THEATER OF THE ABSURD At a debate at the Brooklyn Music School featuring Geoffrey Davis, Letitia "Tish" James, Tony Herbert, and Abe Wasserman, six days before their City Council election, this columnist (who was a panelist) asked how many audience members remained undecided voters. Two hands went up.

The debate made for good theater, but let's not pretend it influenced the results of the election, which James won easily. As one insider remarked, James could have secured more votes by shaking hands outside a bodega. Instead, James endured continuous heckling from two women in the front of the auditorium, who cheered all three of her opponents.

We asked James moments after the debate, "Why did you even bother coming?" She looked at us with surprise, but in fact her appearance proved completely unnecessary, as she cruised to victory with about 76 percent of the vote on the Working Families Party line.

How did she win so handily, becoming the first third-party candidate since the 1970s to triumph in New York City? First, the sympathy vote for Davis all but evaporated in the three months after his brother, Councilman James Davis, was murdered July 23. It became obvious that Geoffrey Davis was not the engaging people-person his brother was, but more of a brooding, temperamental fellow who was not ready for public office.

At the end of the October 29 debate, Davis said that before his brother was murdered, their plan was for Geoffrey to run for the Council seat when his brother ran for higher office, namely Congress or mayor. That might have worked with James Davis campaigning for him, but on his own, with little money and a small and disorganized campaign team, Geoffrey was unable to win over voters. His lack of preparedness was understandable, given that he was thrust unexpectedly into a campaign during a period of intense and sudden grief.

In retrospect, it's clear Geoffrey and his mother Thelma Davis should have given the Democratic line to Hakeem Jeffries, the two-time Assembly candidate, a polished campaigner with a following and an impressive résumé who was an ally of James Davis.

Instead, the Davises lost the seat to their rival, the very woman who campaigned against James Davis in 2001. In the process, the whole world found out about Geoffrey's past brushes with the law. Part of Geoffrey Davis's problem was a poor grasp of the issues and of the job of a councilman. He could deliver fire-and-brimstone speeches about how politicians had "sold out" the community, but was woefully short on specifics.

Only in the final minutes of the last debate did Davis give his first specific answer to a policy question. On the matter of where money should come from to fund school construction, he said, simply, "Tax the rich!" Until then, he answered all policy questions by saying if elected he'd sit down with Council Speaker Gifford Miller and others to figure out what to do. Voters apparently wanted someone who could figure things out independently.

Herbert proved to be an engaging and charismatic candidate, but his off-and-on campaign on the Republican line in a liberal district had no chance. He finished with about 3 percent of the vote, just ahead of the Conservative Wasserman's 2 percent.

Both Herbert and Davis campaigned as if James were the incumbent, since she was chief of staff for Assemblyman Roger Green. It's easy to criticize incumbents, because you can blame all sorts of problems on them, but it doesn't often translate into votes in local races. Lest we forget, Green easily won his 2002 Democratic primary against Jeffries.

Theatrics continually interrupted the 2003 race. At an October 28 candidates' forum at Medgar Evers College, Herbert's supporters stormed out, believing it was slanted in James's favor by one of the organizers, Chris Owens, who is supporting her. Owens said "Herbert's thugs" disrupted the meeting with "false accusations" and then bolted. Owens added that Herbert did nothing to stop them, then left himself. "Wasserman was so frightened by the melee-which never advanced beyond harsh words-that he practically ran off the stage and refused to come back on even after the disruption was over," Owens added via e-mail. "Letitia James was left sitting alone on the stage." That proved to be a harbinger of the election itself. Owens believes the Herbert walk-out was staged in retaliation for a previous attack on Herbert at a Clinton Hill Society forum.

Speaking of staged events, James was a guest on Assemblyman Dov Hikind's radio show Saturday night. "Why is Dov Hikind getting involved in this race?" one Davis supporter asked. The source offered this theory: Hikind is close to Alan Rocoff, who is despised by Councilman Lew Fidler, who backed Geoffrey Davis. So Hikind tried to help James. The only problem with the theory is that Rocoff has helped Davis in the past. (Speaking of Fidler, his bid to become Council speaker in 2005 was set back by Davis's defeat, since James isn't likely to vote for a speaker candidate who opposed her. That's good news for another speaker contender from Brooklyn, Bill deBlasio.)

As if the campaign weren't controversial enough already, a Davis mailing days before the election said, "Geoffrey Davis has the support of the leaders who are committed to helping our neighborhoods improve," followed by photos of 11 photos of Davis with various leaders, including Senator Hillary Clinton and Rep. Charlie Rangel-neither of whom endorsed Davis.

This old and tired campaign tactic keeps coming back like a New York City cockroach. The irony here is that Fidler, who has railed about this dishonest ploy in the past, was this time on the side of the perpetrator. We don't suspect Fidler was behind the mailing. But who was? Davis consultant Hank Sheinkopf always plays dumb, so we didn't even bother to ask him this time.

We did call another Davis consultant, Peter Weiss, who told us he was not involved and hadn't even seen the piece. But Weiss did defend the literature, noting that Clinton helped herself to the publicity following James Davis's death. "If Hillary can go to James's funeral and make a speech, she's fair game as far as I'm concerned," Weiss said.

Of the ad, he said, "I don't think it's so terrible."

WHERE HAKEEM STANDS The Web site of the gay organization Stonewall Vets published a list of Geoffrey Davis's endorsers. It included former Assembly candidate Hakeem Jeffries, who did not endorse anyone in the 35th Council District race.

Jeffries is trying not to alienate anyone unnecessarily before his next run for office, which will likely occur the next time a seat opens up in Prospect Heights. But he did author an editorial calling for Assemblyman Clarence Norman to be replaced as Democratic county leader.

"I've been talking about the need for a change in Brooklyn. As I expressed in the article, enough is enough. It's not a political calculation, more about what's right," Jeffries told us last month. He added, "I think all of us, in the spirit of (late Councilman) James Davis, need to step out and speak on issues we feel strongly about in a clear and public way when the time comes. I think the time has come."

The question is, will Jeffries's time ever come? He hints that after two losses to Assemblyman Roger Green he's finished running against incumbents, but we won't dismiss the possibility that he'll run against Councilwoman Tish James in 2005. James recently changed her party registration from Democrat to Working Families, potentially leaving the Democratic line open in the 2005 race, when turnout should be much greater than in 2003.

A Democratic council candidate in the heavily Democratic 35th Council District would benefit from an outpouring of Democratic voters seeking to boot Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg from office. The 2005 general election will also decide races for Brooklyn district attorney and borough president, city comptroller, and public advocate, which should all be easy victories for the Democratic candidates and could provide coattails for the Democrat in the council race. Jeffries was out of the country this week and couldn't be reached for comment.

SUZAN GOODSTEEN FER COUNSIL We noticed an error-strewn half-page ad for City Council candidate Susan Goodstein in one of the newspapers that carries this column. In the ad, Goodstein tried to take advantage of Mayor Mike Bloomberg's unpopularity by tying him to her opponent, Councilman Lew Fidler. Goodstein called Fidler and Bloomberg "political sweethearts" and referred to the "Fidler-Bloomberg tax increase" and the "Fiddler (sic)-Bloomberg smoking ban." But the ad didn't reveal that Goodstein is a Republican, just like Bloomberg.

We can't recall another Republican candidate trying to link a Democratic opponent with a Republican. It didn't work, as Goodstein garnered just 13 percent of the vote on November 4 to Fidler's 83 percent. (Conservative Robert Maresca got the rest.) Goodstein's ad also spelled the mayor's name "Broomberg" and misspelled Fidler "Fiddler" three times. It's at least a little ironic that Goodstein touted her school board membership and academic credentials in her spelling-challenged ad. We give her credit for running a full-fledged campaign, but some proofreading would have been nice.

We also didn't get her ad's reference to "their (Bloomberg and Fidler's) 25% tax increase." Fidler and other council leaders reduced Bloomberg's proposed 25 percent property-tax increase to 18 percent. How threatened did Fidler feel by Goodstein's candidacy? When we called him Saturday for a comment on Goodstein's ad, Fidler was taking an afternoon nap.

Well, we should clarify that. Apparently he was napping because of campaign-induced exhaustion, not because he was taking Goodstein lightly.

A STADIUM IT'S NOT Opponents of the 20,000-seat professional basketball arena proposed for Atlantic Terminal have taken to calling it a stadium, conjuring up images of a noisy, light-polluting, open-air venue three times larger than what's actually on the drawing board.

"No Stadium" declared a large yellow sign at the corner of Carlton and Dean streets, the work of vandals who reversed a "for sale" sign posted on an empty lot there. (After a few weeks, the sign was removed.) Some neighborhood activists distributed posters comparing the proposed "stadium" to 58,000-seat Shea Stadium and predicting it would attract prostitutes. They launched a Web site with "nostadium" in the address and three references to a stadium on the home page.

The site's main headline declares "No Stadium!" and one paragraph calls the proposal a "stadium-skyscraper housing complex" without any knowledge of how tall it would be. One site developer speculated it would be "at least seven stories." That's a skyscraper? Anti-arena protestor Schellie Hagan told the Daily News, "Stadiums are not good for neighborhoods" and, "We don't want a stadium built on taxpayer money."

Even Conservative Party candidate Abe Wasserman got into the act, issuing a press release Monday declaring his opposition to "a new stadium in downtown Brooklyn until the transportation problem can be solved." T

his may be a scare tactic or just a careless use of the language. (Speaking of careless, arena opponents organized a demonstration on Yom Kippur, the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar.) Whatever the case, opponents would be well served to fight what is proposed rather than exaggerate with words like "stadium" and "skyscraper" to win people to their side. Finally, we commend Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz not so much for supporting the plan as for simply taking a position. Too often politicians take no position on such controversies, or they reflexively support the NIMBY folks.

Markowitz has let us know where he stands even though doing so was certain to make some people angry with him.

POLITICAL TIDBITS

• Brad Tusk, a former aide to Rep. Jerry Nadler and Senator Chuck Schumer, somehow got himself appointed as one of the deputy governors of Illinois. Tusk doesn't hail from the state, but he did go to school in Chicago…
• Blake Zeff of Independent Neighborhood Democrats, the Carroll Gardens reform club, is now Schumer's press secretary for all of New York except New York City and Long Island. Zeff has moved to Washington.
• One of the Supreme Court candidates ballyhooed by the Working Families Party, Alex Eisemann, doesn't live in Brooklyn or Staten Island, where he wants to sit on the bench. He resides in Westchester, and planned to remain there even if he won the election, which he didn't. Eisemann was endorsed by Councilman David Yassky.
• Yassky, by the way, who sent an e-mail asking for people to vote against Charter revision and in favor of three judicial candidates on the Working Families Party line. "I am a proud Democrat, but I am not proud of the way the Brooklyn Democratic Party selects its judicial nominees," Yassky wrote. "The party typically treats judgeships as patronage jobs, with merit a secondary consideration at best." He was quoted in the Village Voice calling the process "rotten."

  Unfortunately for Yassky, the process will continue, as the 2003 Working Families Party slate was trounced by the Democratic candidates, who doubled and tripled the WFP vote totals. Democratic county leader Clarence Norman told The New York Times that voters were expressing confidence in the way his party picks Supreme Court candidates, which of course is absurd since almost no one knows how it's done.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

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