UFT announces endorsements as Primary Day approaches

UFTers are standing behind the state Senate candidacy of Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, flanked by (front row) President Michael Mulgrew and District 6 Representative Mayra Hiciano-Cruz.

The UFT, through its state organization, NYSUT, is making political news this year — not just for the candidates it is endorsing, but because of those it is not.

That knock in place of a nod goes to 28 incumbent state lawmakers who voted this year to disinvest in public schools and public services.

“They did the bidding of the charter management industry and generally defaulted on previous commitments to public education and the rights and benefits of public-sector workers,” UFT Director of Legislation/Political Action Paul Egan said.

Support in numerous cases is going instead to their primary challengers.

NYSUT Executive Vice President Andy Pallotta, a former UFT district representative who oversees statewide teacher-union political action, explained that NYSUT “recalibrated its endorsement rubric to consider not only candidates’ voting records, but their advocacy — or lack of advocacy — on those issues important to NYSUT members.”

In the state Senate, for example, Pallotta said the union considered lawmakers’ stands on a number of issues and their votes on one-house bills that would have lifted the charter school cap without needed reforms, as well as a vote on a destructive property tax cap.

There are also local heroes worth supporting who are under attack. Two key legislative races feature incumbents who stood by the city’s unions, working families and schools through all of last year’s budget-cutting horrors.

In Harlem, state Sen. Bill Perkins faces a challenge from aggressive charter school management proponent Basil Smilke, a former Bloomberg campaign staffer backed by Wall Street, the New York Post and the charter industry.

Perkins, who opposed lifting the cap on charters statewide until the public was guaranteed the same kind of oversight for charter spending that it has over Department of Education finances, was repeatedly labeled a tool of the UFT by the Post for demanding accountability in the new state charter law.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew dismissed that notion as “nonsense,” adding, “Has anyone ever gotten the independent-minded Bill Perkins to do what he didn’t want to do?”

Brooklyn’s Velmanette Montgomery chairs the Senate’s Children and Families Committee, sits on the Education Committee and is a consistent supporter of the UFT’s legislative agenda. Her primary opponent is trial lawyer Mark Pollard, who is heavily backed by the charter management industry and major real estate developers.

Other key races include UFTer Gregg Lundahl’s bid to replace Jonathan Bing in the East Side’s 73rd Assembly District; Sen. Shirley Huntley’s re-election effort in the 10th Senate District; and Gustavo Rivera’s Bronx run against Pedro Espada for the 33rd Senate District.

Re-electing 17-year veteran Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the House Joint Economic Committee, to her 14th Congressional District East Side-Queens seat is a UFT priority, too. She faces political neophyte Reshma Saujani, a Wall Street lawyer.

Also, Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, a supporter of schools and unions, is running for the open Washington Heights-Bronx 31st Senate District seat against outspoken charter backer Mark Levine. And Francisco Moya’s challenge to the disgraced Hiram Monserrate in Queens’s 39th Senate District also received backing.