CANDIDATE AMBUSHED IN TALE OF REVENGE City Council candidate Sara Gonzalez probably wishes she'd skipped the Independent Neighborhood Democrats endorsement meeting, but Cobble Hill resident Gene Moore is sure glad she didn't. Moore was district manager of Community Board 7 for five years before being forced out of his job six months after Gonzalez became chairwoman of the board in a coup engineered by former Councilman Angel Rodriguez, the extortionist. Moore was replaced by Rodriguez's chief of staff, Jeremy Laufer. When Gonzalez was asked at IND about Rodriguez and her sudden ascension from obscure CB 7 member to chairwoman, according to one witness, "She chose not to answer any of the questions. She went off on a tirade saying she was a qualified woman and 'why is it a woman can't get where she is without having a man put her in that place?'"

But if Gonzalez were trying to inspire guilt among IND members, she failed miserably-thanks in part to Moore, who got a measure of sweet revenge by telling the club (in so many words) that Gonzalez and Rodriguez colluded to oust him, and that in the time that he worked under Gonzalez, every move she made was on Angel's orders. Moore essentially punctured the image of independence Gonzalez was presenting. "A lot of us had known the story, but to hear Gene say it, and to hear Gene say that he was unemployed for one year, totally destroyed her," the witness said. "I think she was pretty shocked the way the whole thing unfolded."

The club then voted overwhelmingly to endorse School Board 15 President Eddie Rodriguez for the council seat. Rodriguez (no relation to Angel) has also been endorsed by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, Councilmen David Yassky and Bill deBlasio, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and district leaders Alan Fleishman and Liz Daly. Another candidate, George Martinez, was asked at IND why he didn't join the Campaign Finance Program to receive public matching funds for his campaign. Martinez claimed that noted election attorney Henry Berger said it would cost $15,000 or $18,000 to handle all the paperwork, so he decided to forsake the program. Ken Diamondstone then stood up and said when he ran for council last year, he and a few friends filled out the paperwork on their own and soon had checks in their hands (for $94,946). IND members were no doubt left scratching their heads over Martinez's explanation, which we called Berger to confirm. "I never disagree with a client," Berger said. As for the Campaign Finance Program, he added, "Full compliance with the campaign finance rules is onerous, and in a short-term election, you may not get everything done in time."

But no one in the room bought Martinez's reason. "That was an inexcusable gaffe," said one observer. Further sealing Martinez's fate at IND, someone mentioned the fraudulent petitions submitted by his failed 2001 council campaign. The only candidate to skip the IND meeting was Javier Nieves-probably a smart move given the knocks taken by Gonzalez and Martinez.

The council election is November 5, coinciding with the general election. The district is primarily Sunset Park and Red Hook but stretches from the Bay Ridge Towers to Boerum Hill.

IRAQ MEETING Four members of Congress-Jerry Nadler, Nydia Velazquez, Major Owens, and Ed Towns-have confirmed their attendance at a town hall meeting on Iraq at Middle School 51 in Park Slope on October 6 at 6 p.m. But what about Anthony Weiner? He initially told organizers he might not be able to attend, because of scheduling conflicts. "We assume he's pro-war and he's fearful to come to Park Slope and speak about it," said a member of one of the Democratic clubs hosting the forum.

That's not the case at all, Weiner told us. "I never had a problem going into the lion's den on these things," said Weiner, who grew up in Park Slope. "I like the give and take." The problem with October 6 is that Weiner has appearances scheduled in central Queens, which will be part of his district next year. His current district includes a small piece of Park Slope, which he'll lose entirely come January. He said he'd try to stop in at the meeting, which is expected to attract hundreds of people, most of them likely opposed to invading Iraq.

Weiner's position? "My inclination is I want to be supportive of the president," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind that the timing of this is political. But I don't have the luxury of refusing to vote on it." Many Democrats believe Bush put an Iraq invasion on the table to overshadow two issues-corporate malfeasance and the slumping economy-that could have cost the party control of the House in the November 5 election. The vote on the House's Iraq resolution was scheduled to occur before the election. But Weiner has no viable opponent, so he can vote the way he feels, which is: "I believe [Saddam] Hussein is a menace, that he has shown belligerence toward the U.S. and the U.N., and he has the ability, opportunity, and motive to commit grave acts of terror and he must be stopped." Weiner doesn't have to look hard to find opposition to his hawkishness. "I'm getting a taste of it every day with my mom and dad calling me up and giving me an earful on Iraq," the congressman said.

THORN IN COUNTY LEADER'S SIDE Boerum Hill Democratic district leader Elizabeth Rose Daly is proving to be one plucky customer for her party's county leader, Assemblyman Clarence Norman. In September, Daly joined Councilman James Davis in voting against Norman for county leader (county's Jeff Feldman had told us Daly abstained, which, while inaccurate, was closer to the truth than Norman's telling The New York Times that he was reelected unanimously).

Daly told us she'd had "too many disagreements with him over the years" and was frustrated at Norman's refusal to answer her letters, including one last February suggesting a review of county's method for picking judges because people "see us as running a sham operation." (Had Norman listened to Daly, he might have avoided a ton of bad publicity in recent weeks from the Village Voice, New York Times, New York Law Journal, and Daily News.) This month, Daly and county committee member Jack Carroll of Kensington wrote another letter asking why county had run up $125,000 on its American Express Card and made over $46,000 in car payments since January 1998.

This time, Daly got a response. She was told that county buys a lot of food and also pays $1,000 a month for Norman's car. We mentioned to her the absence of competition for Norman's county leadership. Daly noted that finding someone to run is difficult because the position is demanding, and whoever holds it needs to have a job that provides a lot of free time. You mean, like an assemblyman?

NIEVES TURNS OVER NUEVA LEAF Former Sunset Park/Red Hook assemblyman Javier Nieves says he's learned and matured since his two-year stint in office, during which time some folks portrayed him as overambitious and arrogant. The self-described "much older, much wiser" Nieves is among four candidates trying to succeed Angel Rodriguez in the 38th Council District.

Nieves, after losing to Assemblyman Felix Ortiz in 1994, returned to work as an architect for the New York City Housing Authority. He still lives in Sunset Park, where he told us he stays involved with community issues, and is currently running his campaign out of his 43rd Street apartment. Nieves said the folks who talked badly of him all those years ago had unspoken motivations. "'He doesn't play ball, he's arrogant'-these are the things people were saying," Nieves said. "Certain people have been unmasked. The people that put that stuff out there often had other agendas."

But he did acknowledge that impatience and inexperience caused him some missteps following his election in 1992, a year after he finished second to Joan McCabe in a competitive City Council race. He was faulted for, among other things, allegedly talking about challenging McCabe again or perhaps Rep. Nydia Velazquez. "Certainly I made some mistakes along the way in the beginning," Nieves said. "When you're new and you're young, you're impetuous and you're trying to learn the process…There's a lot to be said for maturity." Rather than bury his past, Nieves is using it to distinguish himself from candidates Eddie Rodriguez, Sara Gonzalez, and George Martinez by noting that only he has been elected to legislative office. "I know all three of them, and they're decent people," Nieves said. But "in this race, we need someone who's been there."

Nieves said he's mended fences with Ortiz. "We've crossed the bridge and we've talked more than we have in the past," said Nieves. "He's told me he is staying out of this race, and I hope that he would honor that." (Ortiz told us he might make an endorsement later.) Nieves did hold out hope for the support of Velazquez, whose Sunset Park/Red Hook campaign operation he coordinated a decade ago. "I will reach out to her and hopefully she will endorse me," Nieves said.

But the congresswoman had already made up her mind. The next day we learned Velazquez was endorsing Rodriguez, the president of School Board 15. Evidently the past is not forgotten.

NEW LIGHTS SAVE CITY MONEY Park Slope resident Steve Yanowsky, a regular reader of this newspaper, asked in a recent letter to the editor why the city is replacing perfectly functional Walk/Don't Walk lights with new ones that use symbols, especially given the budget crunch.

It sounded like a rhetorical question, but in fact there's a good answer: the new pedestrian signals will save the city $1.6 million in annual electricity costs once they're installed citywide at a cost of $7.5 million. So the lights will pay for themselves within five years, said Department of Transportation spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon.

The new signals feature light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are brighter and use 8 to 20 watts of electricity, compared to 67 watts for the incandescent bulbs they're replacing. The LEDs also last for about 12 years, while the old lights needed new bulbs about every 11 months. So maintenance should be less expensive as well. About 60 percent of Brooklyn's 3,920 signalized intersections now have the new lights, and the borough should be finished by year's end. Manhattan and the Bronx will follow. Installation began in Queens and Staten Island in 2000, before the budget crunch.

MARTY ADDS SUBSTANCE Borough President Marty Markowitz has certainly livened up the business of cheerleading for Brooklyn in ways that his predecessor, Howard Golden, wouldn't have dared. But he hasn't made a fan of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who suggested to us a while back that Markowitz's zaniness is distracting him from serious issues facing Brooklyn, such as outrageous automobile insurance rates.

Lopez derided Markowitz's New Year's Day ocean swim at Coney Island and his "Lighten Up, Brooklyn" weight-loss contest, saying, "It mocks the office." But Markowitz says he's tending to important matters as well. At a recent Borough Hall breakfast with us and other reporters, the beep rattled off a list of substantive efforts, including his formation of a Brooklyn Auto Insurance Task Force, whose first meeting he chaired on September 18. The meeting included the state insurance superintendent and representatives of insurance companies, who blamed insurance fraud (fake doctor visits and the like) for Brooklyn's high rates. Markowitz also announced at the breakfast that he'd launched an effort to modify and reopen Coney Island's famous parachute jump.

The beep said he has no plans to curtail his lighter events, including hosting more mixers for singles over 40 and another Lighten Up, Brooklyn next year. There was no word on whether Assemblyman Lopez would participate in either.

HELLER LEARNS THE HARD WAY Prospect Heights resident Mickey Heller, who finished a distant third behind Carl Andrews and Wellington Sharpe in the Democratic primary for Senate District 20, learned the hard way during his virgin campaign what works and what doesn't. On the plus side, Heller made the ballot and won the endorsement of The New York Times. But he spent primary day racing around replacing campaign posters that his enemies had ripped down, when a more experienced candidate would have parked himself in front of a Park Slope polling site and handed out copies of the Times endorsement all day. Heller, who works for a church with a large black congregation, had a notion-admirable but misguided-that he could appeal to voters of all types. So he campaigned evenly across the district.

Yet the fact remains that he was the only white candidate and the only one endorsed by the Times, which means more to Park Slope voters than those in Flatbush and Crown Heights. Standard campaign practice is to use your weapons where they're most effective. Heller's BB-gun arsenal limited his potential, but he could have at least taken home a rabbit for dinner instead of trying to fell a herd of elephants.

BROOKLYN POLS BACK DIAPER BILL Seven Brooklyn councilmembers are among the co-sponsors of a bill to require diaper-changing tables at public gathering places, such as restaurants and playgrounds. Charles Barron, Yvette Clarke, Bill deBlasio, Mike Nelson, Domenic Recchia, Kendall Stewart, and David Yassky all attached their names to the bill, which is sure to go over well with parents of infants, if not for restaurant owners.

But the bill certainly needs tweaking. The idea that playgrounds need changing tables is absurd, given the simplicity of changing a diaper on a bench or rubber safety surfacing. And there is simply no room for changing tables in the tiny bathrooms in pizzerias and other small eateries. Furthermore, restaurants that cater to young families-if they're smart-already have changing areas. But changing stations make as much sense for Peter Luger's steakhouse as a vegetarian menu.

"POLITE" BOOS AS KRUGER PRAISES PATAKI The annual dinner of Canarsie's Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club honored former City Councilman Herb Berman, who now works for Republican Governor George Pataki. But that doesn't mean the club supports Pataki. Far from it. Unfortunately, nobody told state Senator Carl Kruger, a Democrat who heaped praise on Pataki upon taking the podium at the dinner.

Some members of the crowd let Kruger know he was walking on the wrong side of the line. "There was some polite booing," district leader Bernie Catcher acknowledged. Assemblyman Frank Seddio followed Kruger to the podium and cleverly pointed out that he would support the Democratic nominee for governor. Loud applause erupted. Kruger has been vocal in his support for Pataki since the governor helped discard a redistricting proposal that left Kruger no obvious place to run, and replaced it with one that preserves 80 percent of Kruger's current district.

Borough Politics Archive

2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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