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March 2, 2007

Victor in City Council Race Dismisses Residency Issue

With the smell of simmering fish stew coming from the kitchen, Mathieu Eugene stood in the living room of his new two-bedroom apartment in the heart of the 40th Council District, insisting that he had signed a lease, moved in and made the place his home long before his election to the City Council.

?I signed a lease on Feb. 1 and gave the landlord the check,? Dr. Eugene said this week in his apartment, which is on Argyle Road in the Prospect Park South neighborhood of Brooklyn. It was filled with furniture, ceramic figurines and a television.

?This residency issue is not what I want to focus on,? he said. ?I want to work on the issues of this community.?

But the very apartment where Dr. Eugene stood is at the center of a problem that has stirred politics in Brooklyn. Dr. Eugene, a physician, made history on Feb. 20 when, in a special election, he was elected to the City Council, its first Haitian-born member. Since then, there have been questions from rivals and public officials about whether he lived in the district at the time of the vote.

Dr. Eugene and his lawyer, Paul Wooten, asked to have the swearing-in ceremony delayed until the City Board of Elections certifies the vote. But some rivals have suggested that the delay was intended to give Dr. Eugene time to move into the 40th Council District, which includes the Prospect Park, Flatbush and Crown Heights neighborhoods, from his previous home in Canarsie.

This week, the apartment looked lived in, with a kitchen stocked with pots and pans. There were photographs of Dr. Eugene and his family on the living room walls. Also in the apartment were four or five relatives who had come from out of town for the swearing-in ceremony.

Throughout the short campaign leading to the 10-candidate special vote for the Council seat, which was vacated by Yvette D. Clarke after her election to Congress in November, Dr. Eugene was forthright about the fact that his three-story home in Canarsie was outside the district by a few miles.

He said he had worked for years in the district, where he operates a youth and health center. And he said he would move into the district as the election approached.

That point of contention spurred a fiery debate involving election lawyers, council members and political enthusiasts in the blogosphere. Yet, according to Scott Levenson, Dr. Eugene?s political consultant, there have been no official complaints or lawsuits from anyone that would bar Dr. Eugene from being sworn in.

Though those involved seem to agree that a candidate does not have to live within a particular district to run, the debate has focused on what the residency requirements were at the time of the election or by the time the election is certified.

The City Charter is silent on residency requirements. The state?s Election Law and Public Officers Law are vague enough that Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, sent a letter last week to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo seeking help in interpreting them.

According to Maria Alvarado, a spokeswoman for Speaker Quinn, Mr. Cuomo said that under his interpretation a candidate must reside within a district on the date of the election. Ms. Alvarado said that based on the attorney general?s letter, the Council would initiate a process in which any new council members would have to sign an affidavit saying that they meet eligibility requirements, including residency, before being sworn in. She also said that the Council would begin investigating Dr. Eugene?s residency, and that it hoped to have that completed by the vote certification and swearing-in ceremony, tentatively scheduled for next Thursday.

For his part, Dr. Eugene insisted that the legal distinctions were irrelevant in his case. ?I moved here before the election and that should be the end of it,? he said. When asked to provide a copy of his lease, he said that his lawyer had advised him not to make that document public.

?For me, there is no residency issue,? he said. ?I plan to be sworn in next week and to get busy serving my district. I want to focus on issues like jobs, immigration reform and education for the people in this community. I?m ready to get started.?

The problem has offered a bitter aftertaste to an election that was watched from Brooklyn to Haiti. Dr. Eugene prevailed in a special election in a Council district with a large number of Caribbean-American voters. Haitian-Americans nationwide and residents in Haiti, including President René Préval, have reached out to offer congratulations, Dr. Eugene said.

?I?m not worried about this residency issue,? he said. ?I know that the truth will come out and that I will work hard for the people I represent.?