by Yori Yanover

y neighbor Jim Lesczynski is running as the Libertarian party’s candidate for Public Advocate, not because he thinks he’ll do a better job than the current advocate, Democrat Betsy Gotbaum, but because he hopes to abolish her office.

It’s a costly office, he says, with a $3 million annual budget which pays for very little. According to the PA’s own web page, it features an Ombudsman Services Unit, which assists constituents with complaints, problems, and inquiries involving government-related services. The unit provides information and referrals and works closely with City agencies to find solutions to problems.

In other words, everything a call to 311 or your community board would have taken care of, but with no real power. “The Public Advocate used to be next in line to succeed the mayor,” Lesczynski argues. The advocate was a kind of councilman at-large with a vote. But since the city wrote its new charter, the office has been stripped of its council vote.

“If I am elected Public Advocate, I promise to report to work just long enough to fire the staff and padlock the office,” promises Jim.

But Libertarians would probably abolish 311, too, and the community boards are not their favorite cup of tea either, the way they zone away a man’s right to do what he wants with his property. “Government exists to keep people from killing each other and taking each other’s property,” Lesczynski asserts. And that’s the view of mainstream Libertarians —the more extreme ones won’t even vote, that’s how much they mistrust government.

There’s no doubt that candidate Jim Lesczynski is not expecting to actually win this race. Betsy Gotbaum will probably get re-elected, continue to collect $150 thousand in annual salary and disappear into another four years of well-fed obscurity. But wouldn’t it be fun if Jim somehow did it?

Let’s be clear here: My neighbor Jim Lesczynski is not someone I would normally support for public office. Like most Libertarians, he is a maximalist on the Second Amendment. So much so, that his Guns For Tots operation has earned him a solid reputation as, well, out there.

“It started out simply enough,” he contends, “a whimsical protest against an ill advised amendment to New York City’s administrative code.” In response to a bill under consideration in the New York City Council that would make all toy guns illegal – even brightly colored water pistols – his Manhattan Libertarian Party announced a new “philanthropic” program that would put toy guns in the hands of the city’s youth while it was still legal.

The highlight of this effort resulted in Jim’s unforgettable appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, in a segment by fake correspondent Ed Helms, showing Jim distributing the toy guns outside P.S. 72 in Harlem.

They never laugh with you on the Daily Show—that’s a lesson Jim Lesczynski learned the hard way twice (there was an update segment). The good folks in Harlem didn’t get the joke and the situation was gliding swiftly from humor to drama, stopping just short of tragedy.

Incidentally, Jim admits freely that the Libertarian party seems to attract precious few Black members. “It’s a White male party,” he concedes, despite the fact that the party chairman is a Black man. Let’s face it, we’ve all experienced walking into a Libertarian party hall only to discover it’s really a Trekkie convention (the way to tell them apart is Libertarian acceptance speeches are not delivered in Klingon).

And Jim gets really fuzzy on issues of law and order and how exactly gentrification is good for everybody and how come he’s Libertarianing away in a cooperative that was financed by public funds, and how will this neighborhood survive without its government sponsored safety net.

But that doesn’t matter. I think my neighbor Jim Lesczynski deserves to be elected just to see how he works out the details of his promise. And it will be entertaining to see which charity or society or association will be next to hire Ms. Gotbaum for her elite connections.

Of course, it’s questionable whether anyone holding public office is empowered to take it offline - but Jim Lesczynski could at least disable the office and spend the $3 million on toy guns.