Just where is it for Pedro Espada?
November 5, 2009
Four fresh pumpkins sit on the front steps of the house that Pedro Espada Jr. says isn’t his real home.
Three children ignored the front door just after school let out Tuesday as they dashed from a black Mercedes through the garage entrance that opened quickly and shut. The car’s driver stayed invisible behind tinted glass and sped off, just missing the trashcan and cardboard recycling someone had left out on the driveway. Inside the warmly lit house, a dog yipped frantically. A small hand pushed aside the blinds that darkened the front glass door, then let them drop. No one answered the doorbell.
For months, this home on a Mamaroneck cul-de-sac has been the subject of an important question: does state senator Pedro Espada, who switched parties twice last summer and who, along with senator Hiram Monserrate stalled senate business for weeks, truly live in the Bronx district he represents—or does he live in Westchester County?
“They are here,” said a neighbor who lives nearby. She shrugged, standing in her doorway in a red bathrobe. “I see the black car there everyday.”
While it’s perfectly legal for New York politicians to have homes outside their district, it is important that they are actually second homes—not their primary residence, as Espada’s critics and opponents say of his Mamaroneck house. In a case that Espada’s opponent Efrain Gonzalez raised before the 2008 elections, Espada testified that he spent three days each week living in Mamaroneck and the rest in an apartment in the northwest Bronx. He defended his use of the Mamaroneck house as a home for his six grandchildren and a hallmark of his financial success, bluntly telling reporters, “I did not take a vow of poverty.” The judge ruled in Espada’s favor and allowed him to run for office, but the Bronx district attorney’s office has recently decided to review the case and in June subpoenaed Espada’s senate records dating back to 1993. There was no new evidence, said DA spokesman Steven Reed, but the case “raised issues that we needed to look into.”
Michelle Iannarelli and her 13-year-old son Peter wish the inquiries would stop. Parked in their rain-smeared driveway at the end of the street Saturday afternoon, Ianarelli said firmly, “He’s a wonderful man. When I see him outside, he waves. It’s not that fake, ‘I’m a politician and I have to’ wave. That’s just how they are. They keep their property nice and clean. We buy cookies and things from their grandkids.” Peter is a bit older than Espada’s grandchildren, she added, but the Espadas, who bought the house on Beechwood Drive in 1991, still invite him over for birthday parties. “They had pony rides for one of their grandchildren,” she said.
“Oh the ponies!” said Peter. When the weather’s nice, he said Espada plays outside with his grandkids: “He’s a really good basketball player.”
Photo Credit: Victoria Rossi
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It’s a fast trip down the hill in Mamaroneck and a left on I-95, then a 20-minute drive to reach Bainbridge House, a co-op in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx that Espada, 56, said has been his primary residence since he bought an apartment there in August 2007. Two years later, many residents passing in and out of the 72-unit building said they had never heard of the neighbor who represents them in Albany. Others knew of him, but didn’t always see a neighborly side.
Like the Mamaroneck neighbor, Madeline Lorton sees Espada’s black Mercedes outside of the co-op. “There’s a no-parking spot that he always parks in,” she said. “Everybody else will get a ticket if they park there, but he never does.”
The fiercely opinionated 87-year-old Democrat knows a lot about Espada now, ever since her run-in with him was filmed and broadcast all over the Bronx blogosphere. She recalled walking in on his fundraising party in July 2008—the first she had seen of him, she said. “There were all kinds of people there that day, friends and foes alike, because they knew he’d be there,” she said on the phone. They crowded into one of the co-op’s mirrored hallways to gape at Espada, who stood in a suit and gray tie next to a photographer. The camera flashed in Lorton’s direction and she hobbled toward the man holding it, demanding that he not take her picture.
Espada clasped his hands together. “And who are you?” he asked.
“Who am I?” Lorton snapped. “I’m a resident.”
“Oh, like me,” he said.
“No, not like you. I live here. You don’t live here.”
“Oh, I see, I see. Did you pay my $225,000?” he said, referring to the money he’d spent on the apartment.
The following month Lorton, a 30-year co-op resident, joined six others from Bainbridge House who were subpoenaed to address the question of Espada’s residency. All testified that they had rarely seen Espada in the year that passed between when he bought his two-bedroom apartment in August 2007 and the following August, when he began to make the occasional appearance a few months before his election to Senate District 33, according to court records. Under New York election law, a candidate must have lived in a district for at least 12 months before an election to be eligible to run.
Though Espada was most recently elected to office in this northwest Bronx district, his political roots are in the southeastern part of the borough, where he grew up and first ran for district leader in the late 1980s. Since then, he has jumped from position to position, serving for a time on the city council and three non-consecutive terms as state senator in the southeast Bronx until 2002, when he was beaten by Democrat Ruben Diaz Sr. He lost a 2004 election to gain back the seat. Throughout his political career, Espada has maintained strong ties with non-profits and tenants organizations, among them the Soundview Health Center, a state health clinic he founded that has seen its share of criminal investigations, as Espada and some of its staff have been charged with using state healthcare money to fund his political campaigns.
Bainbridge House Co-op. Photo credit: Victoria Rossi
“You cannot tell me that money doesn’t talk or that clout doesn’t talk,” Lorton said of Supreme Court Justice Robert Sewald’s ruling that the Bainbridge apartment was Espada’s primary residence. Among others, Sam Mahmud, the building’s super, testified that he had never seen Espada, though his frequent repairs to the building, interaction with tenants, and review of surveillance camera footage would have made it “difficult” for him to not notice a tenant that had lived in his building a year. ConEdison utility records showed little to no electricity or gas usage until July 2008. All six of Espada’s bank accounts, including his retirement package and life insurance policy, were addressed to either his Mamaroneck house or his business address on White Plains Road in the southeast Bronx, according to court records. So were his car registration and insurance. Espada’s office did not respond to repeated interview requests, and he refused to take questions in person at a Kingsbridge political rally on Sunday afternoon.
Now, Lorton said, “[Espada’s] here one or two days a week. But what constitutes actually living here—he does not.”
After he sold his southeast Bronx home on Leland Avenue in 2005, Espada and his wife lived for a time only in Mamaroneck. In 2006, Efrain Gonzalez, the former state senator for District 33, was indicted on corruption charges. In 2007, Espada bought the co-op. In 2008, he beat Gonzalez. By the end of the summer in 2009, he had switched parties mid-session from democrat to republican and back to democrat, a move which won him the title of senate majority leader.
“We know that politics is full of this ugly stuff,” said one resident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear that Espada would sue the co-op’s governing board for harassment, as he has threatened to do in the past, she said. “But when it’s in your own backyard it’s different. The injustice is rubbed in your nose.”
A year after the ruling, most residents have put the issue aside. “It was really upsetting,” she said. And Espada does seem to be at Bainbridge more often. Occasionally now, there are what some call “Espada sightings.”
“He was here one day wearing a red sweatshirt with his name emblazoned on it,” she said. “He really wants people to know that he’s here.”
It’s starting to work. Sam Mahmud, the super who once testified that he’d never seen Espada, said in late October that he’s made repairs to Espada’s apartment now. “He’s set up real nice in there,” Mahmud said, in jeans, workboots and a baseball cap. Tanya McCray, a tenant, said she saw Espada and his wife outside the building a few nights before. “I don’t think we’ve always given him a fair shot,” she said.
Doug Cunningham, a politically active Methodist minister who moved to Bainbridge House a year and a half ago is glad to hear that Espada may be around more. “Not living in your own district says a lot about your interest in representing it,” he said. “I don’t feel that he has engaged in his district very well. He doesn’t have a strong presence here.”
The sentiment was the same Tuesday night at the monthly meeting for Community Board 7, which lies in the middle of Espada’s senate district that stretches north from Mount Hope and East Tremont to Norwood and Kingsbridge.
One of his representatives, a man in a pinstriped suit named Sigfredo Gonzalez, encouraged the board to visit or call Espada in his office on Fordham Road, which finally opened this August nearly a year after he was elected. “He’s your senator. He’s here until January,” when Espada returns to Albany, he said.
“This is only the second time that he’s reached out to us” since he was elected, Fernando Tirado, the board’s district manager, said after the meeting.
Espada would be opening up another office soon on Gun Hill Road and Bainbridge Avenue, Gonzalez told the board members. “What’s the address?” several wanted to know.
“We’re still renovating it,” Gonzalez replied during the meeting.
“Why don’t you ask Senator Espada himself?” Gonzalez said afterwards. “He’ll tell you.”
But Espada wouldn’t say where his new office would be as he and his wife rushed, surrounded by staff, from the rally Sunday toward the black Mercedes parked on Andrews Avenue in front of St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church. It turned down Fordham road and passed out of sight.
The car often ends up in the Mamaroneck driveway, neighbors said, but that doesn’t mean that Espada—who owns or leases four cars —comes with it. “I don’t see him that much anymore. Before he was here all the time,” said a neighbor who has lived in a house two doors down from the Espadas for nearly 20 years. “Maybe he got the message. Maybe he stays with the people down there.”
His neighbor from across the street clutched the red bathrobe to her in the cold and looked out at the house. Asked what she thought of Espada, the woman, who had read about her neighbor’s residency issues, shrugged again. “It is not up to me,” she said. “It is up to his constituents.”
