NY Observer > Juda Engelmayer

Making the World Safe for 'LoHo'

Observer Staff — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 06:42:17 -0500

Juda Engelmayer, a public relations executive, has been spending a lot of his unbillable hours defending the real estate neologism LoHo ("Lower Houston Street"). Meanwhile, a self-proclaimed "Wikiminimalist" who goes by the moniker Mosmof is trying to get the entry on LoHo erased from Wikipedia.

Watch the sparks fly on the proposed deletion page.

At first, The Real Estate thought Mr. Engelmayer worked for LoHo Realty, which has pushed to get the term (representing the "new" Lower East Side) widely accepted, but he said he is volunteering his time.

"I live there, raise my family there, own a bialy bakery, served on one of the co-op boards for 13 years, and have advocated for the neighborhood all my adult life," he e-mailed.

Mr. Engelmayer suspects his adversary works for the Lower East Side Business Improvement District. Dara Lehon, deputy director for the BID, told The Real Estate that she did not perpetrate nor authorize any linguistic warfare, and sees no threat to the identity of the neighborhood or her BID's brand by the new name. "We have been working hard doing other things, to be honest." - Matthew Schuerman

"Frontrunner" Clarke, Women and the 11th

Observer Staff — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:45:58 -0400

Juda Engelmayer, Chris Lanier and Yvette Clarke after the rally

John Koblin has this dispatch from Yvette Clarke's event with female supporters earlier today:

"If, from the first day of this race, I was a woman, then why wasn't this always apart of the conversation?" asked Yvette Clarke before a rally at City Hall celebrating her femaleness.
Good question.
We asked her campaign manager, Chris Lanier, the same thing. He said he planned on doing a rally like this for the last two months but just hadn't "gotten around to it."
Well, at least not until consultant Juda Engelmayer and the 5W reps got involved with the campaign.
"It's an obvious thing," said Mr. Engelmayer, who was standing just off to the side. "If the media doesn't see it, we help them find the story."
If only the media were there to see it. Due to an unexpected press gathering for Mayor Michael Bloomberg in midtown this afternoon, most of the City Hall press corps the campaign was eyeing for the rally didn't show. (There were a total of five reporters there for most of the event.)
"It's disappointing it had to turn out this way," Engelmayer said.
But it wasn't all bad. For the benefit of the couple of cameras in evidence, Yvette Clarke got her photo-op surrounded by a team of about 40 women supporters, including Betsy Gotbaum.
For the benefit of her small-but-captive audience, Clarke declared herself the "frontrunner" in this race - despite Carl Andrews' assessment - and said that she's the only "authentic" candidate for the district's female constituency. When I asked Mr. Lanier if he thought his candidate was the frontrunner, he shook his head and said, "It's just too hard to tell."

-- Josh Benson

Clarke's Gender Campaign Rolls On

Observer Staff — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:39:52 -0400

More post-racial politics in the 11th Congressional race...

After receiving an invitation to join Yvette Clarke on the steps of City Hall next Tuesday (pdf) for a women-centric promotion that we couldn't pass up posting ("A women's place is in the House...The House of Representatives!"), we decided to talk to Clarke PR rep Juda Engelmayer about the abrupt change in strategy that coincided so neatly with his arrival to the campaign.

Here's what he said:

"Basically the focus has been on race -- the focus hasn't been on issues and it's hard to get the focus back on issues when what's exciting to the media are polarizing issues and we're trying to do that."
"Emily's List and Future PAC just endorsed her. These are women's groups who believe she's good on women's issues. Because of that, we decided we're going to start going with that. She is the only woman in the race so we believe it has a certain appeal and attraction level. But there are women's issues out there that are important and two PACs believe she is the candidate of choice for these reasons."
"People can argue that bringing up the women's issue is just as polarizing in a sense as the race issue, nobody can change their color, and nobody can change their gender -- well let's not go there. We're harping on a kind of non-issue: 'Vote for me because I am of a certain class or gender,' so its kind of feeding into the same race issue. But on the other hand, these two PACs give us the clout of having issues behind us as well."

Got that?

—Nicole Brydson