A Grand Old Party For BermanCouncilmember Herb Berman netted more than $300,000 for his comptroller's race at a November 14 fundraiser fete at the South Street Seaport. Sprinkled among the $500-per-plate crowd were several Republicans, including Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota, Corporation Counsel Michael Hess, and several of Berman's Republican Council colleagues. The presence of so many GOP'ers at the Berman event led some to question whether the draw was Berman's influence as the Council's finance chair, or if the Republicans were looking to cozy up to him since they will most likely lose City Hall in 2001. "Herbie has just always had an excellent relationship with the people in this administration, and I think they were there to show their support for his candidacy," said Amy Klein, Berman's chief of staff.

One grape on the vine wondered whether Berman would consider running on the Republican line should he lose the Democratic primary. "Herbie's a Democrat-lifelong. No chance of switching," said Klein. Berman reported more than $500,000 in his last filing, with the next filing due on January 15.

Hikind Tight-Lipped About Stringer Meeting Assemblymember Dov Hikind is keeping mum about a recent tete-a-tete with Assemblymember Scott Stringer of Manhattan. Stringer and Councilmember Stephen DiBrienza are both candidates for public advocate, and Stringer has been trying to work his assembly connections to make Brooklyn inroads. Hikind himself has been considering a run for public advocate.

Charnie Sochet, Hikind's spokesperson, would not elaborate on what the pair discussed. "(Hikind) did say that he was not ready to comment yet because there were certain decisions that he has to make. Once he does that we can talk, but right now we've got no comment for the record," said Sochet.

Over The Hil Now that Bill de Blasio is out of the woods and his candidate is headed to the Senate, he can finally concentrate on his own race. "I'll stay here at the campaign until the end of December. I'm still working out what I'll do for a day job. The most important thing is to get going for the Council race," said de Blasio, who is Hillary Clinton's campaign manager and one of several candidates for the Council seat currently held by Stephen DiBrienza, which covers Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Kensington, Windsor Terrace and part of Borough Park and Midwood.

de Blasio said that he is not considering taking a job with Senator-elect Clinton. He obviously will seek to capitalize on his role in the campaign and his association with her victory in the heavily Democratic district. "It helps because a lot of people in the district supported Hillary," he said. "But at the same time, all politics is local and at least as important, if not more important, is the work on the school board." Currently, School Board 15, of which de Blasio is a member, is dealing with negative backlash to the fiscal woes of the district and the perception that some of its members are too close to embattled Superintendent Frank DeStefano.

But just as his association with Clinton may help him in places like Park Slope, it may hurt him in the district's more conservative Jewish areas, like the portion of Borough Park. "Depending on whose analysis you listen to, (Borough Park) is 20 percent of the vote in the primary, give or take," he said. Clinton reaped about 36 percent of the vote there, he said, and won a favorable non-endorsement from Assemblymember Dov Hikind, as well as the support of the Bobover Hasidim. "I think it's a more open situation than people might assume, and the leaders of the community are focused on who can accomplish things for the community," he said.

Weinstein In Orange Country While much of the American public was growing disenchanted with Florida's election mess, Assemblymember Helene Weinstein was knee-deep in pregnant chads. Last weekend, Weinstein joined a cadre of volunteer election lawyers monitoring the recounts in Palm Beach and Broward Counties for Vice President Al Gore. Weinstein, who returned early in the week, was formerly the chair of the election law committee in the assembly. "It is essential that we have a fair and accurate accounting of the ballots and that the process is not short-circuited by those that seek a swift yet inaccurate count," she said.

Go Figure Things are just weird in the 43rd Assembly District. First, Assemblymember Clarence Norman crushes James Davis in primary, but Davis beats his candidate for district leader. Davis' ill-fated bid for assembly was backed by Sylvester Leaks, who was also running for district leader-against Davis.

Recently, Leaks revived the Bessie Smith Democratic Club, and what does he decide to do? Honor the man who beat him. On November 17, leaks honored Davis along with State Senator Larry Seabrook and Rep. Ed Towns. The Rev. Al Sharpton gave the keynote address.

Third Party Jousting The Working Families Party was pleased with the 19,500 Brooklyn votes it pulled in the senate race, roughly double what it pulled in 1998. Much of the growth came from black and Latino areas, where party support jumped 600 percent, said WFP spokesperson Adam Glickman. Glickman was especially happy with the results from the 40th, 57th and 58th Assembly Districts, where the WFP outpolled the Republicans by significant margins. (In the 58th there was no Republican candidate.)

But before the WFP declares itself Brooklyn's real second party, it will have to deal with the Green Party and its New York State chair, Brooklynite Craig Seeman. "In every place where we had a candidate and they had a candidate, we did better than them. This is not to put them down, because their politics is good," said Seeman. Seeman pointed to returns from Williamsburg and Park Slope, where Green presidential nominee Ralph Nader pulled close to 20 percent. Nader got roughly 270,000 votes statewide. In Brooklyn, Seeman said that Nader got about 3.5 percent of the vote, with thousands of ballots left to be counted. The WFP also got about 3.5 percent of the Brooklyn vote in the senate race, said Glickman.

There is, however, one Green candidate who did not do so well-Seeman himself. Seeman challenged the State Senate Minority Leader Martin Connor, and took only seven percent of the vote. The poor showing was due mainly to the fact that Seeman, who jumped into the race before being named state chair, was not able to campaign. "Considering I wasn't able to campaign at all, (seven percent) is a really strong base of people just voting down the line," he said, spinning so fast we got dizzy.

Seeman's main criticism of the WFP is much the same as some Democrats. Since the party does not run its own candidates and merely cross-endorses Democrats, it simply displaces votes from one line to another. Therefore, the extent of its influence is open to question. "I personally think our strategy of creating a viable alternative is a better strategy," said Seeman. "We obviously think that completely misses the point of what we're trying to do," said Glickman, who pointed to several pieces of legislation, such as the minimum wage bill, that the party has helped push through state and city legislature by supporting progressive Democrats.

"This is because the Working Families Party uses the leverage of its ballot line in an aggressive but responsible way. In order to make change, you need to develop relationships-you can't make change just by firing shots from the outside, just by constantly running independent candidates and losing," Glickman said, taking a few not-so-veiled jabs at Nader's candidacy and its effects on Democratic nominee Al Gore.

But Glickman did acknowledge one unrelated problem with the WFP's pitch during the senate race. The party told prospective voters that voting for a candidate on the WFP line counted twice-once for the candidate and once for the issues. Apparently, many paper voters took that a little bit too literally, as they voted for Gore and Hillary twice, once on the Democratic line and once on the WFP line. Many machine voters also tried to pull two levers for Gore or Hillary, although the machines did not allow it. "Obviously we think it's a good message, but we recognize perhaps that next time we can make it more clear to people that they can only pull one lever," said Glickman.

Borough Politics Archive
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