Doug Biviano: Former Candidate Catch-Up

Former 33rd District City Council candidate Doug Biviano looks downward as he rides the red-doored elevator in his building to his apartment. “New super” he says, noting a missing tile in the center of the floor. “Guess you get what you pay for.”

The joke, however, was the closest he came to speaking negatively about his current situation. In March, the Brooklyn-born, Cornell-educated Biviano was told by his employer that he would be laid off as superintendent of the Brooklyn Heights building where he, his wife, and three children have been living for almost a decade. Part of the reason he was laid off was because paying a family health care plan was costly to his employer. Along with his job, Biviano and his family would lose their health insurance, and their home.

Dismayed that he could live within a system that would allow this situation to happen to his family and thousands of others, Biviano decided to run for city council. The main issues of his platform were health insurance, political accountability, broad context thinking, and diminishing the power of special interests.

“I thought—this is just ridiculous. Where’s the leadership?” Biviano said. “Something’s got to be done. I thought: this is my moment to get in. I was really compelled to do something about health care on the local level.”

Stephen Levin was voted as the democratic candidate for the 33rd district in the primary September 15, the same day Biviano lost his job. Though he was a latecomer in the game and viewed as somewhat of a progressive long shot, Biviano ran an enthusiastic, grass roots campaign from his campaign office on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights that energized voters and community members and kept the other six candidates on their toes.

Today, though he and his family find themselves in a rough patch, Biviano is positive and hopeful about their future, thanks to the emotional and financial support of family and friends. Some parents at P.S. 8, where his children attend school, even pulled together to give the Bivianos a gift certificate to Trader Joe’s.

“We’re going to land on our feet. Things are looking up,” Biviano said. “Luckily we have people financially able enough to help us a little bit. I have the luxury a lot of people don’t have—I have family and friends in the neighborhood. When people don’t have a family—that’s when they end up on the street.”

Recently, Biviano attended a homeless vigil for families. “They talked about how people are really that close to ending up on the street, and I can see it,” Biviano said. “They’re one paycheck, one job, one medical emergency away. With all our wealth in this country, we just can’t seem to get it right. First, our health care system is broken. Second, our priorities are screwed up as a society. Health care is a local crisis and there’s a complete failure of leadership. Those are the kinds of messages I tried to convey throughout my campaign, that people put political ambitions over the needs of the people.”

Biviano’s core concerns and beliefs regarding health care, re-prioritizing spending, holding leadership accountable, and the ability to affect change on a local level, haven’t changed or diminished since his campaign. Biviano continues to fight for a single-payer health care system, most recently confronting Congressman Michael McMahon with a petition with over 2,400 signatures for the HR 676 single-payer health care plan at a recent health care forum in Bay Ridge.

“We need a fundamental re-evaluation of what the government is supposed to be doing for the people and who it’s supposed to be serving and representing,” Biviano said. “It’s not supposed to be representing the developer on the local level; it’s not supposed to be representing the health insurance companies or the military contractors on the national level. What we see on the local level is the same kind of corruption that you see on a national level. It’s the Democratic Party that’s blocking single-payer health care. They’re in control. They could end the war tomorrow and bring the money back to our cities.”

Though he addresses the issues with a somber seriousness, Biviano ran his campaign with earnestness and energy, engaging the community with an open-door forum series at his office and campaigning for the reopening of Squibb Park for the students of P.S. 8.

“I had an incredible time,” Biviano said. “I met great people; it was quite a journey. [Campaigning] can be incredibly fun and engaging. I learned that if you be yourself, you can be successful in politics—you just have to meet people, listen to them, and put your time in knocking on doors. I didn’t have enough time to do that, but it the end it was coming together. People were sending us donations left and right. Another thing I realized is that money matters. I would say to people: contribute. Unfortunately because our system is built that way, it’s the most influential way of steering a politician.”

“I don’t know that I ever expected to win,” he continued. “I thought I could do well and I think I achieved that. In the end I saw how structural it was—the machine is very powerful. But I think if everybody ran for politics once in their life, or got involved in a campaign, this country would be so much better off because we’d understand and know where we could channel our energy and resources, and how to play the system.”

Right now, Biviano’s priority is helping his family make it through these tough economic times. The first order of business after the primary was to spend the weekend going clamming with his kids and making baked clams—a promise he made to his daughter, Serena, during the busy campaign season. The next order was to look for work to family afloat, sign up for unemployment, and prolong the eviction process while his family figures out the next step. In the future, however, he’d love to run for office again.

“I think it’s in the cards,” Biviano said. “I had a ball; I was energized. I was doing it all on hardly any sleep and I still could get up and go out there and work hard every day. It took a lot of energy and passion. We’ll see what opportunities come my way. Sometimes there are windows and this was my window.”