The Journey to Gifford From Alan Miller

Alan Miller for mayor?An examination of the five times that the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, has registered to vote in Manhattan shows an evolution from his given name, Alan Miller, to the moniker associated with his political persona and Democratic mayoral candidacy, Gifford Miller.In 1994, when Mr. Miller first registered to vote in New York City, he proclaimed himself “Alan G. Miller,” and listed his residence as the Fifth Avenue building where his parents live. According to the registration form, Mr. Miller had last voted, as “Alan G. Miller,” in 1992, when he was resident at “124 Little Hall, Princeton U., Princeton, NJ.”Mr. Miller registered again as “Alan G.” in March 1995,when he changed his address to Greenwich Street.That October, however, he filed a name-change request, asking that he be known thenceforth to Board of Elections officialdom as “A. Gifford Miller,” residing at East 90th Street. Mr. Miller evidently forgot to file a change-of-address form, because he wrote in October 1995 that he had last voted in 1995 at East 90th Street, despite having been registered at the Greenwich Street address since March of that year and despite having voted downtown, at a Hudson Street polling place, in the primary election on September 12, 1995, according to records of the Board of Elections.Mr. Miller spent an apparently mobile year in 1995 “running Maloney’s NYC office,” according to a spokesman for Mr. Miller, Stephen Sigmund, who was referring to Mr. Miller’s time on the congressional staff of an Upper East Side Democrat, Carolyn Maloney.A spokesman for the Board of Elections, Christopher Riley, said yesterday that a candidate’s name must appear on a city ballot as it does on his voter registration card. Sure enough, in January 1996, when Mr. Miller entered elective politics by running for, and winning, a City Council seat on the Upper East Side, it was as “A. Gifford Miller.”The then councilman was still clinging to the initial in June 2000, when he moved to his current address on East 82nd Street and filed a change-of-address form with the Board of Elections as “A. Gifford Miller.”In the current election cycle, however, the transformation to “Gifford Miller” is complete. As the New York Post reported, Mr. Miller asked the Board of Elections in June to list his name on the ballot simply as “Gifford Miller,” consigning all traces of “Alan” – his maternal grandfather’s first name – to the ash heap of his political history. On June 1, Board of Elections records show, Mr. Miller also changed his voter registration accordingly.Mr. Sigmund dismissed last night the evolution of Mr. Miller’s voter persona as “insignificant,” saying, “The voter registration may have changed, but his identity certainly hasn’t. He has always been ‘Gifford’ to his family and friends. No one has called him ‘Alan.'”Old habits die hard, however, and despite Mr. Sigmund’s assertions that Mr. Miller has never been known as “Alan,” it appears that the speaker – even as he hopes to be elected mayor as “Gifford Miller” – retains an attachment to his natal nomenclature. On every voter registration form filed, even his most recent, Mr. Miller’s otherwise illegible signature begins with a discernible “AG.”***At a rally in the Bronx yesterday, a Democratic mayoral candidate, Rep. Anthony Weiner, pledged to fight for the group of Bronx Terminal Market vendors and workers trying to avoid displacement by a planned $394 million shopping mall.The city entered into an agreement on the market property with the developer Related Companies, which has begun the land-use application process for the mall and could begin construction next year. The city says the project will deliver thousands of jobs and help develop one of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods, and Related and city officials are working to relocate the market stalls to satisfactory locations. But critics of the arrangement have charged that it represents a sweetheart deal for Related and that the current tenants of the market got a raw deal.“This administration has chosen to stand with a handful of powerful developers at the expense of the taxpayer and our small-business owners,” Mr. Weiner said. “As mayor, I’ll put an end to the back door deals that have cost taxpayers so much money.”***Mayor Koch endorsed Assemblyman Scott Stringer yesterday for Manhattan borough president. Mr. Stringer, who represents the West Side, faces a crowded field in a Democratic primary set for September 13.“In Albany, Scott has been a reformer who gets results, and he’ll do a great job for Manhattan as borough president,” the former mayor said on the steps of City Hall.

The Journey to Gifford From Alan Miller

The Journey to Gifford From Alan Miller

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