RUDE SURPRISE FOR HYNES WORKERS A cadre of young prosecutors working for Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes showed up for work earlier this month and, with no prior notice, were fired and summarily escorted from the building by security. They had done nothing wrong-Hynes just needed to reduce his payroll. The question is whether giving these assistant district attorneys the ax was the best way to do that. Sources told us the laid-off prosecutors were an eager, hard-working bunch devoted to their boss, while quite a few less-than-competent employees in comfortable, non-essential positions remain on the payroll. Of course, you often hear these sorts of gripes from people who are fired, but in this case Hynes's decision has reportedly undermined the morale of many young prosecutors still working for him. Meanwhile, Hynes preserved programs such as Legal Lives-whose staffers perform functions like calling cabs to take prosecutors on school visits. From what we hear, Legal Lives wasn't too popular with some of the prosecutors to begin with, and will be downright despised if it stays in business while ADA's get pink slips.

Hynes's spokesman told us all programs are being looked at for potential cuts. "We are making every effort to comply with the mayor's mandate to cut the budget by 15 percent," said Jerry Schmetterer. "As the review goes on, we never lose sight of the mandate here, and that is law enforcement." He declined to comment on how the layoffs were conducted.

WEINER CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose boyhood home in Park Slope was drawn out of his congressional district effective next year, said he can now stop pressuring his parents to move to Florida and leave him the duplex in which he grew up. "I think my brother Jason was behind the redistricting decision," Weiner observed. All kidding aside, Weiner did seem a bit morose to have lost the neighborhood of his youth and to end up with a district that is 70 percent Queens.

BURNED BY "PROCESS," PARKER FORGES ON The mechanism used in May to choose a consensus minority candidate in the new Senate District 21, which became known simply as "the process," didn't exactly work. The closest thing to a consensus that it produced was a feeling among the losers that it was royally botched. One of them, Kevin Parker, has taken to calling himself the consensus candidate, citing his endorsement by Assemblyman Nick Perry, Councilman Kendall Stewart, and Rep. Major Owens, who represent the largest assembly, council, and congressional districts, respectively, in the new senate district, which runs from Borough Park to East Flatbush. Also backing Parker are City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke and her predecessor and mother, Una Clarke (Parker's former boss), the Reverend Al Sharpton, the Working Families Party, ACORN, DC 37, and some smaller unions.

The process's consensus candidate, Omar Boucher, has endorsements from Assemblyman Clarence Norman, the Democratic county leader, Rep. Ed Towns, state Senator John Sampson, Assemblyman Frank Boyland, and Councilmembers Charles Barron and Tracy Boyland. So while the process was supposed to unite minority leaders behind a candidate, we now have two distinct minority camps.

According to Parker, it was Norman who orchestrated the process so that initially the candidates themselves would vote on who would advance to the next round. Predictably, candidates voted for the weakest competitors in order to maximize their own chances, according to Parker, Perry, and Owens. Parker alleged that Norman wanted a weak candidate he could control, as well as a painless way to endorse a Caribbean candidate as a gesture to that constituency. Boucher is from Jamaica. Parker added that "ringers" were injected into the process to rig the vote. He named Rock Hackshaw as one and said Colin Moore might have been another.

As the process unfolded, some of the black elected officials who'd been invited to take part-white officials were excluded-jumped ship. "The process fell apart, it was hijacked, it was derailed," said Assemblyman Perry. "A number of candidates were allowed to take over the process and manipulate it." Perry even called it "a real joke…the laughingstock of all of Brooklyn."

Rep. Owens said, "The whole process was very distorted and undemocratic." Owens said he withdrew from the process when its rules were revised midstream and thus wasn't obliged to support Boucher. The congressman nonetheless had kind words for Boucher, a longtime campaign consultant. "Omar has worked with me in past campaigns and he's an excellent tactician," Owens said. But he added, "The evidence is overwhelming that Kevin Parker is the more qualified candidate."

The two white candidates in the district, which is 58 percent black, are Flatbush district leader Lori Knipel, who as the race's only woman could do well among female voters, and former Councilman Noach Dear, who's counting on a clean sweep of the Borough Park vote, which should be 15 to 20 percent of the total. Knipel challenged the petitions of a third white candidate, Harry Kaloshi, who was disqualified.

WHITES EXCLUDED FROM "BLACK PROCESS" Because of their skin color, Lori Knipel and Noach Dear were excluded from the aforementioned "process," the goal of which was to select a lone black candidate in Senate District 21. That wasn't surprising, but it did turn heads that white elected officials were frozen out as well. Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs, Assemblyman Jim Brennan, and district leader Jake Gold were all uninvited-basically ensuring that they would not endorse the winner of the process, even though Jacobs said a black senator would be "most appropriate and relevant" for the district. "Did I feel slighted? Not particularly," said Jacobs. But she indicated her exclusion was a slap in the face to her constituents.

Why was the progress segregated, given that a minority candidate would likely have emerged even if white officials helped make the selection? "There was a conscious effort on the part of the black elected officials that this would be a black process," said Vaughan Toney, a candidate in the process who lost out to Boucher. Jacobs, Brennan, Gold, Knipel, and Dear haven't made a big deal over the snub. But can you imagine the reaction if the district's white leaders had convened to select one consensus candidate from a pool that excluded minorities?

PATAKI GOBBLES UP BROOKLYN CASH Joseph Spitzer of Borough Park handed over $27,500, Josephine Lin of Williamsburg $20,000, and John H. Watts 3rd of Brooklyn Heights $10,000 within the past six months to help re-elect Republican Governor George Pataki. The amounts are surprising and the sources even more so. Pataki has been raking in cash from Brooklynites in 2002, further evidence of the inroads he's made into the heavily Democratic borough. Also contributing $5,000 or more to Friends of Pataki this year were Brooklyn Heights residents Theodore Roosevelt 4th, Theodore Shen, and David Offensend, Midwood's Thomas Schick and Ken Cayre, Michael McConnell of Bay Ridge, and Marvin Neiman of Borough Park. From just those 10 Brooklynites, Pataki has received $94,500 so far in 2002.

Pataki's Democratic challengers, Andrew Cuomo and Carl McCall, have together received only three big donations this year from Brooklynites: Denis M. Kelly of Brooklyn Heights gave $10,000 and Bijan Amini of Park Slope $5,000 to Cuomo, while Joyce Johnson of Fort Greene handed $5,000 to McCall. Cuomo did get $10,000 gifts last year from Sarah Sicherman of Borough Park, Jeff Mollins of Brooklyn Heights, and the same Denis M. Kelly. (The largest political donation from a Brooklynite last year was $20,000 to the Conservative Party by John Zaremba of Gravesend; Arthur Maresca of Bay Ridge gave the party $10,000.)

In Brooklyn races for the state legislature, Assemblyman Dov Hikind has received more $5,000-or-more donations (three) than the dozens of other candidates combined (two) in 2002. Hikind's $5,000 gifts came from Moishe Binik of the market at 325 Avenue M, Todd Feuerstein of northern Ocean Parkway, and Joseph Stamm of Midwood. Yehoshua Balkany of Borough Park (dean of the politically connected yeshiva Bais Yaakov, whose director, Rabbi Milton Balkany, was the centerpiece of a day-care voucher scandal two years ago) gave Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs $5,000, apparently hoping she would help persuade Maimonides Hospital to operate on a foreign acquaintance of Balkany.

State Senator Vinny Gentile got the largest contribution-$10,000 from his own pocket. That's about 20 percent of his annual salary after taxes. Gentile's campaign manager said it shows his commitment to his race against City Councilman Marty Golden. We should mention that in December, Assemblyman Matthew Mirones of Staten Island, who's running in a district that includes Bay Ridge, received $13,100 from his mother Mary Mirones of Bay Ridge. The most a non-family member can legally contribute to a state Assembly candidate is $3,100 for the primary election, but Hikind and Jacobs can accept $5,000 gifts by designating $1,900 for the general election. But these gifts were obviously meant for another purpose, since Jacobs and Hikind can't be threatened in a general election in their heavily Democratic districts. (Hikind says his contributors simply like his politics.)

One of Brooklyn's most generous contributors to political campaigns is John Zuccotti of Carroll Gardens, who gave $10,000 to McCall in December 2000 and, three months later, $10,000 to Cuomo. It always makes us wonder when someone gives lots of money to both sides of a race, though in this instance both candidates are Democrats. (Zuccotti's spokesman, Lloyd Kaplan, would only say that he helps candidates whose views he supports.) Zuccotti also gave $5,000 to state comptroller hopeful Alan Hevesi, and along with his wife Susan Zuccotti spread $24,500 among six candidates for city office in 2001 (including Herb Berman and Ken Fisher). John Zuccotti is listed as president of Brookfield Properties and chairman of Brookfield Financial Services on campaign finance records.

Another noteworthy contributor is Spike Lee's Fort Greene-based company, 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks, which gave $5,000 to McCall last November. McCall also got $1,000 from Prospect Heights' Jean Claude Compas, the personal physician of Abner Louima.

JUDICIAL RACE JUMBLED The disqualification of two insurgent candidates for Brooklyn-wide Civil Court judge, Alan Gelbstein and Jim McCall, changes the mechanism of the Democratic primary. Instead of the winners being the top three vote-getters from a pool of seven candidates, the winners will be Robin Garson and the top two vote-getters from among Margarita Lopez Torres, Marcia Sikowitz, Karen Yellen, and Dolores Thomas. Gelbstein and McCall were doomed by a cover sheet error, which is a lousy way to blow a chance at a 10-year judgeship worth at least $1,256,000 in salary after 8,000 signatures have been collected on your behalf. Their demise inspired some bitterness in the insurgent camp toward Lopez Torres, whom the insurgents had added to their slate. "Although our candidates included Margarita on all their petitions, McCall and Gelbstein did not receive a single signature from Margarita's campaign," nor any legal assistance, one insurgent supporter complained.

But Lopez Torres's campaign manager, Gary Tilzer, said no signatures had been promised. "She's a judge, she's not a political club," Tilzer said. "We did not have people to go around collecting signatures. That was not part of an agreement with (the insurgents). We were prepared to do some joint literature down the road. That was the deal." Tilzer added that no number of signatures would have saved McCall and Gelbstein from their cover sheet error.

But one observer suggested that Tilzer should have put more emphasis on helping McCall and Gelbstein get on the ballot, since they would siphon some white and Jewish votes, respectively, from county's three white, Jewish candidates, thus helping Lopez Torres, the only Latina on the ballot. But the person who's really got to be kicking herself is Civil Court Judge Maggie Kammer, who chose not to run for reelection when she heard that the insurgent camp would run someone against her. With Gelbstein and McCall off the ballot (pending an appeal), Kammer could indeed have had a free ride in the primary. Instead, it's Garson who's sitting pretty.

THE BUCK STOPS WITH NOACH Former City Councilman Noach Dear, now a candidate for state Senate, gets lots of people to contribute lots of money to his political campaigns. But does he personally contribute to anyone else's campaigns? Not that we could find. A check of city and state campaign contribution records showed no city candidate received money from Dear in the 2001 or 1997 election cycles and no state candidate or campaign committee got a dime from him in the last three years.

In contrast, to cite a few examples, state Senator Carl Kruger has donated $3,860 and Assemblywoman Joan Millman $2,800 toward city and state races since the beginning of 2000. Borough President Marty Markowitz distributed $1,800 to eight city campaigns, including his own, in 2001. Assemblyman Dov Hikind gave $1,090, though all of it went to the City Council campaign committee of a certain Libby Hikind. However, Dov Hikind was the conduit for thousands of dollars in donations to the successful City Council campaign of Simcha Felder, his former chief of staff. Hikind also gives money from his campaign committee to other candidates, though that's not the same as giving from one's pocket.

Dear's spokesman, John McLoughlin, emailed us that Noach has raised lots of money for other candidates, including the Clinton/Gore campaign. But he said Dear has a policy against redirecting money from his campaign committee to others, which makes sense, given that those contributions were intended for Dear. But that still doesn't explain why Dear doesn't contribute his personal funds, as do most people active in politics.

Dear wasn't the only tightfisted politician that our random survey turned up. Former City Councilman Ken Fisher gave $250 to Steve Cohn's City Council campaign last year, but that was it. No other city or state candidate got anything. Could this help explain why Dear and Fisher are out of office and Millman, Kruger, Markowitz, and Hikind are not?

BRIDGE CLIMBER COULD LOSE GIG Perennial self-styled Brooklyn political candidate Jimmy McMillan may have to find another way to promote himself. The East Flatbush resident, who made the evening news by scaling the Brooklyn Bridge in 1993 to publicize his campaign for mayor (Rudy Giuliani eventually edged him out), might be disappointed that Mayor Mike Bloomberg is talking about allowing members of the public to be hoisted to the top of the span for a fee. Climbing the bridge might soon be old hat.

McMillan's 1993 bridge ascent proved to be the peak of his political career. In 1996 he scheduled another attempt, this time to launch his campaign for president against Bill Clinton - and alerted the press in advance. Exactly one reporter showed up: yours truly. A cop was also present. She listened while we did a short interview. McMillan was his usual colorful self, but he didn't seem inclined to climb the bridge. So we left.

Days later McMillan called and claimed to be in the psychiatric ward of Kings County Hospital being held against his will. The moment we departed the bridge, he said, the cop called the men in the white coats. Whatever the shrinks told him, it didn't work. In 2001 he submitted papers to the Campaign Finance Board to run for mayor. This year he filed petitions to run in the Democratic primary for governor.

GOLDEN FLAGGED FOR ODD BILL A New York Post story about oddball bills in the City Council mentioned one introduced by Bay Ridge's Marty Golden to require every parade to be led by an American flag. Forget, for the moment, that the whole premise of "the land of the free" is that the government can't impose its beliefs on you, be they religious, nationalistic, whatever. Think instead about how many sleepless nights you've endured worrying that Old Glory might not be at the forefront of a parade somewhere in the city. Not too many, right? Surely there are more pressing problems in need of Golden's attention. allow Golden to run for another term in 2003 (though if Golden wins his race for state Senate this year, that will be moot).

McCALL STRATEGY SIMPLE AS BLACK AND WHITE

Borough Politics Archive

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2001
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2000
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1999
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