Antonio Pagán, 50, Ex-Councilman, Is Dead

By Sewell Chan

New York Times (January 26, 2009)

Antonio Pagan Councilman Antonio Pagán in 1997. (Photo: G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)

Antonio Pagán, a former New York City councilman whose iconoclastic views on matters from low-income housing to AIDS often infuriated liberal activists in his Lower East Side district, and who later became the employment commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, died on Sunday morning at Beth Israel Medical Center. He was 50.

The death was reported by Anne Hayes, who had been Mr. Pagán’s chief of staff. She said Mr. Pagán had been battling an illness, but she declined to specify any details or provide a cause of death.

Mr. Pagan, a native of Manhattan who spent much of his early life in Puerto Rico, became one of the two first openly gay men elected to the Council in 1991 after he narrowly upset the incumbent, Miriam Friedlander, in a close-fought Democratic primary.

Mr. Pagán graduated magna cum laude from the University of Puerto Rico and continued on to law school there before returning to Manhattan, where he received a master’s degree in criminal justice from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He later taught at John Jay as an adjunct professor.

Mr. Pagán quickly became active in local politics, and was elected to Community Board 3. Before his election to the Council in 1991, he was executive director of the Lower East Side Coalition Housing Development, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing; a founding member of the Hispanic AIDS Forum; and public relations director for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s office in New York; and a coordinator of the city’s Charter Revision Clearinghouse.

Despite Mr. Pagán’s backgrounds in housing and social services, he became a lightning rod for his conservative positions. He advocated against low-income housing program and social services for the homeless, and was criticized as a captive of powerful landlords in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of the Lower East Side. Although he was a gay Hispanic politician, many gay and Latino leaders repeatedly denounced him.

“To friend and foe, Mr. Pagán is a bundle of contradictions,” The New York Times reported in 1994, noting Mr. Pagán’s abrasive and confrontational style.

Thomas K. Duane, the other first openly gay lawmaker, who was also elected to the Council in 1991 and is now a state senator, endorsed Ms. Friedlander when she tried to make a comeback in 1993. Mr. Pagán defeated her by a wider margin than he had in their previous matchup.

Mr. Pagán’s supporters described him as a forceful advocate. He headed the Latino Coalition within the Council and was named chairman of a subcommittee on abandoned property. The New York Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog organization, called him an active legislator.

In 1997, Mr. Pagán declined to run for a second four-year term and instead sought the Democratic nomination for Manhattan borough president; he came in fourth in a crowded field. The borough president Mr. Pagán was seeking to succeed, Ruth W. Messinger, challenged Mayor Giuliani, a Republican, that year; Mr. Pagán was one of a host of Hispanic Democratic politicians who defied their party and backed Mr. Giuliani.

As a reward for Mr. Pagán’s support, Mr. Giuliani named Mr. Pagán commissioner of employment in December 1997, an appointment that took effect in January 1998. Mr. Pagán continued in that position until 2002; the Department of Employment was merged into what is now the Department of Small Business Services under a city reorganization.

Mr. Pagán is survived by his mother, Margarita Saldaña, and by three brothers, Albert, Ruben and Frank.