METZ MISSES HER CHANCE Hundreds of hours in the summer heat collecting thousands of signatures for would-be Assembly candidate Susan Metz proved a waste of time when she left town without formally accepting a place on the ballot, sources said. Metz had been warned about going away during what many hoped would be a competitive campaign against Roger Green, the former assemblyman. But she left anyway, and by the time her people realized she had to file an acceptance form and correct cover sheet errors, it was too late.

The form is to ensure people don't appear on the ballot without their consent. But failing to file it can exclude candidates who intend to run. Such was the case with Metz, who hoped to challenge Green on a host of issues, primarily Bruce Ratner's arena project. Metz is fighting to get back on the ballot. To do so, she may need people more familiar with New York election law than those currently helping her. Her research director is reportedly an out-of-towner who has been heard referring to Brooklyn Democratic leader Clarence Norman as "Clarence Newton."

BARRETT BONKS BOYLAND A politico opposing the reelection of Rep. Major Owens tried to discredit the Village Voice article by Windsor Terrace's Wayne Barrett on the suspicious fundraising of Owens's opponent, Councilwoman Tracy Boyland. Barrett, we were told, used to work for Owens.

Well yes, he did. Part-time. For $5,000 a year. Until January 1978. "I'm actually much closer to the Boylands than I am to Major," said Barrett, who goes way back with Tracy's father, Frank Boyland, the former assemblyman. "My mother died in October and two of the Boylands were at the grave in Connecticut. No Owenses." Barrett disclosed his former job with Owens in an article he wrote about the congressman's race in 2000, but not this time. "I think the statute of limitations on that might have run," he said.

The bigger question is about Boyland's fundraising, not Barrett's part-time job more than 26 years ago. The Voice writer further investigated an issue examined in this column's March 8 edition and concluded that Boyland's fundraising discrepancies and violations were intentional, not a matter of sloppy bookkeeping or ignorance. "I was shocked and dismayed at what I found," he said. "I was just appalled." He noted that Boyland's City Council campaign committee held fundraisers and deposited the proceeds into her congressional account, which is illegal, and that some donations were recorded several times.

For instance, a $500 donation by Ken Fisher (which Fisher thought was going to Boyland's Council committee) was reported on the congressional committee's disclosure form three different ways, as if it were $1,500. "That means they got $1,000 that neither you nor I have any idea where it came from," Barrett said, adding that many thousands more were also untraceable.

He suspects the Boylands are masking quid pro quo donations from developers whose projects could be aided by Tracy Boyland in the City Council or her brother, Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. And what was the Boylands' explanation? "They don't have one," Barrett said. In fact, they wouldn't even return his calls. So he drove out to Tracy's campaign office and plunked himself down until Frank Boyland showed up.

In two hours, Barrett never got a straight answer to his questions about fundraising. The elder Boyland professed to be too unsophisticated to even understand it. "Frank has this way [of saying], 'I'm a country boy who can't talk straight,'" Barrett said, but in fact, "He's one of the smartest people you'll ever meet." But even smart people make mistakes. The Voice writer said Frank Boyland should never have run his daughter against Owens this year. "I think this was a political disaster for Frank," Barrett said.

He noted that the better course would have been to start raising money now but not run until the seat is open. "They'd have had a war chest in 2006," said Barrett. Instead, he predicted, the Boylands will have nothing but a damaging Federal Elections Commission audit to run on in two years' time. "I think it was a matter of ambition running against common sense, in rather ugly fashion," Barrett said. Our calls to Boyland were not returned.

PARKER VICTIM OF HATE MAIL State Senator Kevin Parker was victimized by anonymous hate mail sent to households in his district, which stretches from Borough Park to Canarsie. The letter was written in the same style as another recent piece of anonymous literature attacking Parker's ally Weyman Carey, who is running for district leader in the 58th Assembly District against Asquith Reid, an ally of Councilman Kendall Stewart. Most likely the author is an East Flatbush nutcase on one side of the political divide separating Parker and Stewart. Anonymous campaign literature is usually false or wildly exaggerated. Otherwise the author would identify himself.

Elsewhere in the race, Noach Dear raised the ire of Working Families Party head Bertha Lewis by challenging the 11 signatures Parker collected to run on the WFP line. "Noach supports the initiatives of the Working Families Party. Our challenge of Kevin Parker's petitions has nothing to do with the Working Families Party and all to do with Parker's illegal signatures. Out of the 11 signatures Parker collected, ALL 11 are fraudulent. Are we supposed to ignore that fact?" wrote Dear's campaign manager, John McLoughlin. He claimed the signatures don't match those on the signers' buff cards.

Responded Lewis, "An attack on Kevin Parker's WFP petitions is an attack on the WFP since, unlike in the Democratic Party, the WFP helps its endorsed candidates collect signatures." The party should have helped a little more. The minimum number of signatures to make the WFP line in Parker's district is 11, so if just one on Parker's petition is found to be invalid, he'd lose the line. That's why candidates try to collect three times the minimum. Both sides are due in court September 7.

ROBERTS, NORMAN TRADE BARBS Assembly candidate Ed Roberts has said his opponent, incumbent Clarence Norman, should resign, but at a forum hosted by this newspaper Roberts said he hopes Norman is not convicted of the felony charges against him. Roberts said he's not the kind to wish ill upon others. Nonetheless, Roberts said Norman's duties as the county Democratic leader have distracted him from serving his district. "The more time you're preoccupied with certain issues, the less time you have for others," Roberts said. "Power sometimes leads people in wrong directions."

A panelist suggested Norman's other hats help him bring services to the district. "If he has clout from being a district leader and county leader…and can use that clout to bring services to the district, he has been a woeful failure," replied Roberts, citing the district's high unemployment and Norman's failure to pass any significant legislation. Norman bristled at the mere mention of Roberts. "I don't like to beat up on my opponent, but Ed Roberts knows absolutely nothing about the 43rd Assembly District," Norman said, adding that he's never seen Roberts at a community meeting.

Roberts might not be known as a civic leader, but he was a member of Community Board 14 from 1992-94 and works as a neighborhood attorney at Glenwood Road and Nostrand Avenue. He was a state Division of Housing and Community Renewal employee for five years and later worked for the Bedford-Stuyvesant Community Services Corporation.

JUDICIAL REFORM SOUGHT Attorney Alan Rocoff formally introduced a slate of insurgent Democratic judicial delegate candidates. Winners of these races-which are rarely decided by voters because usually they are uncontested-vote for the party's Supreme Court nominees at a convention every fall. Insiders such as Assemblyman Clarence Norman control the judicial convention because the delegates are essentially their proxies. Rocoff's slate represents a frontal assault on the old guard.

"This is the first time in Brooklyn history that an independent, non-aligned group has managed to shake the foundations of the political bosses' control over the Brooklyn courthouse by fielding a slate of candidates pledged to open up the process and return to a merit-based selection controlled by the people of Brooklyn," said Mill Island accountant Charles R. Harary, chairman of the group, in a press release. Said Rocoff, "Only through a direct election challenge to the entrenched machine can we at last cast sunshine on the process."

But the effort has suffered a couple of setbacks. First, according to Norman, many of Rocoff's candidates were removed from the ballot because their petitions were insufficient. (Rocoff said most made the ballot.) Second, sources said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who is close to Rocoff, is trying to distance himself from the effort because his priority is to get a fellow Orthodox Jew, Eric Prus, nominated for Supreme Court. If Hikind were to take part in a failed coup, Norman wouldn't let Prus anywhere near Brooklyn's bench. "Dov has started to make personal calls to district leaders about Prus, because he's worried," one insider said. "I would venture to say now that Eric Prus is not going to Supreme this year. No way."

Rocoff disagreed, saying Prus has widespread support among Brooklyn's Democratic leaders. "I have never known Clarence to be a vindictive or petty person," Rocoff added. "I would find it very difficult to believe that he would turn against Prus because of an effort I am involved in as an attorney, in my own capacity, independent of Hikind and that Hikind has nothing to do with." (Margarita Lopez Torres might disagree with Rocoff's assessment of Norman's vindictiveness, having been blacklisted since lending her name to an insurgent Supreme Court slate in 1997.)

Rocoff said Hikind is "an old friend from childhood" but never had anything to do with the slate of judicial delegates. He said assumptions that they always support each other's political dealings are erroneous, noting that he supported Chuck Schumer and Mike Bloomberg in 1998 and 2001, respectively, over Hikind's choices of Al D'Amato and Mark Green.

Norman, for his part, says Brooklyn's 42 Democratic district leaders decide on the slate of nominees to be ratified at the judicial convention. But it's not exactly an open vote by the leaders. Rather, Norman determines their preferences through phone calls to the leaders, then presents a slate on which the leaders vote yes or no. (They always vote yes.) That slate is then rubber-stamped at the convention, then by voters in November. "The one thing Clarence has over these guys is he's still the one who fills the Supreme Court slots," our source noted. "He has some leverage."

PEARSE BACK ON BALLOT Gabriel Toks Pearse is back on the Democratic primary ballot against Rep. Major Owens and Councilwomen Yvette Clarke and Tracy Boyland, but not before a scare from the Board of Elections and an unsympathetic Supreme Court judge. Pearse was told by this newspaper, but not by the Board of Elections, that he had vanished from the official list of candidates. He then contacted the board and was told he'd been disqualified on a technicality.

According to Pearse, the board initially failed to assign his candidacy a number. A campaign worker later returned to the board and obtained a number. But the board ruled he hadn't been formally authorized by Pearse to do so, and trashed his 2,785 signatures without even notifying him.

A judge upheld the ruling, but Pearse was restored to the ballot by the Appellate Division. Had he not been called by this newspaper August 9, Pearse would have missed the deadline to challenge his disqualification. Stories like these only reinforce the widely held notion that running for office here is an arcane exercise designed to exclude average folk. Pearse asked, "Is this Brooklyn politics at its worst?" Actually, it's the opposite.

TIDBITS Councilman David Yassky was upset that his quote about State Senate candidate Ron Clinton, and a purported endorsement of him, appeared on Clinton's campaign literature. "I have not endorsed Mr. Clinton for State Senate [and] I do not intend to," Yassky said in a statement e-mailed to the media. Clinton is running against incumbent Marty Malave Dilan in northern Brooklyn…

How green is Assembly candidate Inna Kaminsky? The 27-year-old Coney Island resident, who came to the U.S. from Odessa when she was 9, is being mentored by Cole Ettman, 27, a first-time candidate himself. Kaminsky is challenging Adele Cohen while Ettman is running for the seat being vacated by State Senator Seymour Lachman. Ettman is selling his youth as an asset, calling himself "young, untainted, not part of the machine." He noted that Chuck Schumer was an assemblyman at 23 and Anthony Weiner a councilman at 22. But Weiner was 26 when elected in 1991. Ettman is the only Jew in the race, so he was upset to hear that Assemblyman Dov Hikind endorsed Diane Savino. Ettman had met with Hikind seeking his support. Savino, by the way, has appeared twice on Hikind's Saturday night radio show, a platform Hikind uses regularly to promote candidates he likes. Should that not count as an in-kind campaign contribution by the radio station?

The highest court in New York state affirmed the decision denying Sam Sloan the Republican and Independence Party lines against Rep. Ed Towns. The Republicans were so sure Sloan would lose that they didn't send their attorney, Ted Alatsas, to Albany to argue the case…

Rep. Vito Fossella was allotted no speaking time at this year's Republican convention, unlike four years ago, the Staten Island Advance reported.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

Borough Politics Archive

2004
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2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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