GREEN CANDIDATE RIPENING Former Green Party candidate Gloria Mattera, who's challenging City Councilman Bill deBlasio again in 2003, launched an early missive in the campaign. A Mattera press release in late June blasted deBlasio for taking a position on the presidential campaign of Senator John Edwards, whom she blasted as a "pro-war multimillionaire." We can understand attacking deBlasio for backing a pro-war candidate, given the anti-war leanings of deBlasio's 39th Council District. But what's wrong with being a multimillionaire? There are more than a few among deBlasio's constituents, and the rest would like to join them.

If everyone in the 39th who does not want to be a multimillionaire voted for Mattera in November, she'd probably fall well short of the respectable 10 percent of the vote she garnered in 2001. We were also surprised by the timing of Mattera's volley. Going on the attack more than four months before the election? Usually, candidates save their ammunition until later in the race. Nonetheless, her press release infuriated deBlasio's people, particularly her assertion that the councilman would "leave his post" and "take time off" to "co-manage" Edwards's campaign. They say he's not leaving his post, not taking time off, and that his role as a provider of strategic advice is not the same as managing the campaign.

While it is true that time deBlasio spends helping Edwards will not be time he spends helping his constituents, we dare say that neither would Mattera spend 24 hours of every day helping her constituents. Score one for deBlasio.

The deBlasio folks were also ticked that she questioned his belief in civil liberties for immigrants by noting his absence from the series of protests at the Federal Detention Center in Sunset Park, which attracted other Brooklyn politicians. The councilman's people cited evidence that he has fought for immigrants and "has been steadfast in his belief that we cannot ignore constitutional and other protections of civil liberties as we engage in the ongoing recalibration of our security needs." But they did not deny that he skipped the protests. And they did not explain why he skipped them. Score one for Mattera.

Unfortunately, she also claimed that "DeBlasio recently got arrested for protesting the closure of a firehouse, but he was released before he made it to the police precinct." In fact, after his May 25 arrest deBlasio spent five hours at the 78th Precinct stationhouse. Score one for deBlasio. So, it was a hard-hitting but inconsistent opening salvo by Mattera. Let's see if she's saved anything for the next four months of the race.

FAKE WEB SITE SHOCKS ATTORNEY Sheepshead Bay attorney and longtime Brooklyn political adviser Alan M. Rocoff was shocked to discover a Web site purporting to be the home page for his law firm. We'd reported last week that the page was Rocoff's, but the attorney says he's never had a Web site. Rather, someone fabricated the site, which features some off-color humor purportedly directed at people seeking a divorce lawyer. (The fraudulent site has a photo of O.J. Simpson and the caption, "Do you hate your spouse?" The text encourages people to hire a lawyer rather than a hit man.) Rocoff, currently working on a Civil Court campaign, told us he had no knowledge of the site, which has been on the Web for months, if not longer.

As embarrassed as we are to have fallen for the prank, at least we discovered it before someone included it on a piece of campaign literature days before the Democratic primary in an effort to sabotage Rocoff's client, Housing Court Judge Dawn Jimenez. We suppose it's possible that was the aim. If so, Brooklyn politics has reached a low point.

The culprit doesn't seem likely to be a disgruntled client or someone Rocoff defeated in a court case, since he rarely handles divorce cases, the attorney told us. So politics was more likely the motivation. But as Rocoff points out, the perpetrator crossed the line between politics and personal. And the lawyer intends to see that someone is held responsible. "I have, in fact, spoken to both the F.B.I. and the Brooklyn district attorney who both inform me that this is a serious crime, particularly the assertion of a false copyright," Rocoff e-mailed us.

The copyright noted on the fake Web site, which reads "Copyright Law Firm of Alan M. Rocoff 1973 -2003," is evidence of the site's fraudulence, since Rocoff was still a teenager in 1973. Rocoff called on Jimenez's opponent, Shawndya Simpson, to investigate whether someone connected to her campaign or supporting her candidacy was responsible for creating the site. That seems unlikely, though, since Jimenez would probably have been the one spoofed, not one of her advisers. Anyone with an idea of who might be behind the ersatz Web site should call the district attorney at (718) 250-2300. And call this column, too.

OVERHEARD The Court Street wags seem to agree that Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes won't consider his wide-ranging investigation of "judgeships for sale" and the Democratic machine a success unless it nails Assemblyman Clarence Norman for something. But what?

One possibility is tax evasion, sources said, if prosecutors can prove that the expensive suits, shoes, and meals he bought with the party's credit card were for personal use. It's a legal tactic that helped law enforcement nail another Brooklynite, Al Capone. Norman says his purchases were all for party business, an excuse that "doesn't pass the giggle test," one observer remarked.

Much of what prosecutors are finding falls in the category of unseemly, but not illegal. Consider Norman's promotion of Judge Howard Ruditzky to Supreme Court in 2001 after Ruditzky's campaign spent lavishly on vendors preferred by Norman. Forget that Ruditzky had finished last in his Civil Court reelection bid. Norman had to know that Ruditzky was known as a sorry, hapless judge. "Ruditzky is so horrible, they won't give him trials," said one attorney. "He can't write a cohesive sentence."

To keep such dreck off the bench, the Working Families Party has formed its own "independent, good government" panel to screen judicial candidates. Nominees will appear on the party's ballot line. The party bills it as an "alternative to the tainted County process." We asked one Working Families official if the party would set itself apart from the "tainted County process" by declining to accept money from the campaigns it endorses. The answer we got was that candidates won't be required to hire the party. That wasn't our question.

We also noticed that one of the members of the screening panel was former Assemblyman and Judge Frank Barbaro. We always liked Barbaro, who maintained his liberal principles while representing a conservative district, but his appointment to the panel is not without irony, since he became a judge by the very same "tainted County process" to which he's now providing an alternative. At least he's familiar with the system.

As a Working Families Party spokeswoman explained, "The process was the process, and it was the only way to become a judge. And so we can't condemn the good people who went through the process, since there was no alternative. The people of Brooklyn and Staten Island can only be thankful that some good people, like Frank, did serve (and continue to serve) on the bench. But now, with the Working Families Party's new screening panel, there is a better process. And we hope the would-be candidates and the voters will make good use of it."

RICH AUNT IMPOVERISHED Judges Mike and Gerald Garson have reportedly come up with a brilliant new technique to free you from having to pay estate taxes. They just make sure you die broke. At least, that's the method the cousins seem to have used for their elderly, infirm aunt, Sarah Gershenoff, whose near million-dollar fortune has been whittled to just $10,000, reported the Daily News, citing court papers.

To be exact, Gershenoff had $839,942 when she gave her nephews power of attorney in 1997. By the end of 2002, a mere $10,675.04 remained. The Garsons cited "estate planning" fees as one of the reasons they pocketed some of the $600,000 that vanished from their aunt's accounts from 1997 to 2000. Another $227,000 disappeared in the last 10 months of 2002.

The Garsons were supposed to account for the money but haven't bothered.

ZOO SAVED, BUT YOU'LL SPEND Brooklyn's City Councilmembers did a lot of patting themselves on the back for saving the Prospect Park Zoo from the mayor's budget axe. But did any of them have the courage to include in their press releases that zoo admission prices doubled? Adults now pay $5.00 and kids $1.00. It remains inexpensive, and the government still pays about 90 percent of the cost, but full disclosure from the politicians would have been nice.

A BIZMAN, NOT A BUTCHER Our characterization of Brighton Beach City Council candidate Tony Eisenberg as a butcher and comments from Pat Singer about him in a recent column infuriated his son, David Eyzenberg, who wrote a lengthy "rebuttal" and challenged us to publish it.

We like challenges, but we also like readers. And we suspect you don't want to spend the next five minutes reading Eyzenberg's 679-word rant. Instead, here are some excerpts: "I admit to not being completely up to date on all the political inside gossip for this specific Council race but I have noticed a significant lack of mudslinging amongst the candidates towards their counter-parties. However, with hack reporting like yours none may be necessary, as you are doing a great job of compartmentalizing my father into a one-dimensional pigeon hole."

We might well have mentioned his father's two civil engineering degrees, his revival of a failing business after arriving penniless from Russia, and his generosity toward the less fortunate if his father had deigned to return our phone call and tell us. But he didn't, and our ESP wasn't working that week, so we simply printed what we knew, which was that he ran a butcher shop. We also referred to the incumbent in the race, Domenic Recchia, as a lawyer, without mentioning his community involvement. Somehow Recchia refrained from complaining that we had compartmentalized him into a one-dimensional pigeon hole.

Eyzenberg implied that since we called his father a butcher, we should have called Recchia an "ambulance chaser." Wouldn't equating those terms be an insult to butchers? More from Eyzenberg's note [with corrections in brackets]: "To address Pat Singers [Singer's] comments regarding the Russians community [Russian community's] view of representation. The fact is its [it's] not a matter or ethnic background, but rather an issue of locational habitat. The majority of Russians live in the Brighton/Manhattan beach and Sheepshead Bay area. This location has different needs then [from] the Bensonhurst area. Since there is a finite level of funding and political favors to go around I fail to see how someone can or would go against his voting constituency in one location to improve the lot of his non-voting constituency in another."

We'll try to make sense of Eyzenberg's rebuttal. He seems to be saying that since the redrawn 47th Council District has more Bensonhurst residents than Russians, Recchia will favor the former, rewarding constituents who vote for him and ignoring those who don't. But Singer wasn't talking about redistricting. She was talking about whether voters should consider a candidate's ethnicity or his character. Singer, who ran for the council seat in 2001, had said Eisenberg didn't support her because she wasn't Russian. "I don't think you should look at the ethnic background of a man. Look at his character. That's what Tony [Eisenberg] doesn't understand," Singer had said.

The candidate's son said what counts is not his father's ethnicity but his focus on the Russian community. "I believe if a member of any ethnic race ran on a platform to represent the Russian population that inhabits south Brooklyn she/he would gain their support. It's irrelevant that my father is Russian. What matters is that he wants to represent the best interests of the Russian community." Of course, Recchia says he wants to as well. Think the Russians will vote for him?

It may be years before the Russians forgive Recchia for orchestrating, or at least not opposing, the redistricting plan that put thousands of them into Mike Nelson's domain. But the districts are in place and not likely to change until 2014. At least until then, some Russians will cling to the notion that they're being shortchanged. It's a cynical viewpoint but a good one around which to rally a campaign.

Borough Politics Archive

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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