And according to the candidate, Councilman Thomas White Jr. (D-South Ozone Park) is not going to fix what’s wrong in the 28th District.
A self-proclaimed friend of White, Hogan helped manage a winning campaign for him in 1998. But Hogan calls White “more absent in the community than he is in City Council,” where his attendance record has been a point of criticism. Instead, Hogan regardshimself as the ever-present local voice ready to fill the void in both city government and on the streets.
“He’s a nice guy,” Hogan said of White, “but he is not a leader.”
With Imam Aziz Bilal by his side as campaign manager, Hogan is confident he can close any electoral gap between himself and White. Bilal, who lost to White in the 2005 election for councilman, looked on as Hogan made a promise in an interview that he knew his political advisor wouldn’t want him to make.
With the knowledge that many citizens vote more on familiarity than on merits, the political outsider is willing to drastically cut one number to gain figures at the polls.
“I’m only going to take half my salary,” Hogan said, choosing, if elected, to donate the other half to various charities.
Hogan says he has never sat in a politician’s desk chair making proclamations. And while he has connections in city government, he never wants to become like his friends in office.
If elected, Hogan says he would assemble a team to solicit the community’s concerns and make those his priorities. They would also help him formulate his votes. Out of all candidates running against him, Hogan says his life will remain most unchanged by the election’s result. As he wonders aloud why others take the stage beside him — looking maybe for a photo opportunity and a councilman’s salary — Hogan remains vigilant in his role as a pulse-taker, a streetwise product of the Jamaica area.
While other candidates are knocking on doors for votes or passing out fliers, he says he’s dragging another kid away from another confrontation with police.
“There should be a race for who wants to be councilman and who is already doing councilmanic work,” Hogan said.
Economic development
As president of the Baisley Park Resident Association, Hogan has a straightforward resolution to the housing crisis: Be honest with homeowners about the value of their properties.
“Someone has to be honest about lending,” Hogan said. “You can’t renegotiate your loan. Once you are honest with them, then you can go about fixing the problem.”
And while Hogan recognizes poverty is a problem — he has never fancied himself a member of any upper class — he shies away from anything that could be construed as radical wealth redistribution. To close the gap between the rich and the poor, he supports raising the minimum wage. At the same time, Hogan has no illusions that there will be a day when all classes merge.
What he would like to do is institute economics classes at the junior high and high school levels so citizens learn at an early age how to invest their dollar.
But spending away fiscal problems, he says, is not the answer.
“If you try to change a system that’s worked for 300 years, you could be making the problem worse,” Hogan said.
Crime
As he does with many of the issues, Hogan approaches crime at a broader angle than stiffer enforcement. “You can’t force the law,” he says.
“We need to get southeast Queens in touch with the rest of the world,” he said. “When you have anarchy, nothing controls that. Laws don’t really count when people don’t care about laws at all.”
Working off of that mindset, he is not for more gun regulations. Instead of imposing on a person’s right to bear arms, Hogan suggests youths need to have enough common sense to know what guns are to be used for.
“Guns are not being used to hunt live animals,” he said. “They are being used to take lives.”
Hogan is in favor of better enforcement of current gun regulations, though. “It’s a right,” Hogan said, “but it’s not right when you don’t go through the proper channels.”
Hogan said schools with metal detectors are being made into educational prisons, feeding into a criminal mentality more than defeating it. Programs to better relations between youths and police are needed to break down adversarial confrontations.
Displaying his broad view, Hogan supports both the proposed street renaming of Sean Bell Street in Jamaica, memorializing a victim of the police, and the naming of a park for Edward Byrne, the police officer gunned down while protecting a witness.
Mayoral control of schools
While he advocates taking away Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s majority on the Panel for Educational Policy — a board to which the mayor appoints eight of the 13 members — Hogan still thinks the educational system should be accountable to the city’s chief executive.
But he thinks there is room for more input from parent teacher associations and more local decision-making. “That has to be revisited,” Hogan said. “We need community school boards back.”
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