NORMAN'S BENZ AT SUNY DOWNSTATE It's tough to find parking in Brooklyn, particularly if you've got three cars and a busy schedule filled with back-room meetings, bail hearings, and mug shots. Fortunately for Assemblyman Clarence Norman, SUNY Downstate Medical Center provides him with a prized spot in an indoor hospital parking garage generally reserved for hospital employees. The cost to Norman is a mere $16.50 per month.

The Democratic county leader's beige Mercedes S-Class 500 is at this very moment parked on the third floor of the hospital garage, which sources said has a waiting list for spots that can take years to get off. This is the same car whose $1,400 monthly payments were once picked up by Ravi Batra, the lawyer whose Manhattan firm hired Norman in 1995. That's when Norman began using the SUNY Downstate parking garage, according to hospital spokesman Ron Najman. (That's also the same year Batra started getting lucrative assignments from judges connected to the Brooklyn Democratic organization.)

Najman said Norman uses the lot on evenings and weekends, when it's generally not full. But our spies noticed it that very morning, a Wednesday, in its usual third-floor spot near Lenox Road. Another source said it's been there for months. Najman also noted that Norman is usually in Albany during the week. True-but the assemblyman leaves his Mercedes in Brooklyn. He takes his Lincoln Town Car, paid for by the Democratic Party (at $998 per month), to his part-time state job.

The hospital spokesman said the garage is primarily for SUNY Downstate employees but that Norman was given privileges there because he's the assemblyman for the area.

The gesture hasn't gone unnoticed by Norman. Earlier this year he honored SUNY Downstate President John LaRosa at a fancy fundraiser at the El Caribe catering hall.

CLARENCE AND THE $5,000 Assemblyman Clarence Norman's handlers say the beauty of campaign financing is that its paper trail will help exonerate the Democratic county leader on the charge that he stole $5,000 from his campaign fund. Problem is, the paper trail ends with Assemblywoman Diane Gordon.

Let's back up a second. Norman says he put a $5,000 check into his personal account to reimburse himself for a $5,000 check he'd written Gordon eight weeks earlier, in September 2001. Norman was indicted because his "reimbursement" check was made out not to him, but to his campaign committee. It was drawn on his Thurgood Marshall Democratic Club account and said "contribution" on the memo line.

Assemblywoman Gordon offered to tell the grand jury about the check Norman wrote her. She was prepared to testify that Norman was fronting her the money after she complained that Norman ally Alan Hevesi owed her $5,000 and that her people wouldn't carry his literature without payment. District Attorney Joe Hynes said she could testify only if she waived immunity. "In prosecutorial parlance, that is a threat," said Norman spokesman Bob Liff. So Gordon, like Norman, declined to testify. Why? Did she fear being railroaded on trumped-up charges, or had she done something wrong?

The answer is both. Gordon failed to report Norman's $5,000 contribution to her campaign committee, as required by state election law. In fact, she has not reported any campaign finance activity since January 2001, according to the state Board of Elections, which is preparing to force her to comply in court. Moreover, Norman's $5,000 donation was itself a violation, said Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian. The maximum individual contribution was $2,700, he said.

We called Gordon's district office in East New York for an explanation. The woman who answered the phone was either brazenly disingenuous or mentally impaired, because she questioned several times why a reporter would be interested in apparent violations of law by an assemblywoman's campaign. Eventually she slammed the receiver down. Gordon, her boss, never called back.

Gordon, who's also a Democratic district leader in the 40th Assembly District, used her campaign committee to run an election operation for Hevesi, Brooklyn borough president candidate Jeannette Gadson, and other Norman-backed candidates in 2001, according to Liff.

Gordon also had a contested primary (against Kenneth Evans, who estimates Gordon spent $100,000) and general election in 2002. She held at least one fundraiser, at Le Cordon Bleu, a fancy catering hall in Queens. Yet no financial activity was reported.

Gordon even attempted to close down her campaign committee, Daghlian said. The Board of Elections would not allow it because a balance of about $800 remained, he said. "I guess we'll have to go to suit on this," said the spokesman.

Unfortunately, state law only allows the board to get judgments of $500 per violation against Gordon's campaign treasurer, a relative of Gordon. You might be wondering why the law is so weak. Have you forgotten who writes these laws?

FORT GREENE RACE TURNING RED Blood is in the water in Fort Greene and Prospect Heights, where City Council candidate Tish James has finally begun responding to the verbal arrows sent her way by Republican hopeful Tony Herbert. Democratic nominee Geoffrey Davis has, wisely, tried to remain out of the fray.

At various forums across the district, Herbert has labeled James an "opportunist" for only deciding to run after incumbent James Davis was murdered in City Hall on July 23. He is correct, of course, but there's some logic to running in races that can be won and sitting out races that can't.

The fact is, Tish James could not have beaten James Davis in 2003, but she does have a chance against his embattled younger brother Geoffrey. Herbert has the toughest road, since he'll be on the Republican line in an overwhelmingly Democratic district.

While James can't deny the "opportunist" label, she did take exception when Herbert called her a "hack" at an October 19 debate. "If I'm a hack, you're a hack. How dare you call me a hack," James rebutted. "But don't worry, Tony, because after the election you're going to be asking me for a job, just like you did two weeks ago. And I'll probably try to help you, because that's the kind of person I am."

Herbert, for his part, contends that James comes across as "very phony." He told us that in one case, James arrived at a housing development before her handlers did, so she got up and walked out until State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and others showed up to introduce her.

The audience didn't fail to notice, Herbert claimed. "They don't go for that," he said. Herbert also said James bears some responsibility for letting Assemblyman Roger Green, whom she served as chief of staff, get into the mess he's in, with the Albany district attorney investigating whether Green received travel reimbursements for expenses he didn't incur. "She's the chief of staff, she's a lawyer, she's supposed to know all the rules, yet she allows the person she works for to get into the situation he's in," Herbert said.

We expect more fireworks at the next debate at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 29 at the Brooklyn Music School, 126 St. Felix Street off Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene. Yours truly will be among the panelists.

MARTY MAKES HIS MARK Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz usually stays above the political fray, but he made an exception to attend a fundraiser for Civil Court Judge Margarita Lopez Torres, who's running for Supreme Court on the Working Families Party line.

Markowitz and Torres have mutual enemies in Assemblyman Vito Lopez and, to a lesser extent, in Assemblyman Clarence Norman. Lopez has bad-mouthed Markowitz in the past, asserting that the beep's cheerleading style makes a mockery of the office. Norman, the Democratic county leader, supported Jeannette Gadson against Markowitz in the 2001 race for borough president.

Markowitz was also spotted at a swank wedding in Long Island by Charles Komanoff, who took the opportunity to joust with the beep about tolls on the East River bridges. Komanoff is their leading advocate, saying they would thin traffic and speed the trips of people who really need to drive. Markowitz opposes the tolls, saying they would amount to a regressive tax that disproportionately hits Brooklynites.

They're both right, of course. But they didn't exactly agree to disagree during their chance encounter on the buffet line. Markowitz ultimately walked off. For Komanoff's version of the conversation, see http://www.bridgetolls.org/polpolls/mmwedding.htm.

VITO GETS AROUND TOWNS At least two Brooklyn Democratic district leaders weren't thrilled to see Assemblyman Darryl Towns join their ranks at the last party meeting: Assemblyman Vito Lopez and his protégé, Councilwoman Diana Reyna. But rather than hold their noses and vote for Towns, or stir up resentment by voting against him, Lopez and Reyna arrived late to the meeting and missed the vote, which was conveniently placed at the beginning of the agenda.

Towns succeeded his father, Rep. Ed Towns, who resigned in September because county leader Clarence Norman wouldn't let him name any Supreme Court judges. The senior Towns and Norman haven't gotten along for years. After Towns endorsed Republican Rudy Giuliani, Norman said, "It's an outright betrayal of the Democratic Party and a betrayal of his constituents. Ed Towns lacks integrity." One keen observer noted that Norman remained an ally of Lopez, who also backed Giuliani.

JUDGE PARTIES IT UP Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Martin Schneier was chided by the Commission on Judicial Conduct on October 1 for using $20,000 in his campaign fund to throw a party for 250 people at the Brooklyn Marriott, the New York Law Journal reported.

You might think Schneier's contributors had something other use for their money in mind when they donated to his campaign. But you'd be wrong. Judges commonly throw parties with campaign money to celebrate new terms, particularly 14-year terms paying $136,700 to start, and their donors know that. The donors are more interested in the judge looking upon them in a more favorable light when they appear in his courtroom.

No one seems to get in trouble when lawyers give money to and socialize with judges before whom they argue cases, but Schneier's gala at the Marriott did get the commission's attention. Judicial conduct rules only allow for "modest" parties. Judge Schneier was also reprimanded for donating $11,000 in leftover campaign money to charity, which is also against the rules. Aren't you glad the commission is so vigilantly protecting justice in our courtrooms?

What would have been allowed was the purchase of office furniture that becomes courthouse property. Schneier's attorney told the Law Journal, "Next time he'll buy himself a mahogany desk for $6,000." Don't laugh: the Law Journal reported that Judge Patricia DiMango spent $7,500 in leftover campaign money on office supplies-much of it at Bloomingdale's. Somehow, when we think of office supplies, Bloomingdale's does not come to mind.

JUDGE FOR YOURSELF It doesn't take an ingenious strategist to figure out what the premise of Republican candidate Phil Smallman's campaign for Civil Court judge should be. After all, as Smallman pointed out, "When you see judges taken away in handcuffs… that's certainly grounds for concern."

His reference was to Supreme Court Judges Victor Barron and Gerald Garson, both products of the Democratic machine. "I don't think citizens are very happy with what they perceive to be happening in the courthouse," Smallman said.

Indeed, they aren't. Problem is, Smallman isn't running against Barron, Garson, or any of the other judges accused of malfeasance. He's running against Democrats ShawnDya Simpson, a respected prosecutor, and Civil Court Judge Lila Gold, who won her seat by running against the Democratic machine in 1993.

So while Smallman's campaign premise can be, "Vote for me because I'm not corrupt," upon questioning, he acknowledges that neither are his two opponents. "I in no way insinuate that anything is wrong with Ms. Simpson or Ms. Gold," said Smallman, 52, of Park Slope. "They stand on their own qualifications, as do I."

Does it malign Simpson or Gold when their opponent (the three are running for two seats) campaigns against the moral decay of the Brooklyn judiciary? If so, Simpson and Gold don't care. So sure are they of victory, they're not even campaigning. The preponderance of Democratic voters in Brooklyn assures the two Democrats of victory in November's general election.

Why didn't Smallman-a political independent, lifetime Brooklyn resident, and experienced criminal defense attorney-seek the Democratic nomination? He said he considered it, but "I am not personally impressed by the reports I see coming out of the regular Democratic Party clubs and I chose not to pursue that route. It's been widely reported in the press that many of their methods leave a lot to be desired."

He added, "I started my campaign with the Republican, Conservative, and Independent parties. Those are the people who gave me their endorsements and their support, and that's where I am." The fact, however, is that it's possible to get on the ballot as a Democrat without selling out to party officials. At least two candidates did it in 2001 and two more in 2002, and they all won. Smallman is serious about running for Civil Court, which is a credit to him, but if he were serious about winning, he would have sought the Democratic nomination.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

Borough Politics Archive

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2000
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1999
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