Antonio Pagán died on January 25th. Although in 1991 he became one of the first two openly gay men elected to the NYC city council (and the first openly gay Hispanic to do so), he caught heck from the LGBT left for his moderate, centrist positions. Tom Duane, the other first openly gay NYC lawmaker, endorsed Pagán's straight, and very, very, left-wing opponent, former incumbent Miriam Friedlander, when she sought to regain her Lower East Side seat from Pagán in 1993 (Pagán easily won re-election). He later served as the employment commissioner under Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Pagán was for the small businessperson and against forcing taxpayers to support welfare subsidization as a way of life. He had been executive director of a nonprofit developer of affordable housing, but advocated against low-income public housing programs that perpetuated squalor and dependency. The LGBT left never forgave him for championing private sector solutions over big government, and dismissed him as inauthentically gay. But he was a groundbreaker and deserves to be remembered fondly.
More. Reader "avee" comments:
The New York Times called Pagán "a bundle of contradictions." The idea that you could be a forceful advocate for gay equality, and oppose the liberal left welfare agenda, does not compute for the Times writers.
Clearly.
3 Comments for “Remembering Antonio Pag”
posted by avee on
The New York Times called Pag
posted by neeraj sharma on
Antonio Pagan, the former East Village city councilmember, died at Beth Israel Hospital at 2:45 a.m. on Sunday. He was 50 years old. According to friends, the cause of death was kidney failure, although another friend said it might have been a stroke. Pagan, who lived on E. Third St., was reportedly in bad health in recent years. He had become extremely overweight. During the last year and a half, he had been in and out of the hospital four times. Pagan was councilmember from 1991 to 1997, and was one of the first openly gay members of the City Council. After an unsuccessful run for Manhattan borough president in ’97, he landed a job in the Giuliani administration as commissioner of the Department of Employment. After Giuliani left office, Pagan attended culinary school, and more recently reportedly was working as either a consultant or an employee at Lower East Side Coalition Housing, the group where he got his start. Zulma Zayas, head of Coalition Housing, declined to comment, but said the organization “will send a statement to community agenciesâ€
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
As a fairly obscure local activist laboring in my part of the vineyard, I have tasted but a small fraction of the leftist wrath that a public figure like Antonio Pagan tastes. I have great respect for anyone who makes himself a lightning rod by public outspokenness. May he rest in peace and may the flame of his memory ignite the impulse in others to step up and speak up.