Last spring, Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY) joined City Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Brooklyn), right, at an event to support and protect the Moore Street Market, also known as "La Marqueta," from closure. Reyna is currently running for a third term to the Council, representing District 34. (PHOTO COURTESY OF FRIENDSOFDIANAREYNA.COM)

Reported on Aug. 15, 2009

On a sticky morning in early August, City Councilwoman Diana Reyna (D-Brooklyn) sat at the Willburg Café on Grand Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, prepping for another grueling day on the campaign trail. And despite high temperatures and a hotly contested Council race, Reyna wasn’t breaking a sweat.

“This is all about a grass roots effort to engage the voter,” Reyna said. “And I want to empower our people. I want to know and have confidence in our community that they will shape this community, not allow others to do it for them.”

Reyna faces two opponents in the District 34 Democratic primary on Sept. 15: Gerry Esposito, 55, the longtime district manager of Community Board 1; and Maritza Davila, 45, a community organizer strongly endorsed by Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez (D-Brooklyn). Lopez’s supporters think Davila is neck in neck with Reyna, which has added a deeply controversial element to the race. After all, Reyna is Lopez’s former chief of staff, and has notoriously broken with Lopez on issues during her Council tenure.

“[Reyna is] a child of the community, and she’s got a voice,” said Marty Needelman, chief counsel of Brooklyn Legal Services, who has known Reyna’s husband, a sergeant in the New York City Police Department, for almost 30 years. “And it’s a very important race because there’s an attempt to knock her off because she was not totally, 100 percent submissive to Vito Lopez’s control, and that’s what started it. And he’s trying to put in someone who’s totally his agent, tool, and puppet.”

Reyna became Lopez’s chief of staff at age 24, and served until 2001 when she ran for Council the first time. Her work at Lopez’s office was her first taste of politics, starting there as a college intern.

“I enjoyed every second,” Reyna said, “just assisting families, individual cases, whether that was social services or crime-related issues, or issues with immigration – anything and everything that walked through the door.”

Reyna, 35, is warm and personable, a two-handed hand-shaker with a megawatt smile. When politicking, she’s a natural, and eight years in the Council spotlight have no doubt polished her presentation.

First elected in 2001, Reyna is running for her third term on the New York City Council, representing parts of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Ridgewood, Queens. She serves as chair of the Council’s Rules, Privileges, and Elections Committee, and as a member of the committees on Economic Development, Finance, and Transportation. Born and raised in Williamsburg and a current resident of Bushwick, Reyna voted last October to extend term limits of elected officials to three four-year terms instead of two. Reyna, who would have been term limited in 2009, began her campaign for re-election shortly thereafter.

“I didn’t want the work of the last eight years that we’ve been able to accomplish to disintegrate, or be compromised because of a lack of opportunity,” Reyna said. “And opportunity isn’t about starting over again with the next individual. Opportunity is about allowing the people who vote an individual in to be able to have a say as to who they want to be represented by.”

Not everyone agreed with Reyna on changing term limits, and especially not Davila’s supporters.

“Maritza was going to run [and] Diana changed her position,” said John Rodriguez, a spokesman and volunteer for the Davila campaign at the Brooklyn Democratic Club. “She didn’t even have the support of the people voting, she did it herself. And we think that’s wrong.”

Reyna does, however, have the respect of many community groups in Williamsburg. Luis Garden Acosta, president and CEO of the non profit organization El Puente, spoke of Reyna with confidence and admiration.

“We don’t want to go back to those days of the 1950s prior to the Voting Rights Act, which allowed us to finally have representatives that really respond to the community, like Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez and Councilwoman Diana Reyna,” said Garden Acosta. “So those of us who have lived long enough and understand those days don’t want to go back, and we’re very passionate about a democratic process that is open, transparent, and participatory.”

An ongoing and serious point of friction is the fluctuating housing market.

“All the affordable housing you see here, I have more families complaining that they’re not qualifying,” Reyna said, “because they make too much, and too much by $2,000 or they make too little by $2,000. What do you do with that?”

Reyna is outspoken about the recent Broadway Triangle rezoning, a controversial dispute over use of a vacant piece of land at the neighborhood crossroads of the Hassidic, Hispanic, and African American communities in Williamsburg. Reyna spoke at a July community board meeting condemning the city’s proposed plan. Despite ardent opposition by many community groups, the board approved the city’s plan 23 to 12.

“It’s rezone this area, and those who have special interests are the ones who have access to what this particular area is going to look like,” Reyna said with frustration. “With no regard to industry, with no regard to economic development, with no regard to job creation, with no regard to affordability, or access.”

As the first Dominican American woman elected to the Council, Reyna is proud of her heritage and deep ties to the Williamsburg community.

“I grew up on the South Side,” Reyna said. “Naturally, as the family grew, we moved and I grew up on the corner of Hewes Street and Harrison.”

Williamsburg is famously a bastion of Puerto Rican families. Dominican immigrants have long been associated with Manhattan’s Washington Heights, but Reyna’s family headed straight to Williamsburg.

“It’s funny because we always ask my parents, ‘Why didn’t you move to Washington Heights? Everybody else was!’” Reyna said. “But there were jobs in this community, factory jobs … there was never any doubt that they wanted to live here because they could walk to work.”

Reyna, a married mother of two boys aged 3 and 1, thinks her deep ties to the community help her to read its pulse. Displacement of longtime residents, an ongoing issue, is nothing new to Reyna.

“When I was growing up, we were displaced,” Reyna said, “Because our three-family home was bought off by a Hassidim family that was then traded off to another. By the seventh year, it had probably gone through 10 different owners. But we didn’t have gas, we didn’t have electricity in the building.”

Reyna’s parents struggled to stay in her childhood home and later moved to Queens and Bushwick.

“After a while, it just became such a hazard to live there that we were forced out,” Reyna said.

Her family stayed afloat with programs like the federally subsidized Section 8, ensuring success was still a possibility.

“It’s amazing to see how that is the American Dream,” Reyna said. “It’s so clichéd, but you know, when you actually live the opportunity, you see how it opens doors.”

Reyna found her base on the heavily Hispanic South Side. While Davila has traction in her native Bushwick, Williamsburg is predominantly Reyna territory.

Alma Perez, 46, is a real estate property manager who grew up on the South Side and remembered the “wonderful thing” that Reyna did for P.S. 132, where Perez’s daughter, Laura, attends.

“She helped with the grant that was given to the school to upgrade their school yard,” Perez said.

Reyna’s campaign signs are displayed in local businesses like Diaz Cleaners on Bedford Avenue, where co-owner Venturo Gonzalez, 56, has known Reyna and her family for more than 20 years.

“I think she’s doing a good job,” Gonzalez said. “But the people, you give them something, they need more, more, more.”

Robert Peguero, the owner of Bedford Realty, also has a Reyna sign in his window.

“She’s been a fighter and a champion in our community,” Peguero said. “She’s worked well with the new people moving in and the zoning changes.”

The tricky part is, District 34 isn’t just Williamsburg. Davila enjoys a powerful base in Bushwick where she is a community organizer, and Esposito is well known on the northern edges of the district.

Davila’s supporters are confident that their candidate will best Reyna in the election.

“She has gotten the most signatures, and she has 50, 60 people every night volunteering,” said Rodriguez. “Like Obama, she’s an organizer. It will be very close, but I predict we’re going to win it.”

Lopez and Esposito’s offices could not be reached for comment.

Reyna’s campaign knows what it’s up against. With only four weeks to go until the Democratic primary on Sept. 15, her campaign office is open more than 12 hours a day.

“Obviously there’s a building sense of urgency as the campaign comes to an end,” said Bennett Baruch, Reyna’s field director. “The last four days of our campaign, we’ve got something called GOTV, which is our ‘Get out the vote.’”

Indeed, the last weeks of any campaign are an energy-depleting haul, but Reyna is poised for battle.

“We’re asking people to despierta, which is to wake up, and contribute,” Reyna said with a smile. “Not to me, but to themselves. So we’ll see.”