In an election year marked by voters' unprecedented distaste for incumbents, it is still remarkably difficult to be a challenger. Consider Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter's race to unseat New York State Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada.
Espada has been charged in several incidents of corruption throughout his time in office. Though he claims a residence in his Bronx, NY, district, it is widely known that Espada's primary residence is a $700,000 Westchester home far away from the poor and working class folks he supposedly represents. In 2009, Espada gained attention by switching to the Republican party in order to give Republicans control of the Senate. He eventually switched back, re-gaining control for the Democrats but only after extorting the position of Majority Leader. Oh, and then in April 2010, Espada was indicted for stealing $14 million from a non-profit health clinic he founded.
Still, in a sign that the party machine, though squeaky, continues to roll, Pedro Espada is running for re-election.
Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter is running to replace him. Pilgrim-Hunter has lived -- and still lives -- in the Bronx for more than two decades. She's a highly respected community leader, a leader with the Northwest Bronx and Clergy Coalition -- one of the area's most respected community groups -- and board president of the Fordham Hill Cooperative, the largest housing complex in her district. As a community leader, she has delivered concrete victories for the district. Notably, Pilgrim-Hunter led the campaign to stop New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg from converting a neighborhood armory into a shopping center and instead push for community development uses of the community space. Not only is Desiree is exactly the kind of authentic community representative we would hope to see in elected office, but a potential bright spot of the generally reactionary, anti-incumbent energy this year is that people like Pilgrim-Hunter -- from the community, not the party establishment -- might actually win.
But party politics continue to stand in Pilgrim-Hunter's way.
Jose Gustavo Rivera, a life-long Democratic party operative who was most recently Director of Outreach to New York's other recent party-installed politician, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, was put forward by the Democratic political machine establishment as their alternative to Espada. After all, even if there's a change of faces in the state capitol, party insiders and benefactors can't stomach a change of loyalties. They want their own man in office. They don't really care who as long as he's theirs.
Rivera is a smart guy and no doubt his heart is in the right place. But his candidacy reveals everything that is wrong with politics today. Rivera has never been involved in his local community. Not once. In fact, Pilgrim-Hunter organized hundreds of community meetings blocks away from Rivera's home over the last several years. Rivera never came once. But Rivera knows the right people in the Democratic Party and in Albany. All too often, the best financed candidate wins and the best financed candidates are either self-funded millionaires or the candidates picked by and blessed by the party establishment (either Democrat or Republican) and thus significant choices have already been made for them. Even in the case of contested primaries, unfortunately there's rarely a contest -- the deck is stacked toward the status quo insiders.
Pilgrim-Hunter is doing what community leaders do best -- bucking the conventional wisdom to upend the status quo. Without Pilgrim-Hunter and other leaders with the same spirit to triumph in the face of adversity, the Bronx and District 33 would have been left for dead decades ago, written off by a city that generally cared more about Manhattan, and more about Wall Street in specific. But just as the residents of the Bronx bravely persevere through recessions and crime and neglect from the city and state, Pilgrim-Hunter is bravely persevering to run against Espada and against the insider party machinery.
Pilgrim-Hunter's candidacy is a glimmer of hope for the Bronx, New York. But the challenges she faces are a glaring warning sign for the state of our democracy nationwide.