And here’s the other thing... NYC keeps hearing about Eliot Spitzer’s run for NYC Comptroller.
New Yorkers don’t have to choose Sptizer. There is a BLACK REPUBLICAN who is much more qualified but NONE of the media would give him or his ideas the time or space.
His name is John Burnett.
HIS BACKGROUND:
The seventh child of Southern black migrants who met in New York, he was born in rough East New York (which he calls “Vietnam”) before the family moved to Queens Village. He now lives in Harlem.
Burnett was, he says, “an ‘oops’ baby.” Pregnant at 43, his mother faced complications: “Her doctor told her that if she had me she would die and I would die (this was 1969). My parents made the decision to have me.
“The way I look at it, most people aren’t given a shot after they’re born; I wasn’t given a shot before I was born.”
His parents grew up in the Jim Crow South — James in Durham, NC, and Mary in Savannah, Ga. Their experiences informs Burnett’s mantra of “No excuses” — “How can I say, ‘This is difficult,’ when my father had it 10 times as hard?”
Starting out as a dishwasher, his dad did his job super fast so he could watch the cook. He learned to cook himself and eventually became the chef for an entire hospital. Even after becoming a Pentacostal pastor, he continued as a chef because he didn’t believe in living off his congregation.
Burnett says, “He always told me. ‘Son, work to create your own breaks. Don’t depend on anyone for anything.’ ”
After a year at Borough of Manhattan Community College, Burnett quit because he wasn’t learning anything. With no degree, he still talked his way into a margin-analyst position at Dean Witter.
In eight years, he rose to a “compliance” position which immersed him in SEC, NYSE and state securities regulations. He then moved to Smith-Barney for another eight years, as manager of the Global Markets compliance division.
Then, still working full-time, he went back to school at night earning a BS degree in Leadership and Management from NYU, then an MBA from Cornell.
And now politics.
He’d bring a common-sense, no-nonsense approach to city investment: “I believe in investing in an ethically and socially responsible manner [within reason] . . . If [say, green energy] is . . . earning at a comparable rate as other investments, sure I’ll support it. If it’s only yielding a small percentage, say 2 percent and I need it to earn eight, my dollars aren’t going there. That would be a violation of my fiduciary responsibilities in favor of doing something nice and social.”
SO, WHY DON’T PEOPLE EVER HEAR ABOUT THIS MAN? All we hear is Spitzer, Spitzer, Spitzer....
I already like him, he had roots in Durham, N.C, where I grew up!