Brian Ellner is young, gay — and ambitious
By Cyd Zeigler Jr.
New York Blade

On a recent sunny Friday afternoon, when I first met Brian Ellner, he was down 7-3 in a basketball game on a court at the west end of 23rd Street. It looked like an easy victory. Instead, he staged an unlikely comeback; with tighter defense and focus, he eventually won the match up, 11-9.

That’s the kind of come-from-behind fight that has drawn him to New York’s rough-and-tumble political arena. If you’re going to go up against Manhattan’s well-oiled Democratic machine, you’d better be used to fighting against overpowering odds.

Until recently, however, he had been shy to initiate a fight with the party’s power brokers.

Ellner, a fierce competitor who just recently filed papers declaring his intention to run for Manhattan borough president, says he has always had ambitions for public office. He was just waiting for the right time and the right office.

At a luncheon in March, Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, provided the final spark of inspiration. Newsom is only 36 — just two years older than Ellner.

The mayor, who has achieved national recognition for his outspoken support of gay marriage, talked about his experience as a young mayor of one of the nation’s largest cities. Newsom related how he used his position to turn the issue of gay unions on its head.

Ellner had his eureka moment, he says. He realized that what he was waiting for — to get older — didn’t matter, and that his ideas for the borough of Manhattan should determine whether he was ready to run, not his age.

Fundraising exceeds expectations
What has proved surprising, considering his lack of name recognition, has been the encouraging response from donors. In just 60 days, without a single fundraising event, his fledgling campaign has amassed over $75,000. Following in the footsteps of former presidential candidate Howard Dean, over half of it has come from donations through his Web site.

“It shows the overwhelming response from people in seeing a new vision for the city,” Ellner said over an egg white omelet at a café in Chelsea last week.

Ellner said trolling for money has been his toughest challenge thus far in the race. He has run for public office in the city before: He was the highest vote-getter in the 1999 race for the District 2 School Board after serving an appointed position on Community Board 5. But for that minor position, he didn’t have to raise more than $20,000.

The city puts a spending cap of $1.4 million per candidate for the borough-president’s race. So he must raise about $700,000 to reach that cap. Ellner claims he has already raised over one-tenth of that amount.

He’ll need all he can get. The 2005 Manhattan borough president’s race may be the most crowded field of Democrats ever. In addition to Ellner, over a half-dozen other viable candidates are expected to enter the fray, including activist Carlos Manzano, Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, Taxi & Limousine Commissioner Stanley Michels, Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright and Assemblyman Scott Stringer.

With term limits just now coming into play, many of these politicians are scrambling to remain in the public eye. And the only way to do that is by running for another office.

Nor will Ellner most likely be the only gay man in the race. City Councilmember Phil Reed, presently the only openly gay man in the City Council, is expected to throw his hat into the ring fairly soon.

To be sure, gay issues will be near the top of his campaign platform. Ellner believes the Manhattan borough presidency has long been a bully pulpit for gay issues.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg told advocates of same-sex marriage that, instead of marching in front of City Hall, they should go to Albany and petition the state legislature for the right, Ellner said there was an opportunity for the borough president to take a leadership role for marriage equality.

Gay issues in the fore
Sitting Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields has quietly voiced support for same-sex marriage. But Ellner said he would more aggressively pursue the issue.

“I’m going to use the bully pulpit of this position to advocate for marriage,” he said. His specific plan: If same-sex marriage has not been legalized by 2006, when he would take office, he will propose a bill to the City Council that would force the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Crystal meth use among gay men is another hot-button issue that Ellner cites as part of his platform. He also sees a strong need for a stronger response from the city to the mounting evidence of a crystal-meth epidemic.

The $300,000 the Department of Health has allocated is not nearly enough to adequately deal with the problem. He would use the borough president’s role as a public advocate during the city’s budget process to push for more funding.

Continuing in his tradition as a member of a local school board, Ellner considers education one of the most important issues confronting any city elected official.

“We need to fix our [education] system,” he said. “We need more schools, smaller schools, smaller class sizes, and we need to pay our teachers more in order to recruit and retain the most qualified to teach here.”

Making the schools a safe place for gay students is part of his master plan for New York’s children. He cites studies from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network studies, which “make clear that this is still a significant issue in schools across the country, including here in Manhattan.”

His highest priority is the protection of Manhattan Island. “There’s no question that we remain a target and I want to make sure we’re doing all we can to prevent an attack,” Ellner said, emphasizing terrorist threats. “In my view, not enough has been done yet in response to 9/11.”

A long-time New York Jets fan, Ellner said the present location for the stadium is a mistake.

“The current stadium proposal would be a traffic nightmare for the whole West Side of Manhattan and would create significant issues for surrounding neighborhoods Chelsea and Clinton,” Ellner said.

The stadium would attract more and taller buildings, and would limit nearby residents’ access to the Hudson, he adds. He sees Flushing, where baseball and tennis stadiums already exist, as a more appropriate cite.

Ellner said zoning is one of the strongest concrete roles of the borough president, and that he would use that role to derail the stadium efforts in Chelsea.

What drives Ellner more than personal ambition, he says, is his love for the city.

A native New Yorker, Ellner grew up in Stuyvesant Town and attended public school, including Bronx High School of Science. He attended Dartmouth and Harvard but returned to the city soon after graduating.

“I always knew I’d be back,” he says. “I’ve never been to a city quite like New York. The mix of people, the creative spirit. I missed it a lot when I was away.”

A litigation counsel with the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, he lives with his boyfriend, Simon Holloway, a clothing designer, in Chelsea.