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Jack Hidary Announces Official Candidacy for Mayor

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Jewish business entrepreneur Jack Hidary announces his candidacy for mayor of the city of New York.
Jewish business entrepreneur Jack Hidary announces his candidacy for mayor of the city of New York.
The name Jack Hidary is indeed a familiar one amongst the members of Brooklyn’s Sephardic Jewish community, as his grandfather was in the forefront of building it so many decades ago. Now, the 45-year-old entrepreneur has officially thrown his hat in the ring and has announced that he will be seeking the Big Apple’s highest elected office.

Making his official announcement on Wednesday evening, July 17, Hidary said he decided to get into the race because the current candidates didn’t offer forward-thinking policies. “It is clear that New Yorkers understand that the current crop of candidates want to take us back to tired policies and machine politics,” he said. “They want a new, independent choice.” Hidary will now join former MTA chief Joe Lhota and John Catsimatidis on the Independent ticket.

The charismatic and energetic business tycoon has quite a lengthy and most impressive resume.

In 1995, Hidary co-founded and served as President and CEO of EarthWeb/Dice. He raised three private rounds of equity and completed a record breaking IPO and secondary for a total raise of $150+ million. Under his leadership, EarthWeb/Dice earned the prestigious Business Week Info Tech 100 award. Dice is the leading IT job board today and is listed on the NYSE as DHX. Since its founding, Dice.com has connected more than five million Americans with a job.

Next up for Hidary was his venture into the unchartered energy industry. Hidary is the founder and Chairman of Samba Energy, a leading marketplace for commercial solar projects and financing. Samba’s marketplace has driven down the cost of commercial solar and thus increased the ROI for companies using the market for their solar programs.

Committed to community and philanthropic causes, Hidary has received several industry and community awards as well as being recognized as a Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, Davos. He is also a founding member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). CGI was founded by Bill Clinton to bring government together with the private sector and non-profits to solve the big problems of our day.

Hidary is certainly no academic slouch and his scholarship speaks volumes. Having studied philosophy and neuroscience at Columbia University, Hidary was awarded a Stanley Fellowship in Clinical Neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) prior to his graduation. Under the fellowship, he conducted research in functional neuroimaging using techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study brain and disease states.

On Wednesday July 17, Hidary made his debut before the press and announced his plans to revitalize New York City’s economy and educational system if elected. He will be running on the independent ticket.

“My background as a successful entrepreneur and my years in public service and economic development uniquely qualify me for the office of mayor of New York City,” he said.

Hidary has created a website seeking donations for a campaign that he said would be modeled after Mayor Bloomberg’s nonpartisan style of leadership, with the goal of bringing technology companies to the city and helping New Yorkers start small businesses.

“I’d like to build on the mayor’s success and bring more economic development to New York City’s five boroughs,” he said in an interview. “Part of the job of mayor is to run the city officially, but part of the job is also to be the chief attracter of capital, and I alone among the current candidates can do that.”

A major initiative would be spending money to wire all of the city’s schools, businesses and neighborhoods for broadband Internet service, on the theory that it would increase productivity and aid commerce, he said.

In his effort to succeed Mayor Bloomberg, Hidary has hired Joe Trippi, 57, a veteran of the Democratic presidential campaigns of former Vermont governor Howard Dean and John Edwards, and Jerry Brown’s successful 2010 campaign for California governor, as his top campaign adviser.

According to a report in the New York Times, Mr. Trippi offered his analysis of the mayoral race. “Nobody is running away with this thing,” he said. “People look at the candidates that are running and say, ‘This is it?’ We can’t do better than this?”

Other advisers include Richard Strauss, a media consultant in the Clinton White House, and Campaign Grid, a firm that advised Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, said Linda Chung, a spokeswoman.

Hidary first got involved in the business community by helping small businesses grow and championing new models of education by joining Partnership for NYC, Citizens Budget Commission, and ABNY, according to a report in Algemeiner’s. He was a board member of Trickle Up which helps thousands of entrepreneurs start small businesses each year and launched, as well as funding education programs and many, smaller community projects, the report added.

Despite his stellar business credentials, it would appear that Hidary still faces some formidable challenges in his quest for the mayoralty. The New York Times has opined that Hidary will have no support amongst the city’s unions, which has always been a powerful and sometimes deciding force on election day. As name recognition goes, he will also be climbing an uphill battle as most New Yorkers have already familiarized themselves with the records of his opponents on the Independent ticket.

“The significance of his candidacy is that if he wins, we would have a true 21st-century mayor who thinks in terms of the city’s place in the world economy and enlists voter support through social media, not political parties, unions and other traditional interest groups,” said Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Media, which holds conferences on the intersection of technology and politics. The group hasn’t endorsed a mayoral candidate.

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