Last weekend turned out to be one of those nailbiters. First District Councilman Frank DiCicco was searching the fibers of his gut, like other elected officials, to decide if he should seek reelection. The line often used to describe this is, Do you have the fire in the belly?
The backstory on this is that I had personally asked him, repeatedly, to announce he was running for reelection, and he had assured me he was, but wanted to wait for various reasons. A candidate is not a candidate until he or she files petitions, and petitions were due this past Tuesday. So, Frank finally decided Sunday that the fight for reelection was one he didn’t want to have.
Frank should have been a shoe-in, since he has a stellar Council record for his community. He has been one of those people that the LGBT community can count on each and every time. His list of accomplishments is too lengthy to list here, but there is one story that deserves repeating.
DiCicco, along with Councilman-at-Large Jim Kenney, was an original sponsor of the domestic-partners legislation. At that time, it was one of the first in the nation, and the first with a tax break for LGBT couples. They did everything in their power to get it passed, but we ran up against heavy opposition. Six months later, that opposition cracked and the other Councilmembers asked to be listed as the main sponsors. I had to deliver the message to Kenney and DiCicco. They simply replied, “It’s the legislation that’s important, not who gets credit.”
Likewise, it was Frank who championed the amendment to give protection to transgender people under the Fair Practices Act.
It would be remiss of me to not mention the now-infamous DROP program. That controversy will lose us the most supportive member of Council the LGBT community has had. Some may say that’s debatable, but feel free to debate. For my part, I’ll remember the legislation he fought for that gave us rights we didn’t have before.
And since we’re on the subject of Council races, I want to be clear. It is my opinion that there is only one candidate for Council-at-Large from our community who deserves our consideration, and that is Sherrie Cohen. I will elaborate on that in future columns.
Mark Segal is PGN publisher. He is the nation’s most-award-winning commentator in LGBT media, having received the 2010 Columnist of the Year Award from the 2,000-member Suburban Newspapers of America. He can be reached at [email protected] .