Liberal East Harlem Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, a contender for City Council Speaker, is pals with Bolivia’s socialist, anti-American president, The Post has learned.
The pol even traveled to support Evo Morales — whose buddies include Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — during an ultimately unsuccessful recall election in 2008.
Mark-Viverito, a Democrat, flew to the South American nation to “observe” the vote of Morales “at invitation of government of Bolivia,” according to papers she filed with the Conflicts of Interest Board.
That same year, Mark-Viverito, Comptroller John Liu and Councilman Robert Jackson praised Morales after he spoke at the American Indian Community House in Lower Manhattan.
During the speech, Morales denounced an American “conspiracy” to interfere with his socialists agenda, because the US had sought to reduce cocoa farming because it can be processed into cocaine.
Morales, a cocoa farmer by trade, was elected president with heavy support from the country’s farming community.
The three Americans responded by presenting him with a framed proclamation “recognizing his work on behalf of indigenous peoples’ rights,” according to local press reports.
The Bolivian trip didn’t break Mark-Viverito’s bank. The city’s powerful healthcare workers’ union, where Mark-Viverito worked before her 2005 election to the Council, shelled out up to $5,000 for her airfare and hotel, records show.
Last week, the union — which also backed Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio — threw her a party in Puerto Rico to kickstart her campaign for speaker.
Politicos were stunned to learn about the trip and questioned whether her ties to Morales would hurt her.
“How many mothers lost their children to cocaine-fueled violence in East Harlem? What does she has to say to those mothers?” asked one Democratic politico.
“It’s one thing to support repealing Rockefeller drug laws, it’s another thing to coddle the people who grow the cocaine.”
Mark-Viverito, who was in Puerto Rico, didn’t respond to an email and phone calls seeking comment
Bolivia’s president also made several trips to Iran in 2010 and met with Ahmadinejad, who also visited Bolivia in 2007. During one trip, Morales said that Iran and Bolivia “have identical revolutionary conscience” which “accounts for the closeness of the two states.”
Mark-Viverito, 44, is co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucas. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she moved to New York at age 18 to attend Columbia University, then received a master’s degree at Baruch College. After college she worked at a couple of non-profits then as a researcher and strategist for SEIU.
She was an early supporter of de Blasio, backing him in June and was often seen by his side throughout the campaign.
City Hall insiders say de Blasio’s camp is leaning toward her and the healthcare union has been aggressively working the phones to garner support. Other unions are still playing coy about who they support.
Like de Blasio, Mark-Viverito often talks about how hard life is for the poor.
“We are the 99 percent. We represent the 99 percent,” she proclaimed during one Occupy Wall Street protest.
She doesn’t know about those difficulties first hand because she’s part of the 1 percent and reportedly worth as much as $1.8 million.
She is a part owner in several condos in her family’s native Puerto Rico with a value of up to $1.4 million. She also owns a three-family home in East Harlem that was built as part of an affordable housing program for low-income New Yorkers. As of May, the property had an estimated market value of $1.2 million. Yet in a City Council debate this year, Mark-Viverito said she felt that she could be “priced out” of her neighborhood.
Her late father was a doctor and founder of San Pablo Hospital in Puerto Rico who, according to public records, owned a private plane. When he died, he left behind an estate worth over $6.7 million and Mark-Viverito was co-heir to her father’s fortune – which include rental properties in Puerto Rico and the sale of hospital during a $186 million buyout of the company in 1997.