Sheldon Silver

It's primary day, and when it comes to local elections in New York, that means the next few hours bear more significance than what happens in November. Gotham Gazette has the most comprehensive guide to all the contested primaries in the city. From a livable streets perspective, the three Manhattan races stand out.

With New York City's mostly uncontested primary elections less than a week away, attention turns to the 64th State Assembly district in Lower Manhattan, where New York Times-endorsed insurgent Paul Newell is running a long-shot campaign against Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Facing his first Democratic challenge since the coining of the word "cyberspace," the decidedly analog Speaker has joined us here in the Information Age with a fancy new campaign web site, ShellySilver.org. It features an eye-catching Google map illustrating "What Shelly's Doing Near You" with some of the $3 to $7 million in member items he distributes annually.

Finding himself with two opponents in next month's Democratic primary, the Downtown Express reports that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is spending the summer knocking on doors and chatting with editorial boards.

In case you missed it last week, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is raising bucket-loads of campaign cash -- lots more than his two opponents, Paul Newell and Luke Henry. Groups that opposed congestion pricing are, no surprise, among some of the most enthusiastic contributors. The Times reported:

With state primary campaigns ramping up, Observer political reporter Azi Paybarah seems to be everywhere with his video camera. In this clip from a debate held by Democracy for New York City, he captures State Senator Martin Connor, who represents lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, in an unprompted admission of legislative cowardice.

With higher gas prices pushing drivers onto the city's trains and buses, the Daily News today blasted Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly Dems for passing up the billions of dollars that congestion pricing would have brought to MTA coffers. 

This is the second installment of Streetsblog's interview with Paul Newell, candidate for State Assembly in the 64th District, who's challenging Speaker Sheldon Silver in the Democratic primary this September. In this segment, Newell addresses some of the issues that are fresh in the minds of everyone who followed the death of congestion pricing in Albany without a vote earlier this month. The first part of the interview, about running for office in New York, ran yesterday.

Last week Streetsblog caught up with Paul Newell, who's mounting the first primary challenge to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in 22 years. Discussing his candidacy, Newell made it clear that he is in it to win it. (He picked up some momentum yesterday, garnering the endorsement of BlogPAC, which describes itself as "a consortium of progressive bloggers from all 50 states.")

COMMUTE's proposals for BRT routes in the five boroughs, shown next to DOT's current plan. View an enlarged version.