WEINER CHALLENGED One nice thing about having the only column on Brooklyn politics is getting scoops on hot news. For example, Alec Silvergard just called us, and us alone, to say he was challenging Rep. Anthony Weiner for Congress. What's that? You've never heard of Alec Silvergard? Well, neither have we.

But that didn't stop Silvergard from leaving a message at 6 a.m. requesting that we call back within two hours to be the very first to interview him. Never mind that the next congressional race is in 2006, or that Weiner might be mayor by then, or that our family's spaniel has as much chance of going to Congress as Alec Silvergard. And the dog has been dead for three years. Silvergard whetted our appetite by divulging the crucial nugget of information that, before deciding to run against Weiner, he ran the idea past his brother. We bring you this fact exclusively.

GRINCH REPORT We recently found ourselves exchanging e-mails with Bensonhurst activist Carmine Santa Maria about whether the city should be co-naming blocks and erecting street signs to honor local residents who've died recently. We took the admittedly curmudgeonly position that the city should politely decline co-naming requests like the one for which Santa Maria is currently lobbying. Santa Maria replied, "You're concerned with the cost of a street sign, and not the comfort it would give [the grieving] family."

Our answer: If street signs were the only means of comforting grieving families, we wouldn't complain. But they aren't. For instance, for $750 a family can plant and dedicate a tree in Prospect Park, or adopt one for $500. They can also dedicate a street tree a park bench with an accompanying brass engraved plaque. (Trees and benches look nicer than street signs, too.) It isn't the government's job to comfort grieving families. Politicians often do it, but it is not a municipal function when the mayor attends a funeral, for example. Co-naming a street, by contrast, requires the City Council to pass legislation changing the city map.

The pace of street co-namings seems to be increasing. At this rate the city will eventually be peppered with superfluous green and white signs bearing the unrecognizable, long-forgotten names of community board members, crime victims, local activists, civil service workers, school volunteers, and politicians. Go ahead, call us a Grinch. We can take it. The fact is, there are better ways to honor the dead. Take the example of Adele Froelich, a Park Slope woman who ran an athletic group in Prospect Park. She did it well into her 70s, and perhaps longer, serving thousands of kids. Her fee was $10 per month, $5 for each additional sibling, and those who couldn't pay were not turned away. The youngsters went to Prospect Park for two hours a day, six days a week. At the end of the year, every kid got a trophy.

When she died, her fans bought two small larch trees and planted them in Prospect Park, near the 3rd Street entrance where Adele's charges assembled each day. A plaque was installed bearing her name and the simple inscription, "She took the children to the park." A redbud was also planted at Bartel Pritchard Square. They and other memorial trees are recorded at www.prospectpark.org. Twenty-four years later, those trees are still there, but they're no longer small. They are tall and majestic-a fitting tribute to Adele Froelich and an enhancement to the landscape for countless passersby who never knew her. That beats a street sign any day.

IRAQ STUMPS NADLER: Rep. Jerry Nadler does not support an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, because what happens there matters to this country-unlike in Vietnam, where Nadler supported an American pullout. "I don't think it's responsible to just walk away and let chaos take over and probably civil war," said Nadler. He added that the U.S. shouldn't abandon the Kurds, who would not likely fare well without U.S. protection.

At the same time, the U.S. must somehow end the perception of an American occupation, which is fueling the nationalist insurgency in Iraq, Nadler said. "I wish I knew what to do," said the congressman. "I don't know how you get out or how you get in."

BLOOMIE ON BALLOT ACCESS Every summer we run items on candidates getting knocked off the ballot, sometimes for obscure or absurd reasons. But now the mayor wants to deprive us of such material, making our job that much more difficult in August and September.

Witness his recent remarks: "Right now, it is too easy for party bosses and their lawyers to knock challengers off the ballot for minor technicalities. It's hard enough to beat an incumbent without having to spend all your time and money defending your petitions in court.

"The endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are part of the reason why running for office is so expensive here-and why many good people decide not to run.

"Let's end the game of 'gotcha' where lawyers comb petitions to find some technical violation of the hopelessly complex election law requirements, which some courts have found to be unconstitutional.

"Let's make it easier to get on the ballot by eliminating those technical requirements, reducing the number of signatures required, and allowing all registered voters-not just those that belong to a political party-to sign petitions."

Well, if that doesn't show a total lack of consideration for political columnists, we don't know what does. Fortunately for us, changes to the restrictive ballot-access laws could only be made by the state legislators whose jobs are protected by them. It ain't likely these politicians will make it easier for people to run against them.

VITO ON TERROR, TRANSIT MONEY Rep. Vito Fossella is a Republican, but he outlined two policy positions in a recent commentary that probably have more support among Democrats. The first is anti-terrorism funding. At a December 2 breakfast forum sponsored by Crain's, Fossella said, "We are committed in a bipartisan way to ensure that the funding is distributed based on threat-not on a per capita basis. We are seeing progress in that direction.

Initially, it was almost a grab bag of money, with some of it allocated based on threat and the majority distributed to every state regardless of risk. We would like to see it all threat-based." That, of course, is the most logical position for a New York representative to take, but it still runs counter to that of pork-addicted Republicans in low-threat states. "New York City is still Exhibit A when it comes to being a terrorist target-not the middle of Montana, with all due respect to the people there," Fossella said, according to an article that Gotham Gazette adapted from his comments at the breakfast.

On transportation funding, Fossella said the federal government should allocate more for mass transit and less for highways-also a position more common among Democrats, who are more likely to represent urban areas with mass transit systems. Fossella is the only Republican member of New York City's 13-member congressional delegation. "Fifty years ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower had this vision to construct the federal highway system. I think we need a new vision as to how this funding formula should work, because for the most part that highway system has been built up. There are hundreds of billions of dollars that flow into this fund, and we have to start thinking about what the most effective way of using that fund is, as opposed to it serving as a grab bag for projects across the country," Fossella said.

Unfortunately for the city, highway advocates in the Republican-controlled Congress seem to be prevailing. "There is an effort to shift funding away from mass transit-which we greatly rely upon here in New York-towards highway construction, which doesn't benefit New York," Fossella said. "We have to ensure that the percentage dedicated to mass transit remains high. There's a good coalition of Democrats and Republicans who are working to do just that." We'll keep an eye on whether Fossella can live up to his words.

PARKER REFLECTS Remember when minority Democrats in East Flatbush conducted an informal process to choose a single minority candidate to run for the new State Senate district created in 2002? They picked Omar Boucher, and other participants in the process were supposed to step aside to avoid splitting the minority vote.

But Kevin Parker refused, and though he ultimately won the election, some accused him of reneging on his promise to leave the "consensus candidate" unopposed. Parker doesn't buy it.

"We've had bad leader after bad leader," Parker said, invoking the names of City Councilman Kendall Stewart, former City Councilmembers Susan Alter and Lloyd Henry, and former State Senator Howard Babbush. "I refused to continue to live in this community under bad leadership." No doubt Boucher would say the bad leadership has continued. Parker was criticized for not attending enough community meetings during his first term, and he nearly lost his first bid for reelection to Noach Dear.

G.O.P. NIPS AT CYMBROWITZ In 2000, Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz got 78 percent of the vote in the general election. In 2002, he again got 78 percent. This year, he got 67 percent. What happened?

It might be that his 2004 opponent, Arthur Gershfeld, ran a stronger campaign than Fred Fields did in 2000 or Teddy Alatsas did in 2002. Or, perhaps Gershfeld, who was 5 when his family moved here from Russia, and speaks Russian, was able to capture Russian votes in Sheepshead Bay that the other Republicans couldn't. Maybe voters showed their growing dissatisfaction with Albany by voting against the incumbent.

Chances are it was all of the above. Whatever the case, Gershfeld believes his showing will make a difference. He said he'd heard through the grapevine that Cymbrowitz said he'd be unhappy if he only got 75 percent of the vote. "He only got 67 percent," Gershfeld said. "It definitely will motivate him. He sees there's a percentage that don't feel he's doing a phenomenal job." The Republican added, "I think the community as a whole won."

Gershfeld may be right. While elected officials always say they do their best regardless of their percentage of the vote, it's only human for them to try a little harder when challenged. In a district that's 62 percent Democratic and 15 percent Republican, Gershfeld got 32 percent of the vote without an all-out campaign. That is, he didn't quit his job and knock on doors for months, Noach Dear style. In fact, Gershfeld continued his private law practice while campaigning.

But he clearly did more than his Republican predecessors, stationing campaign workers at most of the polling sites in the 45th Assembly District. With 11 days left in the race, he'd spent over $27,000. Alatsas spent nothing and Fields just over $7,000. Gershfeld credited Cymbrowitz with running a clean race. "He was a true gentleman during the campaign…No funny business was pulled…unlike some other races I've read about," he said, an apparent reference to the 46th A.D., in which Assemblywoman Adele Cohen was reelected. "It made it a lot more pleasant to run."

TIDBITS Geoffrey Davis lashed out at Councilwoman Tish James (who defeated him to win his late brother's seat in 2003) after it surfaced that James had asked to borrow $200 from a staffer upon losing her purse while traveling. Davis had no inside knowledge of the case, but he claimed that James had strong-armed her helpless employee. Davis was promptly chastised by Chris Owens, a supporter of the councilwoman. "Don't exploit another's perceived misfortune to your political advantage, Owens wrote to Davis. "Kicking people when they are down is unseemly and, to our community, unworthy of the 'community leader' legacy you claim as your own."

I. Stephen Miller, a founder of the Sheepshead Bay Historical Society and longtime member of Community Board 15, died December 13 at the age of 59. A religious reader of this column, he was described by a friend as "a very unusual and dynamic person." Perhaps his memory could be preserved by dedicating a bench for him on Emmons Avenue overlooking the bay…

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's chief of staff, 35-year-old Rich Baum of Prospect Heights, could see his influence rise to even greater heights should Spitzer become governor. Spitzer recently announced his candidacy for the office in 2006. Baum was described by the upstate Times Herald-Record as "an unassuming Town of Wallkill farm boy." Baum was first elected in 1993 to the Orange County legislature…

Charlie Ragusa, a Democratic district leader in Bensonhurst, was honored December 11 by the United Chinese Association of Brooklyn. Ragusa helped to develop programs for local Chinese kids. The organization's honoree last year was Ragusa's boss, Assemblyman Bill Colton. If you're thinking that UCAB might start grooming insurgent candidates in districts with high concentrations of Chinese, consider that Colton helped found the group and that it's housed in Colton's and Ragusa's club, the United Progressive Democratic Club on Kings Highway. For now, it seems like a cozy relationship. Perhaps Assemblywoman Adele Cohen could use Colton's blueprint to strengthen her relationship with Russians in southern Brooklyn…

Assemblyman Peter Abbate said he's opposed to limiting the terms of state legislators, but not because it could cost him his job. "I just don't think it would be effective," he said.

Contact Brooklyn Politics at (718) 399-3693.

Borough Politics Archive

2004
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2002
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2001
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2000
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1999
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