MAJOR MISTAKE? Reform Democrats who've supported Major Owens must have cringed when the congressman attended a press conference to support embattled Democratic county leader Clarence Norman on October 7. Owens counts himself as a "reform" Democrat. Yet the self-described reform Democratic clubs despise Norman and the way he runs the party.

Owens is not the only elected official who showed up Tuesday for Norman. Also on hand were Assemblymen Roger Green and William Boyland, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Councilmen Al Vann and Kendall Stewart, and Councilwoman Tracy Boyland, not to mention some black district leaders. They contend Norman is the victim of a witch hunt by Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes and the daily newspapers.

Two white elected officials from Brooklyn also came: Councilman Domenic Recchia and Assemblyman Vito Lopez. Strangely absent was one of the organizers, State Senator Carl Andrews, who didn't return our call to explain why. But otherwise, it was a big turnout by Brooklyn's black elected officials.

As one African-American activist told us, "The black elected officials feel they need to take a stand against what they perceive to be an attack by the New York Post, in particular, and other folks who are using double standards to undermine Brooklyn's black political leadership." What we have here, perhaps, is a black thang, and we don't understand.

We don't understand why anyone thinks it's acceptable that rather than build up the Democratic Party by attracting young, eager volunteers, Clarence Norman has used it to enrich himself-buying fancy clothes, shoes, and a Rolex, driving luxury cars, taking women to posh restaurants, and paying for all sorts of mundane lunches and purchases at Target, Mikasa, The Wiz, Home Depot, etc. with party funds. And that doesn't even count whatever he's done with his campaign accounts, which are only as fat as they are because he's the county leader.

Norman has also used the power of the county leadership to enrich his friends, people like Jackie Ward, who is such an amazing campaign strategist that she collected over $15,000 per week to aid Mark Green's losing mayoral campaign after Green bought Norman's endorsement.

Let's not forget Norman's pal William Boone III, who (to cite just one case) got $9,000 to "get out the vote" in black neighborhoods for a white Jew (Karen Yellen) running against a black and a Latina! Yellen wanted to get out the Jewish vote, but Boone's connections are in the black neighborhoods, so that's where Norman directed the money, which would have been better spent suppressing the black vote than getting it out. Yellen lost to Dolores Thomas and Margarita Lopez Torres.

Norman's people tell us Boone did all sorts of things for Yellen's campaign, and it's wrong for us to assume she couldn't get votes in black areas. Boone also made $39,000 (that we know of) in one five-year span from candidates endorsed by Norman, plus $4,500 of the Mark Green money in 2001.

And, of course, there's Andrews, who's pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars from jobs he owes to Norman. Yes, hundreds of thousands. We're counting the $101,000 from Norman-backed candidates between 1993 and 1998, the $80,000-a-year job he got from Norman-backed Eliot Spitzer, and his current job in the State Senate.

We haven't even mentioned all of Norman's lawyer friends who were handed lucrative legal work by Norman-backed judges. One of them was Ravi Batra, whose firm hired Norman in 1995 to work part-time at salaries up to $64,000 and paid him referral fees to boot. Batra even made the $1,400 monthly payments on Norman's $80,000 Mercedes, which Norman apparently needed as a change of pace from his $998-per-month Lincoln Town Car paid for by the party.

The payoff for Batra? At least $456,000 since 1995 for handling court matters commonly tied to patronage. Norman said Batra got those jobs because "he's a brilliant lawyer." He suddenly became brilliant in 1995? Until hiring Norman, Batra got virtually no patronage assignments in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the party is a shell of its former self, despite having more registered Democrats than any county in the nation. A

s the same activist we quoted above explained, "The real tragedy here, however, is that the Democratic Party as a Brooklyn institution has not succeeded in mobilizing and motivating young people to participate and vote in the numbers we need to pursue progressive policies and elect progressive candidates in this city. The Democratic Party has not increased the turnout level among those who are already registered, so that political leadership must respect Brooklyn's numbers. Brooklyn has steadily lost power (sometimes deservedly so) over the past 13 years due to an entrenchment of attitudes and priorities that are out of sync with the changes in the political environment."

We would add that priorities like spending $3,233 in party funds to take dates to pricey steak houses like the Knickerbocker would be out of sync in any political environment, and not very chivalrous either. Yes, Joe Hynes is white and Norman is black. That doesn't make the investigation a racist witch hunt. Mind you, we are no lackey of Joe Hynes. Regular readers of this column know that Hynes has taken his share of criticism in this space. But in the case of the Clarence Norman Money Train, the facts speak for themselves.

SHARKS SMELL NORMAN'S BLOOD Democratic county leader Clarence Norman was to meet October 9 with fellow district leaders to discuss whether he should step down, given his pending indictment, Norman's press people reported. They said perhaps an interim county leader could take over until Norman's cleared and can return to his throne.

We don't know the true meaning of this, but here are three possibilities.

1. Norman is saying he's willing to step aside because his primary concern is the good of the party.
2. Norman is making it seem like his primary concern is the good of the party, but is actually lobbying district leaders to be sure a majority (23 or more) vote to keep him.
3. Norman sees no point in remaining county leader if he can't continue his shenanigans of years past, namely living the good life on party funds and directing candidates he endorses to hire his friends.

People being mentioned as replacements include State Senator Marty Connor (who's not currently eligible to be county leader, but that could be changed with a simple vote), district leaders Joe Bova and Bernie Catcher, and Assemblymembers Darryl Towns and Annette Robinson. Connor said he's flattered to be mentioned, but added, "I'm not looking to kock down any doors to become county leader if what it means is to (preside over) the wreck that's been passing as the Brooklyn Democratic Party in recent years."

It bodes well for Connor, though, that Pat Guadagnino is resigning as vice chair of the party and is slated to be replaced by Freddie Hamilton, a black woman, which augurs that a white man will be county leader to maintain the current ethnic and gender balance in the top two spots.

And what of Norman's seat in the Assembly? He would not resign from that, at least not yet. But that hasn't kept some sharks from circling in the increasingly red water. One possible candidate is attorney Jesse Hamilton, who's served on School Board 17 and Community Board 8. Hamilton's a former member of Norman's Thurgood Marshall Democratic Club but has now distanced himself from it. Another possibility is Eric Adams of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. Adams lives on the same block as Norman's club. He's known for floating his name in lots of races but never actually running. At least one Norman ally would run, perhaps William Boone III or 43rd Assembly District Democratic state committeewoman Shirley Patterson.

Finally, there's a longshot: Hakeem Jeffries, who twice ran against Assemblyman Roger Green. Jeffries grew up in the district and his parents still live there, but he now owns a house in the 57th A.D. Jeffries has other options next year as well. Should Assemblyman Green quit because of the free-ride/travel-voucher scandal, Jeffries would run for the open seat. If Green stays but Carl Andrews leaves his State Senate seat to run for Congress in Rep. Major Owens's district, Jeffries would run there. (Andrews has been telling people he's interested in the congressional seat, a source told us.)

At the very least, Jeffries will run for the male district leadership in the 57th A.D., a seat currently held by Francis Byrd, who was appointed to succeed his political adversary, the slain James Davis. By the way, why was Byrd chosen by Norman? Previously we'd suggested it was payback for Byrd withdrawing from the district leader's race in 2002 purportedly in an effort to help Norman ally Bill Saunders defeat Davis.

But that doesn't really make sense, because Saunders had no chance to win anyway, so Norman didn't really owe Byrd. More likely Norman made some sort of deal. One source speculated that Norman appointed Byrd as a favor to Byrd allies Rep. Major Owens and his son Chris Owens-in exchange for a guarantee that Major would not quit after petitioning for reelection and then bequeath his seat to his son. Why would Norman care about that? Because his friend Andrews wants a fair shot at Owens's seat.

If that deal were made, it was a good one for Chris Owens, since he'd already pledged to try to win the seat fairly, and now his friend Byrd is in a better position to help him.

SHELTER FOE RESPONDS DAY-LATE NEWS: First sentence of a Daily News story October 2: "Brooklyn Democratic boss Clarence Norman and his executive director believe they could be indicted as early as next week by a grand jury investigating whether judgeships are for sale in the borough, the Daily News has learned." Where do you suppose the News learned that from? Perhaps from the New York Sun, which ran the story the day before?

SHELTER UPDATE Opponents of the plan for Rose House, a battered women's shelter to open soon in Carroll Gardens, recovered a bit of their dignity by deciding to stop publicizing the address of the safe house, since no one believed their disingenuous claim that advertising the secret location was not part of their effort to scare the shelter away.

Rose House opponent Danny Contreras also decided to return his ourcarrollgardens.com Web site to its former purpose as an impartial neighborhood resource center, rather than an advocacy site to stop the shelter. Nonetheless, ridiculous arguments against Rose House persist.

To listen to opponents, you'd think the 20 resident battered women and children would require dozens of garbage trucks to collect their trash, a fleet of taxis to take them to court dates, a dozen Secret Service officers to keep the block safe, and a bunch of school buses for the 12 or 14 children. Contreras told us an appropriate site would be one that was run past the community first, which didn't happen with the current site. Yet that has no bearing on its appropriateness. He also told us the big brownstone is too small for four to six women and their kids, and they would feel cramped. The fact is they'd have plenty of room, and more than millions of New Yorkers. C

ontreras said a brownstone is not a safe location for such a shelter. Yet Park Slope has at least two safe houses in brownstones. No one protested their arrival and no one complains about them. Virtually no one even knows they're there.

Another Rose House opponent, Vincent Favorito, somehow got the impression there would be no services at the facility. "Our sources who treat these women and their emotionally traumatized children tell us that they are in need of special care and attention. From what we are told, which is very little, they will receive no such care at this facility."

We refer Favorito and Contreras to the Rose House fact sheet: "Families will share kitchens and dining areas located on three of the four floors. The first floor of the property will contain a social service office, a common room and entertainment room and one bedroom. The second and third floors will contain three bedrooms with a bathroom, a kitchen, and eating area. The fourth floor will contain two larger bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and eating area. The cellar will contain a boiler room, the laundry room, and storage space. New York Asian Women's Center will offer a range of services to women and children at the site including safety planning, domestic violence counseling, case management assistance, legal and medical referrals, independent living skills, and assistance locating permanent housing."

Another opponent asserted that welcoming the shelter wouldn't be "giving back" to Carroll Gardens because the shelter residents would be coming from other neighborhoods. As if Carroll Gardens has no abused women who seek shelter elsewhere! The same writer, opining in the Brooklyn Paper, predicted abusive husbands would find the shelter and chase their wives down the street, running into the blind and deaf people who receive services nearby. Yes, it has come to that.

A letter from Carroll Gardens activist Buddy Scotto scolded us for referring to Rose House opponents as "heartless, ignorant, and paranoid" since "name calling never furthers civic discourse." We like Buddy Scotto because he's fought so hard to clean up the Gowanus Canal, and we appreciate his advice, but our purpose was not to further civic discourse. It was to call opponents heartless, ignorant, and paranoid.

In his letter, Scotto failed to articulate why he believes the chosen shelter site is "inappropriate" except to say that a site could have been found that didn't raise substantial concern. That misses the point. The point is baseless concern should not get priority over the needs of battered women. The point is shelter residents deserve to live in a residence, on a residential street, in a residential neighborhood. They do in Park Slope and many other neighborhoods. Why not Carroll Gardens? With Councilman Bill deBlasio and Assemblywoman Joan Millman having accepted the shelter's arrival as inevitable, and pledging only to help ease whatever legitimate concerns opponents can scratch together, some opponents have begun to focus on repairing the neighborhood rift spurred by their uproar. But others have not, and are preparing to take legal action.

Scotto might want to advise them that filing suit doesn't further civic discourse.

MILLMAN MIFFED Sources tell us that Assemblywoman Joan Millman announced at the last meeting of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats that she refuses to return our phone calls. "He never gets anything right," she fumed.

Never? We wrote just before her reelection last year that Millman has been "a fairly visible legislator, regularly attending community meetings and events." If that is not right, please alert us and we will run a correction.

Just to test Millman's assertion that we're never right, we'll report that her district's state committeewoman, Liz Daly, will resign and hopes to be replaced by fellow Boerum Hill activist Joanne Simon. If that's inaccurate, we're sure Daly will tell us. Millman is upset because we called on her to take a position in support of the battered women's shelter proposed for Carroll Gardens. She wants to remain impartial.

SORRY, DOV An item in the paper version of our October 6 column infuriated Assemblyman Dov Hikind. When he called to complain, we thought his objection was to our assertion that by mentioning bestiality in discussing the Right to Marry bill, he was comparing gay people to animals.

But that wasn't what upset him. Rather, it was the sentence, "Apparently Assemblyman Dov Hikind's mother never taught him that if he had nothing nice to say, to say nothing." Hikind told us, "We will not return your calls and we will never talk to you ever again." The assemblyman has every right to be insulted. (His feeling of insult may be comparable to that of gay people who read Hikind's quote likening gay marriage to bestiality, but that doesn't excuse what we wrote.)

We were just using "when you have nothing nice to say…" as an expression, and not attempting to get personal, but obviously, we touched on a sensitive subject. An apology is indeed in order. We should have written, "Apparently Dov Hikind never learned that if you have nothing nice to say, to say nothing." The reference to his mother was careless, superfluous, and uncalled for, and we are sorry for making it.

We hope to be forgiven, even if the assemblyman chooses not to contribute to the column in the future.

We also hope that Dov, regardless of his religious beliefs about same-sex marriage, will find it in his heart to apologize to those who were offended by his remark about bestiality. So does Councilman Bill deBlasio, who represents Borough Park and is a political ally of Hikind, but also represents brownstone areas where the gay community is strong. "What he said was absolutely inappropriate. I can't disagree with him more on this," deBlasio said. "It was one thing to disagree on an issue, but to use that kind of terminology, I think it really hurts the public discourse. We try to keep things as civil as we can in a diverse city and I really think he should apologize, and I told him that. I think he made a real mistake and he would help the entire city by simply apologizing and saying he used words that weren't wise and weren't helpful."

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

Borough Politics Archive

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2000
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