Melissa Mark-Viverito will be a great City Council speaker for women, feminist Gloria Steinem and a host of women’s groups declared Monday.
“We have the best-qualified and most effective speaker possible, ” Steinem said of Mark-Viverito, who would be the first minority woman to hold the post.
But rival Dan Garodnick countered with his own statement from four female Council members who back him and object to Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s lobbying on Mark-Viverito’s behalf.
The quartet, Elizabeth Crowley and Karen Koslowitz of Queens and Annabel Palma and Maria del Carmen Arroyo of the Bronx, charged that “a speaker who is hand-picked by the mayor in a back-room deal” would not be able to push effectively on women’s issues.
edurkin@nydailynews.com