GAYS BACK OFF MARRIAGE ISSUE When candidates appear before Lambda Independent Democrats, Brooklyn's lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) political club, they are inevitably asked where they stand on gay marriage. One of the club's missions is to put legalization on the front burner of elected officials. But in the presidential race, Lambda takes the opposite tack. The club wants the Democratic nominee to minimize the issue so as to increase his chances of defeating George Bush.

That's one reason the club had no qualms about ditching Howard Dean and supporting Senator John Kerry for president, even though Kerry is dancing around the thorny topic of gay marriage. "Of course he is. Why wouldn't he?" said Lambda president Dan Tietz. Bush and his political strategist Karl Rove may try to make gay marriage a wedge issue in the race, something Tietz would prefer not to see. "Do we all think we deserve the right to marry just as straights do? You better believe it," Tietz said. "And that day will come. The question is when and how. And it's not going to come with this president."

He added, "The LGBT community and certainly the voters are rapidly suggesting to all of us that we're all on the same page, that we all have our own issues…but first and foremost is having a different president." Kerry may avoid the topic of gay marriage throughout the campaign, but Tietz said his club is quite comfortable with his history on gay issues.

"John Kerry has been very brave on LGBT rights," Tietz said. "In 1985 John Kerry was a principal sponsor of an LGBT anti-discrimination measure in the Senate. Here he was in 1996 in the tightest race of his career, and losing, and he bucked his own president and voted no [on the Defense of Marriage Act]. He's certainly way out there on civil unions."

ROPER TIES UP HYNES A Brooklyn woman named Mary Lee Ward has on four occasions accused attorneys of ripping her off. One of those attorneys, Sandra Roper, once ran against Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes. Guess which one of the four accused attorneys got indicted? That, at least, is Roper's version of events. Hynes's version is unknown, because the D.A. ain't talking. We should note that Hynes handed the Roper case to a special prosecutor to avoid a conflict of interest. He wouldn't want anyone to think he prosecutes people for political reasons, right?

Never mind that political muckraker John O'Hara was stripped of his law license, fined $20,000, forced to pick up trash for 1,500 hours, and otherwise had his life destroyed because he voted using his girlfriend's address, thanks to a Hynes prosecution that lasted a decade and probably cost taxpayers more than $1 million. Roper, who challenged Hynes in 2001 and earned a respectable 36 percent of the vote despite a shoestring campaign, cited the O'Hara case in a motion she filed last week. Roper claimed that Ward accused four other attorneys of forgery, larceny, filing of false documents, and fraud. The first three times, Hynes referred Ward to private counsel. The fourth time, he alerted the grievance committee of the New York State Appellate Division, Second Department.

In Roper's case, which began one month after she declared her candidacy against Hynes, the D.A. gave the complaint to the grievance committee and to a special prosecutor for criminal investigation. Did Roper really rip off Mary Lee Ward? We don't know, but it's worth mentioning that the bar association's grievance committee investigated and found the complaint without merit. The committee generally holds its attorneys to a higher standard than district attorneys do.

GOLDEN BOTCHES ABORTION STATS In a letter to this newspaper, State Senator Marty Golden declared, "The soaring number of abortions must be reversed." We have good news for you, Marty. It has been reversed. In fact, it never soared in the first place. It's been declining since 1973, the first year abortion was legal. Not only is the number of abortions dropping, but so is the rate (abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44).

We found the stats in about two minutes on the Alan Guttmacher Institute's Web site. Planned Parenthood of New York City spokesman Roger Rathman said of abortions, "They are going down, year after year. There are no soaring numbers, in any demographic or in any age group. It's all on the decline." The national abortion rate, which dropped the fastest during Bill Clinton's presidency, fell about 28 percent from 1981 to 2000. In New York, it dropped 20 percent from 1985 to 2000.

PREZ RACE PURGATORY A check of state Board of Elections records reveals how many Brooklyn political and community leaders put their money on the wrong horse back when no one knew who would be the Democratic nominee for president. Among those who filed to be delegates for Howard Dean were Reps. Jerry Nadler, Major Owens, and Nydia Velazquez, Councilman Domenic Recchia, Assemblymen William Boyland Jr. and Nick Perry, future congressional candidate Chris Owens, former Council candidate Ken Diamondstone, and Lambda's Renee Cafiero. Councilman David Yassky was also a Dean endorser but failed to speak for Dean as scheduled at a recent candidates' night hosted by the three major Democratic clubs in his area.

In the Rev. Al Sharpton's camp are Rep. Ed Towns, his son Assemblyman Darryl Towns, State Senators Kevin Parker and Carl Andrews, and district leader Gale Reed-Barnett.

Supporting General Wesley Clark were Rep. Anthony Weiner, his father Mort Weiner, State Senator Seymour Lachman, former Councilman Sal Albanese and fellow Bay Ridgite Gloria Melnick. Their candidate at least outlasted Senator Joe Lieberman, whose withdrawal from the race left in the lurch Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz, district leader Maryrose Sattie, Thomas Jefferson club leader Alan Maisel, and political consultant Elnatan Rudolph.

Backers of the first candidate to bite the dust, Rep. Dick Gephardt, included Councilman Vinny Gentile (who quickly jumped to Senator John Edwards) and Canarsie civic leader Gardy Brazela. On Rep. Dennis Kucinich's team are former Assemblymen Joe Ferris and Frank Barbaro, former City Council aspirant Elliott Kramer, and Marion Cleaver (an aide to Assemblyman Bill Colton).

Still holding out hope for Senator Edwards are Councilman Bill deBlasio, district leaders Lori Citron-Knipel, Ralph Perfetto, and Booker Ingram, former Council candidate Sam Palmer, and Marine Park activist Saul Needle. Incredibly, just three noteworthy Brooklynites filed to be delegates for John Kerry, who emerged as the frontrunner: former School Board 22 President Eileen O'Brien; Michael Benjamin, an aide to Councilman Lew Fidler, and Andrew Kurzweil of Sheepshead Bay, chairman of the Disabilities Issues Caucus for the NYS Young Democrats. Assemblyman Colton jumped aboard Kerry's train on February 18.

State Senator Marty Malave Dilan was listed as a Kerry delegate but withdrew his name on January 6, perhaps because his son, Councilman Erik Dilan, joined the Edwards campaign. The younger Dilan even drove with deBlasio to Iowa to knock on doors for Edwards just before the caucus there. The most mysterious listing we found was the name of Caribbean Life editor Kenton Kirby in the column of perennial outlier candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

BROOKLYN NETS NOTES Opponents of Bruce Ratner's arena/housing/office project are amused by the streetscape renderings depicting an idyllic scene bereft of double-parked cars, beggars, and sidewalk vendors. And about two vehicle lanes of Atlantic Avenue have been replaced by trees. "Hilarious. No one can drive on Atlantic Avenue, so [they] can put trees on the middle of it," one neighborhood activist said.

Will double-parking be absent? Not if the recent politician-laden press event announcing the sale of the Nets is any indication. "They were all double-parking on Lafayette Avenue with their engines running for two hours," the activist said… …While Councilwoman Tish James and other opponents of the arena plan have dominated the conversation, countered only by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, we continue to hear great excitement about the Nets' potential move from non-political folks (the kind who read the sports page and trash the rest of the newspaper).

"I'll be the first guy sleeping on the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic to buy tickets," e-mailed Brooklyn's Joss Williams, a Nets fan who's grown increasingly unwilling to schlep to the Meadowlands to see games.

HATE MAIL BLASTS POLS A carefully crafted piece of anonymous literature blasting three southern Brooklyn politicians is turning up in mailboxes of Democratic Party insiders across the borough. The flier blasts State Senator Carl Kruger and Councilmen Domenic Recchia and Mike Nelson as "Democratic sellouts" who "have been identified as contributing to the detriment of our party."

While "contributing to the detriment" is awkward English, the flier otherwise appears professional, indicating that its author is experienced in political literature. "This person definitely knew what he was doing," Recchia said. The ostensible motivation for the flier is that Kruger, Recchia, and Nelson have all crossed party lines to endorse Republicans. Kruger takes the brunt of the flier's attack. The flier says Kruger "tries to be a crusader for education," but it questions the value of Kruger's own college degree.

Kruger, who's usually quick to answer accusations, would not discuss his educational background with us, saying he does not respond to anonymous literature. Kruger's chief of staff Jason Koppel told us if the author were to identify himself, the senator would address his concerns. (With a club, perhaps? Just kidding.) In his online Senate biography, Kruger simply states that he has a bachelor's degree in political science. He does not say where it's from. The other eight Brooklyn senators all name the schools they attended.

Politicians are not required to have any degree, and the quality of an official's degree often has no bearing on his effectiveness. Nonetheless, if Kruger runs for public advocate in 2005, he'll likely have to address this issue. As for Recchia, the anonymous flier reports, "Recchia 'graduated' from Atlanta Law School. Atlanta Law School is not approved by the American Bar Association. To be a NY lawyer and take the bar, the school had to be approved. How is this guy a lawyer?" Glad you asked, Mr. Anonymous Flier Writer. Recchia, as a Kent State undergrad, didn't get into accredited law schools because dyslexia sank his LSAT scores. So he went to Atlanta, which Recchia said "is a great law school" that has produced more Georgia judges than any other school.

Well, it's not a great law school any more, because it's been closed for years. It's produced fewer members of the state bar (1,439) than Georgia's five existing law schools. And only 51 percent are members in good standing, compared to about 90 percent of members from other Georgia law schools. Not that we're knocking Recchia's education. He persevered when others might have quit. And Atlanta Law indeed has some esteemed graduates. By the time Recchia graduated from law school, students with learning disabilities like his were being given extra time, enlarged print, and other handicaps on bar exams. That helped Recchia pass the bar exams in Indiana (though he turned down a job there so he could return to Brooklyn) and later New York.

He qualified for the New York Bar by spending a year at an accredited school, namely Touro Law Center. So who sent the flier? No one is sure (one suspect, campaign manager Gary Tilzer, told us it wasn't his work), but all agree it's odd to see a flier like this when no election is imminent. It's possible the sender was motivated by the three politicians' meddling in Community Board 15's controversial district manager hiring.

Another theory is that the real target of the mailing was Kruger, with Recchia and Nelson added as a diversion. The information on Kruger was fresher and more specific, while the comments on the other two were partly inaccurate. For example, the flier said, "Recchia is best known for starting nasty rumors about fellow Democrats and hanging his own people out to dry." But one unaffiliated insider, "That's not his reputation." Also, the innuendo about Recchia's law degree has circulated in past years, Recchia said.

Of Nelson, the flier said he "coasted to re-election without a Primary or a General election." In fact, Nelson had a Conservative opponent in the general last year. The flier also asserts that Democratic district leader Mike Geller is Nelson's "puppet master." But people who know Nelson say Geller is absolutely not his puppet master. Kruger is his puppet master.

TIDBITS The simmering feud between Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Assemblyman Vito Lopez has boiled over into the New York Post, which quoted Velazquez saying a Lopez-linked organization is trying to force some tenants from their Bushwick homes. The tenants don't want the housing organization Lopez founded (now run by his girlfriend, Angela Battaglia) administering a government grant to repair their homes. Velazquez suspects the city is circumventing federal rules to award business to the organization, the Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council…

The campaign committee of Peter Williams, who finished behind James Davis and Tish James in the 2001 City Council race, was fined $3,600 by the Campaign Finance Board, including $2,500 for "grossly defective" filings of financial statements. Somehow, we learned of the fines before Williams, who had been trying to resolve the matter…

Unemployed copy editors should call State Senator Carl Andrews, whose latest constituent mailing includes a chart that's supposed to explain three different types of parking restrictions, but instead lists "No Stopping" on all three headings.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

Borough Politics Archive

2004
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2003
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2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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