James McGreevey   (Photo: Richard B. Levine)

Former senate majority leader and current Walt Disney Co. chairman George Mitchell doesn’t seem prone to New Age judgment calls. But he’s endorsing a yoga instructor for state office. Esther Yang, who’s taught yoga in the hatha style for ten years and is also expert in feng shui and karate (she’s a brown belt), is running as a long-shot rookie candidate for the State Legislature. Her Democratic primary opponents for the East Side seat—Tudor City to Delancey—are community-activist incumbent Sylvia Friedman (she won a special election in February) and longtime City Hall politico Brian Kavanagh (he won the Times’ endorsement). Through an assistant, Mitchell said that “he endorses” Yang, explaining that “they met at church.” That church is Saint Bartholomew’s, on Park Avenue, where parishioners also include Kurt Vonnegut, Walter Cronkite, and James McGreevey, who goes there with boyfriend Mark O’Donnell, and also endorsed Yang. She decided to run after losing custody of her daughter in a divorce so contentious she collapsed twice during court proceedings. She sees herself as the outsider’s outsider and promises to bring a “holistic” solution to judicial corruption and “Albany’s problems.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
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• Table of Contents: Sep 18, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!