A7A| Monday, November 16, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
staying in the House forever
but didn’t elaborate.
When asked during an
April public forum about the
possibility of mounting a pri-
mary against Mr. Schumer,
she said, “I literally don’t
even think about this in any
serious way.”STILL COUNTING:Election
Day was almost two weeks
ago, but more than 200,
votes in a number of com-
petitive state Senate elec-tions are only just starting
to be counted.
Officials in Brooklyn will
begin opening 22,459 ballots
on Monday in the race be-
tween State Sen. Andrew
Gounardes, a Democrat, and
his Republican challenger
Vito Bruno. Mr. Bruno was
ahead by 6,035 votes at the
end of in-person voting, ac-
cording to the New York City
Board of Elections. Of the
absentee ballots, 13,
came from enrolled Demo-BYLEEHAWKINS
STATE STREET|By Jimmy Vielkind
State Politicians Seen as Contenders for Biden Administration
Elected officials and politi-
cal operatives in New York
have found a
new parlor
game since
President-elect
Joe Biden’s
victory: specu-
lating who might leave state
offices to take jobs in a new
administration, and the dom-
ino effects of their departures.
High on the list are Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, a close ally
of Mr. Biden, and U.S. Sen.
Kirsten Gillibrand, who made
an unsuccessful bid for the
2020 Democratic presiden-
tial nomination. People close
to Mr. Cuomo said he has
previously mused about leav-
ingAlbanytobeattorney
general or White House chief
of staff, but the governor has
repeatedly denied having any
interest in a new job now.
“Zero, nada, niente, zilch,”
Mr. Cuomo told interviewer
Howard Stern last week
when asked if there was
truth to the rumor he would
become attorney general.
Ms. Gillibrand, during a
cable interview last week
said: “Of course, I’ll serve in
any capacity, but I think I’m
best suited here in the U.S.
Senate.”
Her departure would give
Mr. Cuomo the opportunity
to name her successor, which
would prompt a scramble
that last occurred after Presi-
dent Obama in 2008 picked
Hillary Clinton to be secre-
tary of state. Mr. Cuomo ex-
pressed some interest in Mrs.
Clinton’s seat at the time,
but then-Gov. David Paterson
settled on Ms. Gillibrand.
Some political operatives
speculated Mr. Cuomo could
name U.S. Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the progres-
sive Democrat from Queens,
to the Senate to head off a
potential Democratic pri-
mary challenge to either Mr.
Cuomo or U.S. Sen. Chuck
Schumer, both of whom are
up for re-election in 2022.
Mr. Cuomo’s allies pri-
vately dismissed the idea—
one called it a “fever
dream”—because of the two
officials’ divergent political
philosophies. Ms. Ocasio-
Cortez said in a recent inter-
view with Vogue magazine
that she didn’t see herselfcrats and 3,235 were from
enrolled Republicans, board
tallies show. The rest were
from independent voters or
members of minor parties.
This partisan tilt is true of
competitive races on Long Is-
land and the Hudson Valley,
where some counties will be-
gin counting this week. A
court proceeding will delay
ballot opening in Republican
Rob Astorino’s challenge to
Democratic state Sen. Pete
Harckham, who represents
parts of Westchester, Dutchess
and Putnam counties.
Mr. Astorino, a former
Westchester County execu-
tive, brought a lawsuit to en-
sure proper procedures are
followed, his spokesman
said. He led Mr. Harckham by
8,059 votes after in-person
voting. As of Thursday, Dem-
ocrats had returned 18,
absentee ballots, enrolled Re-
publicans had returned 6,
ballots and other voters had
returned another 9,775 bal-
lots, according to the state
Board of Elections.
Nearly 1.9 million people
around the state voted by
mail after Mr. Cuomo loos-ened the requirements to re-
quest an absentee ballot in
light of the pandemic.
Representatives of both
parties said they were opti-
mistic they would do well in
the absentee counts, which
have already taken place in
some parts of the state.
Senate Deputy Majority
Leader Mike Gianaris, a
Democrat from Queens, said
the process of vote counting
could be expedited in future
elections and introduced leg-
islation that would allow
election officials to deter-
mine the validity of and
start opening absentee bal-
lots before Election Day.
Under current law, absen-
tee ballots are valid if they
are postmarked by Election
Day and received up to a
week later. Under Mr. Gia-
naris’s proposal, ballot enve-
lopes would be examined as
they arrive and votes could
be tallied starting at 6 p.m.
on Election Day. “If New York
was a swing state, we would
be the subject of national rid-
icule right now,” he said.[email protected]Both parties say they are optimistic about absentee ballot counts.JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESSTwo days after warning
parents to prepare for schools
to close this week, New York
City Mayor Bill de Blasio said
that classrooms would remain
open after the city recorded
new Covid-19 infection data
below the threshold for shut-
ting down.
In a Sunday morning tweet,
Mr. de Blasio said the seven-
day average positivity rate of
Covid-19 tests was at 2.57%,
shy of the 3% threshold for
shutting down in-person
learning at schools.
The city’s seven-day aver-
age positivity rate for Covid-
tests had been steadily rising
in recent weeks. Mr. de Blasio
had warned parents Friday to
prepare for schools to shut
down classes and revert to re-
mote learning.
But the daily positivity rate
announced Sunday fell sharply
to 0.3%, city officials said,
forestalling a closure.
“Thankfully, schools will re-
main open on Monday, but we
have to keep fighting back
with everything we’ve got,”
the mayor tweeted.
The city’s teachers union is
urging the city’s Department
of Education to stick to its
state-approved agreement to
end in-person learning when
the citywide seven-day rolling
average hits 3%.
“We’ve had many members
pass away from Covid, and we
don’t want to go back to that,”
said Michael Mulgrew, presi-
dent of the United Federation
of Teachers, which represents
120,000 DOE employees.
According to New York City
school data, there were 1,
confirmed cases of Covid-
among students and staff from
mid-September through Nov.- In late October, the city’s
education department said
about 541,000 students had
chosen to stay fully remote in
a district that had about one
million students last school
year. On Oct. 26, the depart-
ment said 280,000 students
had attended in-person classes
at least once this fall.
Mr. de Blasio said the DOE
will release a new reopening
plan in the coming days if in-
person class time stops.
Schools wouldn’t automati-
cally reopen if the weekly av-
erage dips below 3%, he said.
In the event that the city
shuts down in-person learning,
the UFT will likely recommend
a standard by which the infec-
tion rate “continues to go
down incrementally” before
in-person classes resume, Mr.
Mulgrew said last week.
The state requires schools
to shift to fully remote learn-
ing if the infection rate in the
corresponding municipality
hits 9%.
BYLEEHAWKINSIn-Person
Classes to
Stay Open
Despite
Warnings
Before the coronavirus pan-
demic closed New York City
schools in mid-March, 11th-
grader Ilinca Anschel, some
classmates and teachers com-
plained regularly about their
school’s air quality, saying ex-
cessive heat and poor ventila-
tion was hurting their health.
The Martin Luther King Jr.
Educational Complex has
stuffy, windowless classrooms
with minimal airflow.
“I’ve had headaches because
of the lack of ventilation,” said
Ms. Anschel, recalling when a
classroom’s temperature
reached 84 degrees. “There’s no
air, and it’s hot and sticky, no
matter the season.”
After years of complaints,
the coronavirus prompted the
city’s Department of Education,
teachers union representatives
and others to inspect ventila-
tion systems at the 1,
school buildings across the city.
The MLK complex was flagged
as one of the city’s most unsafe
in terms of air quality.
Plagued with rodent infes-
tations, water leaks and poor
air quality, the MLK building
remained closed when schools
reopened in the fall. In-person
classes for the six schools
within MLK’s Upper West Side
Building near Lincoln Center
were moved to another build-
ing.
Many inspections and mil-
lions of dollars later, the DOE
believes it has found a way to
make MLK and other school
buildings with the worst air
quality safe for in-person
classes during the pandemic.
But students, parents and staff
remain skeptical.
The city has spent about
$4.2 million to fix the ventila-
tion system at MLK, working
in consultation with the com-
mercial real-estate company
Tishman Speyer, according to
the United Federation of
Teachers, which represents120,000 DOE employees. The
DOE and the union say MLK’s
problems are nearly fixed and
that in-person classes can re-
sume as soon as January.
The UFT says the problems
at MLK, Murry Bergtraum
High School For Business Ca-
reers, also in Manhattan, and
Herman H. Lehman High
School in the Bronx are largely
being addressed by upgrading
their heating, ventilation and
air-conditioning systems.
“We were just dreading it,
and then, all of a sudden, this
all clicked,” said UFT Presi-
dent Michael Mulgrew. “It was
like, ‘Wow, this major problem
that we were facing now has areal resolution.’ ”
Mr. Mulgrew credits a con-
versation with Rob Speyer,
president and CEO of Tishman
Speyer. Mr. Speyer cleared a
team to inspect the compli-
cated central-air distribution
system at MLK and Herbert
Lehman. The work included de-
vising new strategies for bring-
ing in fresh outside air during
winter months and retrofitting
the MLK building’s systems
with Merv 13 filters, which re-
move a large portion of air-
borne particles.
With the filters in scant sup-
ply, Tishman Speyer leveraged
a relationship to get 107,000 fil-
ters for the entire DOE system.GREATER NEW YORK
Tishman Speyer’s services were
pro bono, and the filters cost $
million, according to the UFT.
“We’ve given the DOE and
its engineers a road map to
make this scalable,” Mr.
Speyer said.
DOE Chief School Opera-
tions Officer Kevin Moran said
the agency has equipped all of
its custodians with carbon-di-
oxide meters, which also will
allow them to measure the air
quality in rooms.
“Once we get the Merv 13s
installed, we’re very confident
that the system will work in
all spaces,” he said.
The schools in the Murry
Bergtraum High School For
Business Careers and the Her-
man H. Lehman High School
buildings are already holding
in-person classes.
Ms. Anschel and some MLK
parent leaders and teachers
aren’t yet convinced the prob-
lems are fixed. They are calling
for more certainty and trans-
parency from the DOE on how
such a dysfunctional system
could be brought up to standard
within only a matter of months.
Ms. Anschel, who attends
Special Music School High
School at the still-closed MLK,
is concerned about a plan to
move the 200 SMS students up-
stairs and hold music classes in
the windowless subbasement.
“We spend roughly two to
three hours a day learning mu-
sic, so that would mean two to
three hours in that basement,”
she said. “We should not be
going there at all.”Schools Get Ventilation Upgrades
City invested millions
to improveair quality,
but some students,
teachers are skeptical
Ilinca Anschel still has concerns about ventilationat the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Complex.DESIREE RIOS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALBig marijuana companies
and emerging entrepreneurs are
laying the groundwork to set up
shop in New Jersey after voters
approved a constitutional
amendment legalizing the rec-
reational use of cannabis.
Residents supported the bal-
lot measure in the Nov. 3 elec-
tion by a 2-to-1 margin. State
lawmakers are now crafting en-
abling legislation to help set up
the parameters of the market-
place, and a new state commis-
sion is set to start creating reg-
ulations for the new industry.
Developing the regulations
will take time, and Democratic
Gov. Phil Murphy has said it
would probably take about a
year before the first wave of re-
tail sales begins. The state
hasn’t determined how many li-
censes for growers and retail
sites will be allowed. Still, es-
tablished marijuana businesses
and those looking to break into
the industry are preparing now.
Charles Gormally, co-chair-
man of the cannabis-law prac-
tice at Brach Eichler, said his
law firm was fielding calls
from people with an array of
backgrounds seeking to get
into the cannabis business.
“You’ve got farmers who
own their land, you got dis-
tressed warehouse folks,
you’ve got brownfield develop-
ers,” Mr. Gormally said.
“Those folks have control over
real estate, and that is their
ticket into the marketplace.”
The state joins Massachu-
setts, Vermont and Maine as
the fourth state in the North-
east to legalize recreational
marijuana, according to the
National Conference of State
Legislatures. And with a popu-
lation of nearly nine million
people, it will become the most
populous state in the region
that permits cannabis sales.
New Jersey also benefits be-
cause of its proximity to both
New York City and Philadelphia,
two large cities where recre-
ational marijuana sales remain
illegal, said William Caruso, aco-founder of New Jersey
United for Marijuana Reform.
“I still see New Jersey being
the gem in theregion,” he said.
“You are seeing significant op-
portunity for investment.”
In New Jersey, one of the
last unresolved issues is
whether to add a tax on mari-
juana on top of the state’s
6.625% sales tax and where to
allocate the tax revenues from
the new industry. State law-
makers continue to negotiate
on a final bill.
Curaleaf Holdings Inc., a
marijuana company that oper-
ates in 23 states and growsand sells both medical and
recreational cannabis, has one
cultivation facility and one
medical dispensary in New
Jersey. The company is al-
ready in the planning stages to
increase production in New
Jersey, said Boris Jordan, the
company’s executive chairman.
“We intend to expand dramati-
cally, particularly on the culti-
vation side,” he said.
Curaleaf is building a
120,000-square-foot indoor
cultivation facility and later
plans to build a 500,000-
square-foot outdoor operation,
Mr. Jordan said. The companyalso plans to add two addi-
tional retail locations, he said.
Once New Jersey’s mari-
juana program is fully devel-
oped, the marketplace could
generate at least $2.5 billion in
sales, said Scott Rudder, chair-
man of the New Jersey Canna-
Business Association. It is ex-
pected to create 30,000 direct
and indirect jobs, he said.
“We have record unemploy-
ment. Lots of businesses have
shuttered—some of them for-
ever,” Mr. Rudder said. “We
really need to take aggressive
measures, and the cannabis in-
dustry is ripe for that.”BYJOSEPHDEAVILA
Marijuana Businesses Look to New Jersey
A worker at Curaleaf Holdings, which plans to expand its presence in the state now that recreational pot will be legal.CURALEAFNY