Albany when we had to stay over a weekend to do the budget. And so I went to a Marshalls or a TJ Maxx. And look—[FLIPS OVER TIE TO REVEAL MICHAEL KORS LABEL] it’s my little ode to Project Runway.
CH: Are you in a rent-regulated building?
TD: No, I’m in Penn South, which is an equity co-op. We buy our apartments. There’s a waiting list. Nobody moves out, they get carried out. That will be true for me. My maintenance is so much lower than people in market rate co-ops. I finally have money in my pocket to spend.
CH: So what are you buying now? Michael Kors neckties?
TD:This is what my mother asks me, “What do you spend your money on?” I was like, “Mom, I haven’t gotten a raise in 10 years, and therapy because of you.”
[WAITER ARRIVES]
TD: I should eat a salad but I know what I want.
CH: What are you wrestling between?
TD: Well, I should have a salad, but the breakfast burrito is calling me. I’m going to tell you something else that I spent my extra cash flow on: My partner and I bought a fixer-upper in Sullivan County in 2002.
CH: Are you dealing with things like a locust infestation or badgers digging up your yard?
TD: We have a lot of deer actually, which I love. I know they’re bad and they eat up all our flowers. They’re beautiful. Sometimes you’ll see 20 of them on the lawn.
TD: You know, when I went to Albany, I gained about 80 pounds my first two or three years there.
CH: Really? Why is that?
TD: I was lonely. I didn’t have fruit. There are a lot of receptions in the beginning. I don’t want to say that there were always pigs in a blanket, but that type of food. Little quiches. But the problem was that I would eat all that, and I would eat dinner too. My whole routine has changed. Over the last three years, I’ve lost 60 pounds.
CH: Are you and your partner married?
TD: No.
CH: Do you—this is a personal question—want to get married?
TD: We are not going to make a decision until New York legalizes. We’ve talked about it with Massachusetts and California. We’ll wait for New York. We want the right to decide to get married and the right to decide not to get married. We can’t be domestic partners because we don’t live together. Louis has a rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper East Side. I have a one-bedroom apartment here. So, it works perfectly. There are many, many, many sleepover dates.
CH: So you’re kind of an Upper East Sider, too.
TD: Well, I almost never stay there.
CH: Is the Senate kind of like junior high school in terms of the competition and the egos?
TD: Anyone who studies sociology might be interested in how it is. Because we’re all very competitive of each other, but competitive as a party. We have to work together and we actually develop relationships with each together.
CH: How does the Council compare?
TD: The City Council wasn’t partisan, even though we had Republicans, it was rarely partisan. I think when I first got to the Senate, my anger about some of the bills being on the floor that I so vehemently disagreed with—my anger about that and the sarcasm came across as arrogant or—I’d say arrogant and know-it-all. So actually, it was Senator Bruno that told me how I came off when I did that. I tried to tone it down with everyone. I’ve always encouraged people to tell me when I’ve hurt their feelings and not hold back and let me know.
CH: Your Senate office seems like a very touchy-feely, caring, talking-about-how-we-feel type place.
TD: Yeah. I think I could have better boundaries.
CH: Christine Quinn is poised to be a mayoral front-runner. Which of her qualities that do you feel responsible for fostering?
[TAKES A LONG PAUSE AND CHEWS HIS FOOD]
TD: A long time ago, I like to think that I helped her with her self-esteem. I don’t think she knew how great she is. I mostly think about what she’s given me. You could have a big political fight with someone about something and it’s absolutely not personal. I think I helped her to come out.
CH: When did that happen?
TD: During my campaign for City Council in ‘91. I was in an endorsement interview. The discussion was around, “Why is it important to be out in politics?” My answer was that I thought it was important to be out because not being out meant it was something you didn’t want to be. And being gay, or lesbian, or bi or tranny—it’s not right to give the message that it is something you want to hide.
CH: I wanted to ask you about a seemingly random bill that you sponsored which dealt with large cats and keeping them out of contact with the public. I didn’t realize this was an issue in New York. Was this a Siegfried and Roy reaction?
TD: It did happen to a girl in California. Haley. The humane community was obviously very concerned about it. It was at, like a photo-op kind of thing. Have your picture taken with a—
CH: —Rabid tiger.
TD: It was that kind of thing, where someone wasn’t trained to work with big cats. And that happens when you bring them to children’s parties or to a bachelor party.
CH: A big cat?
TD: Yes.
CH: How big of a cat?
TD: There’re people with big cats in their backyard.
CH: There was that guy with the tiger in Harlem.
TD: So this bill says that only if you are accredited by the national zoo association can you handle big cats. People can get killed, like Haley. And also when a big cat does that, and it’s in their nature, they have to be put down. So it’s tragic across the board. Though the bill is very worthwhile—obviously, or I wouldn’t have introduced it—I think that the Republicans knew that they could get some humor out of it in the public realm. I think that’s why—many bills pass the Senate without much debate at all—they debated for like 45 minutes. I’m not sure if it was to buy time or whether it was for fun.
CH: Was there a big cat lobby?
TD: Well, the Humane Society was very interested and happy about it. It was unexpected, but [the Republicans] may have thought I wasn’t prepared to defend it, but I was. It passed with only two negative votes, which means people really had to think about it.
