Candidate, New York State Assembly, District 52, 2014

Candidate, New York Assembly, District 52, 2010

Candidate, City Council, 2009

No caucus information on file.

Building Superintendent, Taurus Management, 2009-present

Member, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's Anti-violence Task Force

New York State coordinator, Dennis Kucinich for President campaign, 2008

Favorite Book:

Les Miserables

Favorite Movie:

Jaws

Favorite Quote:

You must be the change you want to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. -- Teddy Roosevelt

Favorite TV Shows:

Survival Shows, True Blood with Lee, American Idol with the kids

Hobbies or Special Talents:

Brooklyn, Politics and people, the family, the water, swimming, walking, biking, skiing, basketball, soccer and softball.

Reason for Seeking Public Office:

Dear Neighbors,

My opponent for Assembly, Peter Sikora, is deeply involved in Mayor de Blasio's campaign deception using LICH and it makes me worry about our future. That's why I'm running.

Allow me to explain...

Like you, I am frustrated at the corrupt waste and lack of smart government in Albany that are causing this state to have the highest taxes, pushing the middle class and businesses out and causing suffering of the poor. Hospitals have been disappeared throughout NYC for condos for over a decade now. The leadership and professionalism that made New York the economic, cultural and idea capital of the world have gone, replaced by a generation of politicians whose elective office will be the best and only jobs they have.

Campaign promises have become disconnected from governing. As a cynical class of insider politicians have mastered the election process, the public is powerless to stop them. Case in point, Bill de Blasio, Steve Levin, Daniel Squadron, Brad Lander and Peter Sikora used LICH hospital as an election prop last year and they' re at it again.

Council Member Steve Levin makes that perfectly clear in the Brooklyn Eagle on July 1, 2014:

...Levin also credited Sikora with coming up with the idea to get arrested to try to keep LICH open. "At the time, the candidate who was third in the polls, candidate Bill de Blasio, said, "That's a really good idea...'"

Now these elected officials -- City Councilman Brad Lander, City Councilman Steve Levin, NYS Senator Daniel Squadron -- are endorsing Sikora, a candidate who has never been involved in our community unless he was paid mostly working for their election efforts. They also share the same Lobbyist-Consultant-fundraiser, Berlin Rosen, who represents the most powerful developers in our city like Two Trees and Forest City Ratner who is going after the Brooklyn Heights Business and Children's Library (for more details see our press release - It's Time to Respect the Voters...). These elected officials, lobbyists funded by the developers are supporting Sikora not to empower our community, but to give themselves more power to control us and plunder our vital institutions for personal fortune.

No matter who is elected, the permanent government, as journalist Jack Newfield called them a generation ago, stays in power. Today's elected officials are put in power by the permanent government and kept in power by their campaign contributions. Lobbyists like Peter Sikora are carefully hand picked insiders who can rake in dollars for influence. True to form with lobbyist insiders, Sikora raised $97,000 of out of the district money from special interests within 6 weeks of Joan Millman's announcement that she was stepping down.

Breaking campaign promises -- whether it's LICH, condos in Brooklyn Bridge Park or shrinking and closing libraries for more condos -- is unfortunately only a symptom of the damage to our neighborhood. The worst thing today's permanent class of politicians has done to us by controlling the election process is the taking of power of governing away from our community and you the voter to consolidate it for themselves and the permanent government to do as they please.

The progressives attacked Dick Cheney, and rightly so, for spinning facts and creating fake realities. But sadly our local parties in power (Democratic and Working Family Parties) have copied his methods. Mayor de Blasio recently sent out a propaganda letter via his PR machine and PAC, Campaign for One New York, rejoicing 'less is more' without a full service hospital. It was clearly paid by a PR front but signed by Gary Reilly represented as a board member of Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association. This deceptive representation was pure Orwellian.

For more on this see, Alarm raised about "dark money' behind de Blasio's LICH - Fortis letter, by Mary Frost in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (July 15, 2014).

The question our elected officials and the media is not asking is why did SUNY buy a losing money hospital ($300 million a year) and turn around to sell it to developers? Was it to save Stanley Brezenoff's company (Stanley got a golden parachute). Shortly after taking office, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is obviously close with Sikora, hired Stanley Brezenoff the former President of Continuum, the company that took control of LICH and bleed it out. When hospitals close people die.

I was the guy at the Community Board 6 meeting in 2008 fingering Brezenoff, asking him how much he was being compensated as he slit LICH at the throat by trying to close Pediatrics and OB/GYN at the time (strategic step even just announcing it if one wants to slay a neighborhood hospital). Council Member Bill de Blasio was there and asked Brezenoff nice-nice questions about his bio, allowing Brezenoff a platform to not only look like a qualified and dedicated man but almost celebrate how lucky we were to have him. Apparently, Council Member de Blasio believed Brezenoff so much that he hired the mastermind of LICH's doom when he became mayor or maybe it is just plain old corruption (Fortis contributed tens of thousands of dollars to de Blasio and Cuomo that we can find from campaign disclosures but who knows how much was contributed through PACs they control). How anyone could have been at that meeting, professing to care about our community, yet turn around to hire this man once elected to higher office is not unclear, it's simply disturbing.

It was nice to know LICH was there. LICH saved my child's life when he had a bad Asthma attack a few years ago. I've met countless folks over the years and again petitioning the last few weeks who believe LICH saved their lives. Without full cardiac and stroke centers, our seniors in our community face unnecessary and unprecedented peril. This is shameless.

And don't believe that these elected officials are powerless. Interfaith Hospital just a few miles away from LICH faced a similar fate yet African American elected officials went straight to Governor Cuomo, flexed their representative power and saved the hospital. Our community elected officials all come from inside the political system. They put pressure on only in front of the cameras. In the back rooms, they bow to the permanent government who got them elected.

We have to give power back to the communities -- back to you the voter. Today's elected will not attack the special interests that put them in office. I am running for Assembly because I believe this permanent class of politicians who have seized control of our city, state and country is destroying the future not only for us, but our children and grandchildren. We must take New York back for them.

Sincerely yours,

Doug Biviano