The local Rye Democratic Committee announced its local slate for the fall elections in an online posting this week. The group is doubling down on Mayor Josh Cohn and Councilpersons Julie Souza and Ben Stacks. The one new addition is Lisa Tannenbaum, who is being put forward for the third council opening.
Current Human Rights Chair and former Councilwoman Danielle Tagger-Epstein announced this week she will challenge current Rye Mayor Josh Cohn for the top job.
Here is the official statement released by the local Rye Dems:
“The Rye City Democratic Committee announced its nomination of a slate of experienced leaders as its 2021 candidates for local office: incumbent Josh Cohn for mayor and incumbents Julie Souza and Ben Stacks, along with first-time candidate Lisa Tannenbaum, for City Council. In addition, they endorsed County Executive George Latimer, County Legislator Catherine Parker and County Clerk Tim Idoni, who are seeking re-election.
Mayor Josh Cohn, (B.A., Columbia College; J.D., NYU Law) is a long-time Rye resident and a retired partner in the global law firm Mayer Brown. He serves as an expert witness in derivatives litigation and devotes unfathomable hours to his mayoral duties.
Councilmember Julie Souza (B.A., University of Michigan; MBA, Harvard Business School) is the mother of three school-aged children and an avid volunteer in numerous community organizations. She is Head of Sports, Global Professional Services, Amazon Web Services.
Councilmember Ben Stacks (B.A., Syracuse University; MBA, American University) serves on the boards of Breaking Ground, NY’s largest nonprofit supportive housing provider and the Real Estate Lenders Association. He is a commercial real estate EVP/line of business executive with BankUnited, N.A.
Lisa Tannenbaum (B.A., Carnegie Mellon University; MBA Kellogg School, Northwestern) has been Marketing Director for Citi Cards, AT&T, and Outreach Director for Congressman Eliot Engel. Her passions include criminal justice reform and social justice.
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As a team, the incumbents have led the City to an extraordinary record of achievements, finishing the 2020 pandemic year without a deficit; making clean energy financing available for nonprofits and a green power provider available for residents; offering residents extra time to pay property taxes in this pandemic year; obtaining body cameras for police; staying within the tax cap each year; negotiating contracts with all four City unions, which were out of contract when they took office; initiating major City infrastructure renewal; restoring the Finance Committee and the Senior Advocacy Committee; instituting drop-in and by appointment office hours; establishing a capital reserve fund; and dozens more major accomplishments.
Mayor Cohn said, “Julie, Ben and I are honored to be nominated once again by the Rye City Democratic Committee. Along with our running mate Lisa, we look forward to continuing to serve our community with care, hard work, fairness, reasoned decision making, fiscal restraint, respectfulness and responsiveness.””
Promises, promises… This group of people has promised to, but has not yet updated our 1980s vintage land use master plan, an increasingly major problem for Rye resulting in unnecessary rezoning crises. They also put up barriers to taking advantage of the no-brainer county offer to vastly reduce our costs for food scrap removal — when that program is extremely popular among residents. As a voter, I will be listening carefully to see whether Danielle Tagger-Epstein, who is challenging the mayor, makes the case that she could do better.