Posted on 05/04/2005 9:12:46 AM PDT by SheLion
Dennis Duggan
May 3, 2005
Retired cop Audrey Silk puffed on a Parliament in her Cape Cod-style home in Marine Park and said she is running for mayor because Michael Bloomberg is a "Puritan who has taken the gusto out of New York City."
"How many of those do you smoke every day?" I ask.
"I hate that question," she said in a mind-your-own-business voice.
Silk knows she's the longest of long shots as the candidate of the Libertarian Party, which was burned in 1994 when it chose radio talk show host Howard Stern to run for governor against George Pataki. Stern left party officials high and dry by quitting before the election.
"He was only running for the publicity it gave to a book he had just published," said Jim Lesczynski, who is the Libertarian candidate for public advocate. Lesczynski said he is not a smoker, but has become a "political smoker" to protest the smoking ban.
But Silk says she is in the race to stay. For her, the smoking ban is personal and so is the mayor, whose voice drives her nuts - "It's like nails in my head." She has a poster in her living room of the mayor that shows him with his pants at his ankles and the line "Bloomberg Butt Out!!"
Silk, a cop for two decades in the 67th Precinct, was a community activist long before she went into politics - this is her first run at any elective office and she says the Libertarians sought her out.
"I don't come with any baggage," she said, "and it helps that I am a former police officer."
It is Bloomberg who rattles her chains the most, she admits. In a magazine interview in July 2002, Silk said everyone has an addiction, including the mayor.
"He's addicted to money," she said.
"He is ruining the city," said Silk, 41, who unlike Bloomberg, grew up in the city and went to public school.
Silk, who is divorced, is the founder of NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment or NYC CLASH. It isn't just the smoking ban that began in March 2003 that angers her. It's all those increased traffic fines and the higher taxes, including the one on cigarettes, that made her decide to try to oust Bloomberg from office.
Silk, who has a no-nonsense manner about her, wears a miniature diamond-topped replica of her police badge around her neck - a gift from her diamond-cutter father when she graduated from the Police Academy in 1984.
In the 67th Precinct, Silk was the election officer, meaning she ran police postings at the 14 voting places in her precinct.
Until a few weeks ago, when she was chosen as the party's mayoral candidate at its convention in Bohemian Hall in Astoria, her only other brush with politics was voting.
"I will speak forcefully on the issues important to us and will never say I believe something that I don't," she told the convention. She admitted she was inexperienced, but said "one thing I do know is that there are a lot more libertarian-minded people out there than we are led to believe."
One of them is Sidney Zion, an author, columnist and former federal prosecutor, who leaves a trail of crushed cigars wherever he goes. Another is smoker Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine, and a social critic of renown.
Both attended a "Bye, Bye Bloomberg" party that NYC CLASH held on the first day of the smoking ban at Frankie & Johnnie's bar and restaurant in Hoboken.
I asked Zion if he planned to vote for Silk in the fall election.
"Yeah, I'll vote for her. Even if she loses, she's raising an issue everyone else is afraid to raise," said Zion, who added that the "ban has gone too far" and is "the stuff of dictators."
Zion said he talked to a World War II veteran who said his VFW club was complying with the ban.
"I got through Normandy and now they tell me I can't smoke in my own club?" Zion quoted the veteran as saying.
Silk said she is appalled at how easily New Yorkers have submitted to having their behavior enforced by law.
"I don't like busybodies like this mayor or his health commissioner [Thomas Frieden] telling me what to do," she said. "I like the idea of smaller government."
In a year when the media are panning the four drab Democrats running for mayor, Silk seems about right when she calls herself "the real deal."
Like that means anything these days, besides gigantic budgets and more restrictions.
I won't even get into the silliness of living in a concrete hell in the first place . . . . . .
I mean, after she wins, it's not like the local Democrat pols will ride roughshod over the little dear, is it?
I watch CSI: New York. And it's so bleak and gray.
Then I watch Sex & The City and you couldn't pry those gals out of New York City with a crow bar.
You either love it or hate it.
The hustle and bustle today would kill me. And all those CABS! Goodness! :)
She is tough. She has lived there all her life and is a 20 year Veteran of the NYC Police Force. She knows NYC very well and many know her.
The only thing that bothers me is that she is running Libertarian. I know that party is picking up speed, but it is still like voting for Ross Perot. He gets votes but not a lot.
WHOO HOO!!! Go Audrey!!
MY New York is one of smoke-filled bars, diners/coffee shops with food that clogs your arteries, and people who "tawk like dis." Bloomberg and his minions are totally contrary to that.
Not anymore with BloomingIdiot at the helm.
When he instigated this smoking ban for New York City, even the Japanese business men were pondering what other state they could go to for their business meetings.
Can you image the Japanese business men not being "allowed" to smoke? heh!
In the 67th Precinct, Silk was the election officer, meaning she ran police postings at the 14 voting places in her precinct.
I grew up in the 67 precinct and my parents still live there. I had left the city a couple of years before she joined NYPD.
Bloominidiot has truly turned me off my "hometown."
What a laugh. My dog is more of a Republican than Bloominidiot could ever be. He only switched parties because he knew he couldn't win the Dem primary. He bought the Mayor's office.
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't WAIT for her to see THAT comment. Audrey, a "little dear".....what a laugh.
Bloominidiot bought his way in as an "inexperienced Mayor who thinks the most important issue is cigarette smoking." Along with sitting on milk crates on the sidewalk, creating a huge blackmarket for tobacco products, driving businesses and residents out with OUTRAGEOUS tax increases...........yeah....the Bloominidiot is a GREAT MAYOR.
The Dem front runner is absolutely no different more taxes and more control - at least Audrey has far more conservative values than any of the others. If nothing else she will bring it to the front that New Yorkers are tired of high taxes and over regulation of business.
From what I have seen, the only smaller government/lower tax conservative running for mayor of New York City is Audrey Silk.
Bloomberg was a life long left-wing socialist liberal Democrat and only changed his affiliation because the Republican ticket was not going anywhere and he knew he couldn't buy a win in the Dem primary.
I do both.
I would never trade the first 22 of my life growing up there for anything in the world.......but there is absolutely no way on earth I want my 6yo daughter to grow up there. And there is no way I could imagine going back to that way of life.
When we decided it was time to move out of Dover, DE we actually could have gone anywhere because of the company my husband works for. We chose to stay in the same "territory" he was already in because he likes his coworkers and neither of us were interested in "big city."
Yup, this "big city" gal is perfectly content living in the middle of nowhere, with 150,000 chickens as my nearest neighbors in rural Virginia.....unlike my friends in Delaware, where I spent most of my adult life, or my friends in NYC where I grew up, I can have a cigarette with my coffee or beer when I go out.
And on that note - I take a temporary leave to run some errands......FReep at you in a bit.
And the same with me before we moved up here. This is the smallest laid back community I have ever lived in my entire life. But it grew on me.
The only down fall in Maine is the anti smokers. They finished the state off with their total ban.
MY Boston used to be like that too. Now it's yuppies and wussies.
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