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Feerick makes bid for home-turf council seat

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

When she said that recently to a very bright 3rd grade glass in Sunnyside, Queens — which also discussed issues like global warming and the world financial crisis — they thought it was because she was an immigrant.
Her grandmother was indeed an immigrant, from County Mayo, but she couldn’t vote because no woman could. She did, of course, get the vote eventually and was particularly delighted to cast it in 1928 for Al Smith, the first Catholic to be a presidential candidate for a major party.
Feerick, who is vying for the Democratic nomination in New York City Council’s 26th District, got to meet another political trailblazer when she herself was a school student.
Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro granted an interview to the then 11-year-old Feerick for a project about women in the workplace.
“I remember she was very kind and she was very smart,” Feerick said of Ferraro, who later became the first woman nominated to a major-party presidential ticket.
“She wasn’t dismissive of a grammar school kid,” she recalled. “I remember how gracious she was, and how attentive she was to those working around her.”
Feerick, the eldest of six girls born to a nurse and a NYPD detective, was tapped to be a Democratic district leader the decade after Ferraro’s run for the vice-presidency.
It seemed a natural step to seek political office at the city council level. But it was a friend who first put the idea to her over lunch a few years ago.
“You should run, because if you don’t then you don’t get to complain,” she was told.
Feerick was uncomfortable with the idea at first, but after she thought about it for a while, she said to her friend: “You’re right.”
The Brooklyn Law School graduate has a particular advantage over the other candidates for the nomination: a professional career working at City Council. She began in the Oversight and Investigations Unit, later served as counsel to the Legislative Division and is now deputy director of the Administrative Services Division.
She said that coming from a large immediate family, and with two sets of cousins living nearby, she developed the ability to get along with everybody.
In local politics, a political representative can’t rely on second- and third-hand information, Feerick argued.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” she added.
“You have to speak to people who disagree with you in order to grasp their objections to a proposal,” she said, adding that she’s also known for her “blunt” style.
Feerick is a native of and now lives in the 26th, which covers Woodside, Sunnyside, Long Island City and parts of Maspeth and Astoria.
“I’ve been very lucky to have grown up in the district, and to have been exposed to cultural diversity,” Feerick said. “It’s always been a first- and second generation neighborhood, though the countries of origin change.”
She has won the endorsements of key figures such as Congressman Joe Crowley and the party organization in Queens.
But perhaps more important to Feerick personally is the backing of senior women politicians like former Councilmember Ronnie Eldridge and Helen Marshall, the borough president of Queens.
“I know how hard you’ve worked,” Marshall told her.
Primary Day is Sept. 15. The other candidates are Van Bramer, Brent O’Leary and David Rosasco.

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