Marq Claxton, Jacques Leandre and Michael Duncan say he’s done nothing to improve the district. Sanders says they’re wrong, but what would be different about the next four years?
“The unity of the elected officials has come together like I have never seen,” he said in an interview this week, adding that he plans to use his relationships in the City Council to fund a community center in his district within the next four years.
“No one elected official can build it. I am a wizard, but that’s still $15 million.”
Then again, his competitors also say he’s too close with one politician in particular — Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Republican. They spotlight a fundraiser the city’s top executive held for the Democratic councilman.
“If Comptroller Bill Thompson wanted to hold a fundraiser for me, I’d be more than open to the idea,” Sanders said of one of the Democratic candidates for mayor.
Again, likening his district’s situation to a runner catching up from behind, Sanders says he needs more than eight years to take his region of southeast Queens from where it was to where he wants it to be. And he needs more time considering the political valleys he has found himself in.
“I was sent to Siberia for some time,” Sanders said of falling out of favor with the rest of the council in his first term, which he believes happened because he was late to back the council speaker, Christine Quinn.
The Queens County Democrats did not endorse Sanders in the following election, a blow rarely dealt to a sitting councilperson.
“No one tells me what to do. I pay for it, but I don’t do what anyone tells me to do,” Sanders said. “I’ll do what the people sent me to do: to vote my conscience, to do what I think is right and bring resources into my community and the city as well.”
Sanders flaunts the fact he is No. 2 amongst Queens councilmembers when it comes to bringing spending to the district and No. 9 in the city. His critics don’t talk about that but instead call into question the $2,750 dollars he received from Bloomberg for his re-election campaign.
This puzzles Sanders, who recalls being seen as an outsider one day and now a “flunky” or a “pawn” of the mayor’s. This wannabe minister turned marine turned wannabe history professor turned politician expresses shock when it’s hinted that a couple thousand dollars could buy him off.
“If that is the price of your soul, if you can be swayed by twenty seven-fifty, this is not the place for you,” Sanders said of city politics. “You are going to find yourself susceptible and get yourself in trouble.”
To put a gap between himself and the mayor, Sanders cites his time as president of one of the old school boards to expound on his position against Bloomberg’s control of schools. He protested the boards’ being abolished.
Now, he said, the Panel for Educational Policy, the controlling body for the city’s schools, has no independence from the mayor.
Such positions differentiate him from someone who could be “bought,” Sanders said, adding that he has not endorsed a candidate for mayor: “My understanding of a pawn is not someone who goes against a key issue.”
Sanders also credits himself for being on the forefront of several issues, whether it be rallying against the “hot sheet” motel across from the Springfield Gardens High School Complex or supporting President Barack Obama before last year’s primaries.
He turns it around on Claxton, Leandre and Duncan, saying they don’t have enough of a track record to expound on their own accomplishments.
“I know people feel they must say something when they have to run,” Sanders said. “And since there is so little they can say about themselves, they must spend their time knocking others.”
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