LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Lora never supported the IDC

Posted

To the editor:

(re: “Koppell backs new candidate in council primary,” May 20)

We owe a debt of gratitude to G. Oliver Koppell for his decades of public service and his willingness to take on former state Sen. Jeff Klein well before the mass movement to remove him took hold.

Klein’s group of fake Democrats empowered Republicans to control our state senate, and we are pleased to see the legislation they blocked finally moving.

In Koppell’s letter to The Riverdale Press endorsing Abigail Martin, he correctly states that Eric Dinowitz supported Jeff Klein.

But his claim that Mino Lora did the same is simply false.

Mino supported — and voted for — Sen. Alessandra Biaggi. Sen. Biaggi, the Working Families Party, and NoIDC NY all led that fight against Klein and his Independent Democratic Conference, and are all now enthusiastically supporting Mino for city council in District 11.

Mino also has our wholehearted support as well as that of other founding members of the Bronx-based IDC Action Group of NYCD16-Indivisible.

Biaggi would never endorse a Klein supporter, and neither would we.

Unlike Eric Dinowitz — who lies and obfuscates about his many years of support for Klein — Mino has been open and honest. Mino is Dominican, and the executive director of a nonprofit headquartered in Inwood.

In her professional capacity, Mino was asked to attend a Dominican Mother’s Day event for Dominican women leaders hosted by Inwood’s then-Sen. Marisol Alcantara. And Mino paid the suggested $50.

That’s it. Mino did not campaign for or otherwise support Alcantara.

An anonymous email is circulating — originating from a server in Switzerland, no less — that falsely accuses Mino of supporting the IDC. A photo in that email, cropped to link Mino to Alcantara, shows a government press conference announcing the city’s first car-free day on Earth Day, which was organized by the city’s transportation department and spearheaded by Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez.

Mino attended with her nonprofit’s youth actors, who performed a play they created in partnership with the mayor’s immigrant affairs office.

This was a government event — not an Alcantara campaign event. Electeds present in this picture include Assemblyman Al Taylor, Assemblywoman Carmen de la Rosa, Rodriguez, Alcantara, and representatives from the New York Police Department. Additional nonprofit executive directors visible in the picture are from the Dominican Women’s Development Center and the Washington Heights Business Improvement District.

Plainly, Mino Lora is the candidate most likely to beat machine choice Eric Dinowitz who did, as Koppell notes, work for years in partnership with his father to support the election, re-election, endorsement and defense of Jeff Klein. Attempts to link Mino Lora to the IDC are preposterous, but the machine is threatened by Mino, and desperate to stop her.

We won’t let them, and neither should you.

Rebecca Lish
Andrew Mutnick

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Rebecca Lish, Andrew Mutnick,

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