Bloomberg: Linares has stepped down to run for Council

Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a statement today indicating that last night Guillermo Linares, the mayor's appointee as Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, resigned in order to run for the City Council seat that became vacant yesterday when Miguel Martinez resigned.

"Last night, Dr. Guillermo Linares told me that he is going to stand for election in the City Council's tenth district, and he resigned - effective immediately - as the City's Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs to avoid any potential conflict of interest," read the mayor's statement. "Even before he joined our Administration in July 2004, I counted Guillermo as an adviser, and I have since come to count him as a friend."

The last step in Linares officially becoming a candidate for the City Council seat he held in the 1990s is for Martinez' committee on vacancy to sign over to Linares Martinez's petitions to run for office. Sources have said that was expected sometime today.

This paves the way for Linares to join a crowded field of candidates. As many as eight others have planned to vie for Martinez' seat, including Manny Velazquez who chairs Community Board 12, and local educator and community advocate Ydanis Rodriguez, who lost Council races to Martinez in 2001 and 2003. Also on September's primary ballot is Ruben Dario Vargas, Martinez' lone Democratic challenger in 2005

Martinez resigned yesterday in the face of a federal investigation of financial wrong doing, although details of the charges have not been made public.

The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood.