Andrew Vitelli

Browde Among Five Democrats Seeking Assembly Seat

March 22, 2020 by Andrew Vitelli

PHOTOS BY CAROLYN SIMPSON, DOUBLEVISION PHOTOGRAPHERS

While Kristen Browde has the backing of the New Castle Democratic committee, she is running against a crowded field for David Buchwald’s 93rd Assembly seat.

Bedford Supervisor Chris Burdick and White Plains resident Jeremiah Frei-Pearson, a civil rights attorney who ran in 2012 but dropped out to endorse Buchwald, are two leading candidates. Alex Roithmayr, Buchwald’s chief of staff, and Greater New York Chamber of Commerce President Mark Jaffe are also seeking the nomination.

“White Plains seems to be coalescing around Jeremiah, and they certainly have a lot of votes,” Jane Silverman, co-chair of the New Castle Democratic Committee, says. “Women and the LGBTQ groups are really behind Kristen. So right now, I don’t necessarily think there is a frontrunner.”

In 2017, Browde challenged New Castle Supervisor Rob Greenstein for his seat, lost but still garnered 47% of the vote in the heated race. The contest was closer than some expected, according to Silverman.

Silverman points to Browde’s work for the New Castle Democrats as well as her work on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Love Makes a Family council to legalize gestational surrogacy and her experience as a trustee for the $2.5 billion AFTRA Pension Fund.

Kristen is a force to be reckoned with,” Silverman says. “When she wants to get something done, she will get it done.”

Tim James, chair of the White Plains Democratic City Committee, says he thinks Frei-Pearson is the favorite. But he acknowledges that without polling there is little information to go by. He touts Frei-Pearson’s service on the city Democratic Committee as well as his law practice.

Burdick, meanwhile, has the support of the Bedford, Mount Kisco, and North Castle Democratic committees. He was elected supervisor in 2013 after serving on the town board.

Browde has thus far trailed in fundraising having raised just under $18,000, according to public records, while Burdick has raised more than $66,500 in the same period. Frei-Pearson’s fundraising totaled more than $163,500 including a $150,000 contribution to his own campaign.

Though the primary is sure to be a battle, the nominee will be favored to win the general election. The seat has been in Democratic hands for all but three years since 1993. The only Republican elected to represent the district over this period was Robert Castelli, who won a special election in 2010 and was re-elected later that year in a Republican wave election. For every registered Republican or Conservative, there are roughly 1.6 Democrats among active voters in the district.

As of press time, North Castle resident Sarmad Khojasteh, a partner at Kasowitz Benson Torres, confirmed that he was being considered as a possible candidate on a Republican ticket. Khojasteh, who serves on the Town of North Castle Assessment Review Board and on the Iranian American Bar Association’s New York Chapter Board of Directors, entered the race for the 37th Senate District in 2018 before dropping out and endorsing GOP nominee Julie Killian.

Just Getting Started: Quakers Field Hockey Team A Section 1 Win Plus Hopes for the Future

March 22, 2020 by Andrew Vitelli

On November 2, the Horace Greeley field hockey team clinched its first Section 1 championship since 1984 with a 1-0 win over Mamaroneck.

It was a late goal by senior captain Isabelle Klein that sealed the win at Nyack High School last Fall. But building a championship team–one that lost two straight sectional final games before breaking through–took years, both for the program and the girls who finally ended the drought.

The upwards trek towards the top of Class A began 11 years ago, when Sukhvindar Singh Sandhu–recently named New York State Coach of the Year–joined the coaching staff. Sandhu, who played pro field hockey in India, found a middling program that posed little threat to Section 1 Class A juggernaut Mamaroneck. Sandhu saw that many of the girls were relatively new to the game, and realized he needed to get a stick in their hands at a younger age.

Building a Hockey Program from the Ground Up

“I talked to a couple of the parents, and we started a youth program,” he recalls. This helped grow the number of players coming out for the team, but it was not enough. “The next step was getting the travel team” established, Sandhu says. “You need the kids playing year-round.”

Sandhu became head coach of the varsity team in 2009 after a year coaching JV.

His first four years at the varsity level produced just one winning record and no playoff wins. In 2013 the Quakers began showing signs of life, making it to the Section 1 quarterfinals. The next year, Greeley reached the semi-finals, followed by three trips to the sectional championship game in four years.

The Quakers fell one game short of a Section 1 title in 2015, 2017 and 2018, losing to Mamaroneck each time. In November, the girls found themselves as the only team standing in the way of a Tigers threepeat.

“Seeing the seniors lose in that final game [the previous two years], I did not want to feel that as a senior,” midfielder Sofia Rutman says. “We just knew that couldn’t be our last game with the underclassmen.”

Klein’s goal, along with a dominant Quaker defense which did not allow a goal throughout the Section 1 playoffs, were enough to finally lift Greeley past the Tigers. Greeley won two more games to make it to the state championship. There, the season ended with a 2-1 loss to Maine-Endwell. “Most of the girls on our team who are juniors now were playing in that youth group with me,” says junior forward Lily Schoonmaker, who started playing the sport in fifth grade and has verbally committed to play for Colgate. “We’ve been going through the New Castle program through modified and now to varsity.”

Team Camaraderie & Coaches: Key Success Factors

Rutnam also pointed to the team chemistry as an important factor in their success. “I’ve been playing with these girls for six or seven years now, and it makes a huge difference just to know them and know their playing styles,” she explains. “We got along off the field really well, and that translated to passing and connections on the field. It let us score a lot of goals.”

Schoonmaker, who led the team with 20 goals, and Rutman, who was named the Quakers’ MVP, both cited Sandhu and assistant coach Brittany Paulus as key to the team’s success. “If you have a foot in the wrong place as you’re approaching somebody with the ball, he knows exactly where you should be and how to fix it,” Rutman says of Sandhu. “He knows every aspect of the game.”

Following their 18-1-4 season, the Quakers will be favored to vie for the championship again next season. The team is graduating nine seniors, including Rutman, who was All State, All League midfielder Talia Belowich and forward Klein, and All League Honorable Mention forward Kristen Graham and midfielder Paige Dalrymple. Defender Mia Warshaw, forwards Tess Fuqua and Sophie Dorst, and midfielder Mia Handler will also graduate.

But three All State players will be returning –Schoonmaker along with defender Caroline Flannery and midfielder Natalie Laskowski. All Section defender Stephanie Kasulka will be back, as will Emma Terjesen, Grace Arrese, Hannah Lane and goaltender Siena Jarrin, who were all named All League or All League Honorable Mention.

With a Section 1 title crossed off the checklist, the next goal is to win one more game and take home the state championship. “We are going to come back strong,” says Schoonmaker. “Now that we’ve been there, we have to do it.”

Chappaqua Resident Aims for Ultimate Goal

March 8, 2018 by Andrew Vitelli

Rauch at the opening ceremony of the WFDF 2016 World Ultimate Championship in London, England

Robert Rauch was an 18-year-old freshman at Williams College in Massachusetts when he began playing Ultimate Frisbee. Ultimate was just a decade old at the time, and a classmate had discovered the sport at nearby Hampshire.

Rauch, a Chappaqua resident known in the disc community by the nickname ‘Nob,’ spent the next two decades on the Ultimate field and the last three decades advancing the sport on the administrative side. He’s played in the first Ultimate world championship, met his wife on the field, and twice served as president of the World Flying Disc Federation, the position he holds today. His current mission–which he has made a focus of his current term as WFDF president–is to get the sport into the summer Olympics. “That would be a milestone that I could rest my laurels on,” Rauch tells Inside Press.

Rauch began his career on the Ultimate field in 1976. He had played high school soccer in Connecticut and was looking for a new field sport to try out. With Ultimate, everything clicked; it involved even more running than his former pastime with the added intensity of non-stop action. At the same time, the sport retained a measure of mellow “zaniness,” with referees unnecessary and players making their own calls.

“It is not ‘win at all costs,’” he explains. “You need to respect your opponent. You need to excel within the rules of the game.”

Rauch spent the rest of his college years playing for a club team. After graduating from college, he moved to Chicago for work and played for Windy City, a local team there. In 1982, he played in his first U.S. National Championship.

And then, this: Rauch helped bring Windy City back to the National Championship the following year, this time winning the title. The win qualified the team for the first WFDF World Ultimate Championship Tournaments, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, where Windy City became the tournament’s inaugural world champions.

Rauch went on to win four more world championships and five more national titles, also playing for teams in Boston and New York. In 1994, he won the title as a member of the U.S. All-Star team.

Rauch’s contributions on the administrative side have left a mark on the sport–and in 2006, they earned him induction into the Ultimate Hall of Fame. By the mid-1980s, Rauch believed Ultimate and other disc sports were growing rapidly but the bodies governing the sport had failed to keep up. Rauch, who earned his Master’s degree in finance and international business from Northwestern University and is now partner at $6 billion investment firm Gramercy Financial Group, felt a “sense of duty.”

“The people who were involved were very well-meaning but really didn’t have any business acumen,” Rauch recalls. “I felt that if the organization was going to keep up with the level of competition, it really needed to up its game.”

Rauch was elected as the national director of the Ultimate Players Association in 1987, serving in that position until 1990. He also took over as chair of the Ultimate committee for the World Flying Disc Federation, then as the federation’s president in 1992.

Rauch focused on beefing up the sport’s organizational makeup.

He raised dues at the UPA (now called USA Ultimate), leading revenues to nearly triple. He took a number of additional steps to increase the sport’s legitimacy–he set up an 800 number, for example, and established an insurance program.

“It was was bringing in more enthusiastic people within the infrastructure of the organization,” Rauch says. “It was getting financial resources.”

Already working long hours for his day job, Rauch’s disc-related activities–done without pay–amounted nearly to having a second full-time commitment. After his first of three children was born in 1994, Rauch–whose playing days were largely behind him due to a knee injury–took a break from the sport to focus on his career and his family. In 1995 he moved with his wife–Katie Shields Rauch, whom he first met at the 1989 World Championships–and 1-year-old daughter to Chappaqua.

All In The Family

All three of Rauch’s children graduated from Horace Greeley High School. His oldest daughter, Kristen, graduated from Greeley in 2012 and played Ultimate at the University of Delaware, where she graduated in 2016. Her sister, Gwen, is now the captain of her club team at Penn State after graduating from Greeley in 2015. Rauch’s son and youngest child, Erik, graduated from Greeley last fall and is considering taking up Ultimate at Northeastern.

Olympic Dreams

During his first term as WFDF president, Rauch submitted disc sports as candidates to the International World Games Association. Rauch calls IWGA the ‘minor leagues’ of the Olympics–sports that are popular across the globe but not featured in the Olympics take part in their own quadrennial exhibition. World Games sports range from billiards to lacrosse and sport climbing. In 2001, flying disc was introduced as a World Games sport.

Rauch ran again for president of WFDF in 2011 and has served in the position since. In his current term, he has focused largely on paving the way for disc to become an Olympic sport. In May 2013, the International Olympic Committee provisionally recognized disc as a sport, with the full recognition coming two years later. Disc is now one of 37 sports recognized by the IOC but not featured in the Olympic games.

Until recently, the path to the Olympics was significantly more difficult.

Every summer games featured 28 sports, so in order for a new sport to make it, an established pastime had to get the ax. But starting in 2020, the games will include several “floating” sports, in which new sports will be eligible each year based in part on the host city. “Our view is that our best path is probably through this host city designation,” says Rauch.

With disc sports popular in more than 100 countries from Canada to the Middle East, and Ultimate now featured on ESPN networks, Rauch believes inclusion in the Olympics would be a natural final step in his decades-long quest to bring the sport to the world stage.

“I’m trying to finish the job I started,” he acknowledges.

Up Close & Personal with Democratic Nominee for County Executive George Latimer

October 21, 2017 by Andrew Vitelli

It has been 13 years since State Senator George Latimer left county government to serve in Albany. Latimer spent 13 years on the county’s Board of Legislators before his 2004 election to the New York State Assembly, including two terms as board chairman. Now the Democratic nominee for Westchester county executive, Latimer calls a return to White Plains, and to a leadership position, a “natural fit.”

“It is the opportunity of an executive job not just to, as legislators do, advocate for ideas and sponsor ideas,” Latimer tells the Inside Press. “But to actually administer a government and to try to shape it in a direction that you think is positive.”

Latimer, a Mount Vernon native who has lived in Rye for 30 years, worked as a marketing executive for companies including subsidiaries of Nestle and ITT before entering politics. He was elected to the Rye City Council in 1987, then to the Board of Legislators in 1991. After four terms in the Assembly, he was elected to the Senate in 2012.

Latimer announced his candidacy for county executive in April, winning the backing of the Democratic committee and in September, defeating county legislator Ken Jenkins in the party’s primary. Now, he looks to unseat County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican who has convincingly won two elections in a Democrat-heavy county. While Astorino has highlighted his administration’s record of keeping the tax rate down, Latimer believes the incumbent’s overall fiscal record is flawed.

“What I am going to promise to do is to get an honest set of eyes to look at our fiscal situation,” Latimer says. He plans to ask the state comptroller to do a full audit of the county, he elaborates, and will then create a blue-ribbon commission comprising members of the business community, academia and others to chart a responsible path forward.

“If you think that we can run the county forever and never raise a tax because politically people don’t like taxes,” Latimer says, “then you are going to have to make some decisions about cutting everything and having no services.”

While the tax levy has held steady–even dropping slightly during Astorino’s term–Latimer claims the headline numbers do not paint a full picture. For example, the county has been too reliant on borrowing for recurring expenses, Latimer says, and may now be overestimating projected sales tax revenue in order to avoid a budget gap. Naturally, Astorino disagrees. “I think George has been in Albany so long he now has Albany math,” Astorino quips. (For a deeper look at Astorino’s policies and platforms, see the accompanying article about Astorino: https://www.theinsidepress.com/spotlight-on-republican-incumbent-rob-astorinos-final-bid-for-county-executive/)

Favors Consolidating Services

Latimer says he will look to generate alternative revenue sources or to save money by consolidating services before raising property taxes.

He does not promise to keep taxes flat, saying that he will need to see the 2018 budget and get a deeper look into the county’s finances, but notes that he has no intention of breaking the tax cap. “If we can deliver another 0 [percent increase] that would be good, but I don’t marry myself to any commitment until I know the specifics,” he says.

Similarly, Latimer acknowledges that bringing back every position cut by Astorino is unrealistic.

“On merit, you probably need to restore a ton of it. But the money isn’t going to be there,” he says. His priorities, he adds, are to strengthen the Department of Public Works, police services and the planning department. “Some of the downsizing that [Astorino] has done is probably sensible,” Latimer admits. “The question when you [make cuts] across the board is, are you throwing out the bathwater and the baby?”

In November 2016, Astorino announced plans to enter into a public-private partnership for Westchester Airport. The deal would have seen Oaktree Capital Management pay the county $130 million upfront for a 40-year revenue-sharing lease. Though that plan was stopped by the legislature, the county is now considering several competing plans to privatize the airport, which is located partially in North Castle.

Latimer sees privatization of the airport as more or less a nonstarter. Giving up control of the airport not only cedes a source of revenue, Latimer explains, but gives the county less control over decisions with environmental and quality of life implications.

“I don’t want those decisions on that asset being made by a private sector entity unless there is a reason for it,” Latimer says. “And there is no reason for it except that [Astorino] wants to fill a budget gap.”

Optimism in the Last Stretch

This race, Astorino tells Inside Press, will be his last run for the office he has held since shocking Andrew Spano in 2009. This means, in all likelihood, it will be the party’s last chance to knock off the incumbent, perhaps before he takes another shot at the governor’s mansion.

Democrats were optimistic four years ago when Astorino saw a challenge from New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson. Obama won the county by 25 points the previous year, and Bramson looked to keep Democratic voters engaged with a focus on national issues such as guns and abortion. Astorino, focusing on taxes, won with 56 percent of the vote.

Latimer points to a handful of differences between his race and Bramson’s. Bramson, as the mayor of a city, was less well-known than Latimer, who represents a third of the county in Albany. And he notes, around 45 minutes into an hour-long interview, that so far in the conversation he’s spoken only about local issues. But, he continues, “there is the Donald Trump factor.”

Trump received just 31 percent of the vote, five points worse than Mitt Romney’s 2012 showing, in the county. Latimer has looked to tie Astorino to the president–a picture of the two Republicans together features on at least one of Latimer’s campaign mailers, while Astorino’s veto of a bill limiting the county’s cooperation with immigration enforcement was dubbed “Trump-like.”

“Donald Trump, as every day passes by, is giving more people doubt into what it is that he is all about,” Latimer continues. “I don’t know about Wisconsin, but he is definitely less popular in Westchester than he was a year ago, and I don’t see Rob distancing himself at all from Trump.”

Latimer does not seem to be going all-in on the Trump card. His campaign has centered on challenging the incumbent’s fiscal record. But he also does not hesitate to oppose, for example, the county executive’s decision to bring gun shows back to the Westchester County Center.

Latimer recognizes the challenge in taking on Astorino, whom he calls “a very sharp guy” and “a great communicator.” He points out, though, that he has been in tough races before. His 2012 election over Bob Cohen for the Senate seat vacated by Suzi Oppenheimer came two years after Cohen nearly knocked off Oppenheimer, a 14-term incumbent.

His contest in November will be his toughest yet.

A Proponent of Dialogue, Armonk’s Don Gregg Shares his Views… on the North Korea Threat, Trump and More

June 3, 2017 by Andrew Vitelli

On April 17, as national news headlines warned of an impending crisis and possible war between the U.S. and North Korea, Westchester native and Armonk resident Donald Gregg was one of the few Americans sitting across the table from a North Korean, let alone a high-ranking diplomat. Gregg, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea under President George H.W. Bush, was having lunch with two senior North Korean diplomats and trying to make sense of the latest flare-up in their countries’ animosity.

“We were sort of laughing at the fact that here we are, speaking to each other very civilly,” Gregg recalls, addressing a small group of locals at St. Stephen’s Church in Armonk. “And the news was full of how North Korea was going to be at the center of the next crisis, and the world may come to an end.”

The meeting was nothing new for Gregg, who for decades has been calling for dialogue between the American and North Korean governments.

Gregg’s long career in public service included multiple stints on the peninsula, including as CIA station chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975 and as ambassador from 1989 to 1993. After retiring from government, he served as chairman of The Korea Society, which promotes cooperation and understanding between Koreans and Americans.

Gregg’s first trip to Pyongyang came in 2002 at the urging of former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung. He has gone five times since, with the latest trip coming in 2014, and has witnessed significant economic growth over that period.

“The people were living better. The conditions were better,” Gregg says of his last visit. “The roads were better, the cars were better, the clothes were better. The body language was better.”

Gregg was in Seoul during some of the tensest moments between the North and the South under the reign of Kim Il-sung, so fear of a sudden attack by the leader of the Kim dynasty is nothing new to him.

But despite the rhetoric coming from Pyongyang, he sees North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, like his grandfather, as a rational actor unlikely to risk his regime through some kind of ill-considered act, like a major attack on the U.S..

“The North Koreans are not suicidal,” Gregg says. “They are not going to use one of their weapons against us, because they know their country would be obliterated.” Even the Kims’ pursuit of nuclear weapons has been undertaken with the regime’s survival in mind, he adds.

“I’ve talked to the North Koreans, and they say ‘We’ve looked at you very carefully. You do not attack people who have nuclear weapons,’” he explains. “That’s the root cause of it. They are scared to death of us.”

The CIA, White House and Two Koreas

Gregg grew up half an hour south of Armonk, in Hastings-on-Hudson. In 1953, he married Margaret Curry, an Armonk native and 1947 Pleasantville High School graduate.

Two days after Gregg’s 14th birthday, Japanese warplanes launched a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor and drew the U.S. into the war already raging across the oceans on each of its shores. In 1945, at the age of 17, Gregg enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he trained as a cryptanalyst. But before he could be sent overseas, World War II ended. Gregg served in the Army until 1947, then attended Williams College in Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1951 with a degree in philosophy.

Though he narrowly missed World War II, he would leave a mark on the four-and-a-half decade Cold War that followed. He joined the CIA in 1951 and served in Japan and Vietnam, learning to speak Japanese fluently. In 1973 he was sent to Korea, where he served as station chief. There, he helped stop torture by his Korean counterparts and played an important role in the rescue of Kim Dae-jung, who went on to become South Korea’s president.

Gregg worked at CIA headquarters from 1975 to 1978 and then as an Asia policy specialist for the National Security Council under the Carter administration. During the Reagan presidency, Gregg was director of the NSC’s Intelligence Directorate before being appointed Vice President Bush’s National Security Advisor.

When Bush became president, Gregg was appointed ambassador to South Korea. Forty years after joining the CIA in the early years of the Cold War, Gregg now played a role in its end. After Bush’s lone term ended, the Greggs returned to New York and in 1995 moved to Armonk, with Don chairing The Korea Society. He began teaching a course at Williams, looking to get top students interested in public service. In 2014 he published a memoir, titled Pot Shards: Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House, and the Two Koreas, about his experience.

Gregg has been active locally as well, meeting every month with Armonk neighbors to discuss history, politics and current affairs. “Don has had an immense contribution on the global stage, but he has had an immense contribution locally as well,” says Rev. Nils Chittenden, the Rector of St. Stephen’s, where Gregg is an active congregant. “We as a congregation really appreciate and recognize that we are in the presence of someone that has really had a huge effect on shaping world history.”

A ‘Very Different’ President

Gregg has met eight American presidents. He also met the current president, and though their brief meeting took place years before Donald Trump would seriously consider any political run, Gregg’s view of the 45th president remains broadly the same. “I don’t like Trump,” he says bluntly. “He and I are very, very different people.”

Gregg holds out hope that Trump will change course on North Korea and move away from the escalating rhetoric seen during the first months of the administration. He notes some positives, such as the appointment of HR McMaster as National Security Advisor.

But just as Americans find it difficult to understand Kim Jong-un, Koreans have trouble making sense of Trump’s approach.

“We neither like nor understand the North Koreans,” Gregg wrote in a letter submitted in April to The New York Times, “and fill our gaps of ignorance with prejudice that prevents us from thinking vicariously about Pyongyang, its concerns and policy objectives.”