Searching for a topic for this month’s column, I realized I had forgotten what most New Yorkers never knew, which is that we had an election coming up. The menu Brownstone voters are being presented with consists of barely contested City Council and Supreme Court races, and an uncontested Countywide Civil Court race. Much of the area also has an uncontested race for a local Civil Court seat.
Plus, referendums on two proposed State Constitutional amendments affecting debt limits in localities outside the City (one concerns sewers, the other schools in small cities). My humanitarian inclination is to vote yes on both, but who really cares?
Which all begs the question: “Why bother?” Here’s why:
The answer came as I struggled to make this dismal reality into a publishable piece. Looking for an angle, I went back to my 2020 version of this column (https://www.star-revue.com/brownstone-brooklyn-voters-guide-2020) and found the following gem hidden within, concerning one of the pathetic losers holding the line for the GOP that year, specifically, the poor clown who was the only schmuck the GOP managed to find that year to run for a Brownstone State Senate seat (also partially in Manhattan):
“Only in SD 26 does incumbent Brian Kavanagh face a GOP opponent, Lester Chang, an “international shipping consultant” whose Ballotpedia page actually lists a campaign website, Twitter page and Facebook page. It should be noted, that the campaign page is actually from prior race for Assembly and contains nothing but a notation that it is still under construction. By contrast, the Twitter page does contain content, but still notes Chang as an Assembly candidate, and has not had a new post since 2016. The Facebook page does acknowledge Chang is running for Senate, and features pictures of him, and most of them, in a daring display of independence from Party, show him wearing a mask. One of them shows him with an unmasked Curtis Sliwa. There is even a long, but not quite readable, policy statement about mass transit, though it is a reprint of someone else’s thoughts. It should be noted that there has not been a new post on this page since April 27th, but compared to the other Senate choices offered to voters in brownstone Brooklyn, Chang shines like a mackerel at moonlight.”
You may not know that, before his unsuccessful 2020 run for State Senate in the bi-county seat in 2020, Mr. Chang had also run in Manhattan for Assembly in 2016, and in 2021, he filed a petition to run for a Manhattan Council (before dropping out of the race).
But, as many you may have already figured out, the eminently forgettable Mr. Chang, still then the leaseholder of a rent-regulated apartment in Manhattan, ran in 2022 for a Brooklyn Assembly seat in Sunset Park/Bensonhurst, using a Brooklyn address belonging to his mommy miles away in Midwood (permissible only in a redistricting year, and only if he actually lived there), and won the seat for the GOP for the first time since the 1984 election.
The New York Constitution, with language (using words like “SHALL” and “MUST”) requires a member of the State Legislature be a resident of the state for 5 years and resident of the district for 12 months immediately preceding election. (In the first election immediately after a redistricting, which this was, a member must be a resident of the County for 12 months immediately preceding the election). Lester Chang voted from his then Manhattan residence on November 2, 2021. What were the odds that he moved to Brooklyn in the next six days and was eligible to run on November 8, 2022?
Complaints were made and the Assembly undertook an investigation of his eligibility. Since Chang did not live anywhere near his district, if the Assembly refused to seat him, he would not even be eligible to run in the special election to fill his vacancy.
Asked by a reporter how he could have lived in. Midwood “continuously,” as he claimed, if he voted in Manhattan, Chang replied, “Before I’m going to say more, because I’ve been advised by my lawyer not to make any more comment on that, because all I can say is, I’m living in Brooklyn.”
But squawks immediately were heard. A lot of righteous voices, some even from the left, were heard saying that refusing to seat Chang would be “playing politics.”
The Dems had just discovered a problem with Asian-American voters which had been simmering, but largely unnoticed, at least since Bill DeBlasio lost two Asian majority Assembly Districts in his 2017 campaign for re-election.
The evidence in the Assembly Committee’s report (Matter of Lester Chang (nyassembly.gov)) was overwhelming and largely unrefuted that Chang was constitutionally ineligible to serve. The Constitution’s language was even more clear on that matter.
But unseating Brooklyn’s first Asian-American Assemblymember after a 38-year incumbent fell, largely due to a repudiation by Asian-Americans of Democratic candidates, was not a message the Assembly wanted to send.
The righteous voices had got it exactly backwards; refusing to seat Chang would not have been “playing politics.” It would have been a discharge of the Assembly’s constitutionally mandated duties. “Playing politics” was what happened when the Assembly ignored its own report, and the evidence it contained, and instead allowed Chang to be seated.
As the late Tammany State Senator George Washington Plunkitt once said “what’s the Constitution among friends?”
Perhaps one could call this a victory for “racial justice,” but only if one were using the words ironically, by ignoring the substance of Chang’s campaign.
The Ultra-Orthodox paper Hamodia quoted Chang as saying “I’ll be bold about this. Certain communities, the brown and black communities, are mostly targeting our community, Asian and Jewish.”
Not really, Lester.
At worst, certain people of color (and otherwise) may have engaged in targeting your community and mine, but the Black and Brown communities are certainly not engaged in targeting our communities. So sad that a Brooklyn elected official and “international shipping consultant” cannot understand that less than subtle distinction. This comment almost makes Chang’s proposal for boot camps for homeless people seem sane.
To be fair. Lester’s being an ass was entirely irrelevant to his legal qualifications. Sadly, most of the asses in the legislature meet the legal requirements for being seated (which is, after all, one of an ass’s prime responsibilities).
But the real lesson here is that sometimes these seemingly pointless and clueless candidates making seemingly pointless and clueless races can become members of the Boards of Directors of our City and State. Chang’s 2022 campaign wasn’t all that much more impressive than his prior losing efforts, but the time was right. Similarly, right-wingnut Vicki Paladino, the wackiest screwball on our City Council (a body which also includes Charles Barron) started out as one of these GOP neediest cases before achieving elective office.
So, the point of covering such candidates isn’t just for shits and giggles (even though I will admit it is the primary purpose). It is also meant as a public service.
I’m going to skip the uncontested races, and I’m going to assume that anyone reading this is probably somewhat familiar with the incumbent Councilmembers, so mostly we’ll focus more heavily on their challengers.
So, now it’s off to the races:
SUPREME COURT: Seven candidates face off for six seats. Five of these candidates, all siting judges, are Democrats who also took the GOP & Conservative lines because no one else wanted them.
There is one candidate, Timothy Peterson, running on the GOP & Conservative lines alone, and, truth be told, he didn’t want those lines either, but someone needed to hold the Conservative line in the 47th Council District (one of Brooklyn’s two competitive seats), until the GOP primary was over, and that was Peterson. Now that that’s over, the Conservatives got rid of Peterson (and, in a process appropriately known as “backfill,” substituted the GOP primary winner) by giving him a nearly worthless judicial nod, and, just for his troubles, the GOP nominated him too.
Peterson currently works as “Lead Security and Privacy Specialist” at Reinsurance Group of America, and describes himself as “Experienced privacy and cyberlaw attorney with demonstrated success working as a sole practitioner and in-house counsel, with interest and skills in Cybersecurity, Journalism, Commercial Law, Blockchain Technology, Technology Licensing, and Intellectual Property.” Notably absent is any reference to litigation, which is where judges come in. His New York Attorney registration lists a business address in Chesterfield Missouri. In 2022, he ran as the GOP/Conservative candidate for Assembly in the 51st Assembly District.
The one other Democrat nominee, Civil Court Judge Caroline Piela Cohen (who is currently on voluntary loan to the difficult assignment of Family Court, where she employed my son as her once and future intern), inadvertently made Peterson’s switch easier by refusing the GOP and Conservative nods on principle.
Theoretically, one can vote for any six, so theoretically, both Cohen and Peterson can win, but, practically, the race for the last seat is between them. Given that the two real Council races, and the two other Council races where underdogs are actually trying hard for a “Hail Mary” (perhaps the wrong choice of words in seats where underdogs are both Orthodox Jews) have good size GOP votes, while the more Democratic areas of the Boro have either uncontested races or snoozers,
Thus, Cohen, an extremely dedicated judge, with highly impressive case clearance stats, and a perfect appellate record, could theoretically lose. So, that should be enough reason to come out and vote.
Other than that, the only interest shown in this race was when “The City” revealed (She Disagrees With Roe v. Wade. Brooklyn Dems Just Picked Her for Supreme Court. – THE CITY), long after anyone could do anything about it, that one of the cross-endorsed candidates, Judge Rachel Freier, had once written an article (https://forward.com/opinion/172778/a-mother-is-who-i-am/) talking about her taking a stance against Roe v. Wade when she was a law student.
CITY COUNCIL (District 38: Red Hook, most of Sunset Park, parts of South Slope, Bay Ridge, Boro Park, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Bath Beach): In perhaps the classiest race in Greater Brownstone Brookly, incumbent DSA affiliated Councilmember Alexa Aviles (D/WFP) is being challenged by Paul A. Rodriguez (R/C), the operations manager for the Development Office for the Archdiocese of New York.
In a Boro where most GOP candidates are likely to be patronage jobholders at the Board of Elections, Mr. Rodriguez’s job with the Archdiocese makes him a pretty big macher (perhaps not the best choice of words). Mr. Rodriguez has also worked at UBS, Morgan Stanley, ANZ Bank (as Associate Director of Corporate Banking/Research and Analysis) at ANZ Bank and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (as Senior Vice President-Commercial Banking).
Clearly, if ever there were a race exemplifying socialism versus capitalism, it is this one (although Ms. Aviles sometime seems a relative moderate among her crew, close to some more establishment Dems, and perhaps more Social Democrat than Democratic Socialist).
But one could be forgiven thinking that for a seemingly serious business person, Rodriguez seems obsessed with running unsuccessfully for offices he has no chance of winning. In 2004, he ran as a Republican against Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez; in 2021, he ran as the Conservative for NYC Comptroller; falling ever upward, in 2022, he ran as the Republican/Conservative for State Comptroller. Now, setting his sights at a far lower level, he seeks the seat in the 38th.
In this era of MAGA loons, Rodriguez’s website reminds one of the rhetorically big-hearted, Jack Kemp-style GOPers of older, better (context is everything) times, with a tendency to posit things like privatization of public housing as if they were the most humanitarian ideas in the world. The one exception to his love of market-based solutions concerns zoning and development, where his nostalgia for old days is less like Kemp, and more like Brownstone liberals in the days before YIMBY became hip.
CITY COUNCIL 33 (Coastal Brooklyn from Greenpoint to Brooklyn Heights and Boerum Hill) and 39 (Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Kensington) The Two-front Brownstone Battle between Progressives and Anti-Vaxxers:
In 2022, the anti-vaccination “Medical Freedom Party” ran Martha Rowen against both the Democratic and Republican candidates in Senate District 26, and Arkadiusz T. Tomaszewski for Assembly against both the Dems and GOPers in Assembly District 44.
This year, despairing of forcing some poor patronage appointee to hold the line, the GOP and Conservatives surrendered their lines to Rowen (in the 33rd) and Tomaszewski (in the 39th), leaving the inmates in charge of the poor house. In total, over a third of the 37 GOP Council candidates in the City carry the Medical Freedom Party line, or at least their endorsement.
While the Medical Freedom Party says it that “bodily autonomy is the basis from which all freedoms flow,” some aspects of autonomy are clearly more important than others. As their website explicitly notes, they have fought vaccine mandates and refused forced vaccinations, but nowhere do they mention reproductive freedom. When pressed on the matter, both Bowen and Tomaszewski admitted to being pro-choice, but expressed themselves with seemingly as much enthusiasm as they would in swallowing their medicine. Bowen went out of her way to note that she was running for a position where she’d never vote on abortion (though abortion adjacent issues like requiring pharmacies to note the availability of emergency contraception have and will continue to come before the Council) though that hasn’t stopped her from taking positions on regulation of pharmaceuticals within the province of the federal government while running for state and local office.
I got more attempts at answers from Tomaszewski than Bowen, who cut the interview short because she got frustrated with my asking her for yes or no answers instead of speeches, on questions like whether they would end the City requirement that students to be vaccinated for measles (both answered they would eliminate the requirement). Apparently, Bowen feels that those who seek elected office need only provide answer to likeminded individuals, while others must stay silent when she tries to avoid clarity with evasion and attempts to make one’s eyes glaze over with boredom.
Tomaszewski denied the Party was anti-vaccination, rather than for freedom to make one’s own medical decisions without coercion, despite the statement on the Party website that “No one. Not a single one of us. Regrets Not taking it,” which appears below what seems to be a group-shot of candidates which includes the both of them.
And, indeed, both admitted to not being vaccinated for COVID. In fact, Tomaszewski said “I don’t believe in COVID,” and said he knew people who had died from the vaccination.
Those concerned about the purity of our natural body fluids will be happy to know that one of Rowen’s websites, in a bow to Dr. Strangelove’s General Jack Ripper, advocates for an end to fluoridation. She’s also concerned about the dangers of Wi-Fi, smart meters, cell phones, 5G, cell phone towers, and body scanners in airports, and wants to slow down the implementation of new technologies.
In fact, an aversion to technology seems to inflict the Med Freedom folks in other ways. Their website contains profiles of its 2022 candidates, with a promise that profiles of the 2023 candidates are “Coming in May.” As I write, it is now near the end of September, six weeks before the election, but there are still no profiles. Bowen has her own website, but other than his 2022 profile on the Party site, there is noting for Tomaszewski. When asked, he directed me to the website of a Republican club in Queens.
Before she cut off our conversation, I asked Rowen, who said she opposed censorship, whether that meant she would stand up to Vicki Paladino’s opposition to drag queen story hours, and got a denial of any knowledge, mixed with some equivocation.
The Medical Freedom platform opposes mandates not only by government, but by corporations, something echoed in statement and website by both candidates. When I asked Tomaszewski about whether business owners should be forbidden the “Medical Freedom” to determine whether they could require visitors to their premises to prove vaccination or wear masks, I got several different and sometimes contradictory answers. He said store owners should be required to follow the science, which he seemed to believe had an anti-masking, anti-vaccination consensus. When I asked him whether he favored fines for businesses which attempted to impose such mandates, he told me this was a difficult question to answer. He seemed to believe that businesses which imposed such mandates would be met by boycotts, which he supported, even though, in the type of neighborhoods he seeks to represent, it was often the stores who openly proclaimed their opposition to such mandates which were forced out of business by boycotts.
When Tomaszewski responded to a question by saying that he was not a government official, I noted that he sought to be one, but he did not seem to consider the City Council member to be a part of the government.
Each of the candidates had some big differences with GOP/Conservative orthodoxies beyond being unenthusiastically pro-choice. At times, Rowen’s websites sometimes make her seem like a radical environmentalist, and she mentions being a member of Transportation Alternative, despite breaking with them on the matter of McGuinness Boulevard. Tomaszewski, for his part, supports increasing Social Security benefits, and as someone forced to quit his job as an asbestos remover after inhaling glue fumes in a poorly ventilated room, and developing asthma and a severe latex allergy as a result, he wants to make the Worker’s Compensation law more pro-worker.
One might think that someone with Tomaszewski’s health history, might be more enthusiastic about medication, but it’s possible his history might also account for his reasons. Bowen, for her part, believes that public health is not supported through “pharmaceutical interventions.” At times, it sounds like she believes a vegan diet will cure all ills. Perhaps she should run for Mayor.
I do not write this with unbridled enthusiasm for Rowen and Tomaszewski’s opponents, incumbents Lincoln Restler (33) and Shahana Hanif (39).
Earlier this year, I watched with some sympathy as a very liberal Democratic club debated whether to support both as well as Crystal Hudson (unopposed in the 35th) after they all successfully supported what amounted to a purge of Progressive Caucus members who opposed Police defunding. It was clear the club was angry, but Restler maintained his support largely because his constituents in the club loved his superlative constituent service (one City inter-governmental aide told me once that half of her calls on any particular day came personally from either Lincoln Restler or Justin Brannan). But, Hanif’s constituents in the club did not have similar feelings about her (Hudson may have had one constituent at the meeting). Just when it seemed near certain that both women were going to lose club support, someone pointed out how awful it would look if the club endorsed the white male and not the females of color, and the endorsement opponents backed down.
Now apparently, some Greenpoint constituents of Restler believe he’s too focused on the Heights and Williamsburg to their detriment, and are running a write-in campaign for former Assemblyman Joe Lentol. I love Joe, but I’ve no beef with Restler’s constituent work (a different former Assemblymember expressed amazement to me about his intensive microtargeting of constituent contact) and would vote for him if I hadn’t been redistricted out, but I think a vote for another candidate sends a message, and if you have a message to send, a write-in is surely a better way of sending it than voting for a GOP anti-vaxxer, which would be seen as merely a sign of derangement.
My new Councilmember, Shahana Hanif is a different matter. As a recent headline in “The Forward” noted: “She voted against creating a day to end ‘Jew Hatred.’ Now she’s introducing a bill to combat antisemitism.”
Credit where it’s due, but I believe this is what my Catholic friends call “an imperfect contrition.”
Atonement hints: Before one sings Kol Nidre, it’s helpful to try saying “I’m sorry” to those one has offended. As my fellow Semite Mr. Dylan once noted, “Swallow your pride; you will not die; it’s not poison.”
To be clear, the Resolution was not about Israel and/or Zionism, it was about identifiable Jews getting beaten up because they were identifiable Jews. And while there is no doubt that the resolution in question contained one line of praise for an astroturf group made up of bigoted bad actors, there are only two acceptable responses to voting on such a resolution.
- a) Get up to explain your vote; note the problem, and vote “yes”, saying that condemning hatred is more important, or
- b) Get up, explain your vote, and abstain–there is no excuse to ever vote against condemning violence against a religious group. PERIOD.
Months ago, annoyed that Hanif voted against a resolution condemning anti-Jewish violence, and that her office staff had expressed more sympathy for a man who had killed a dog in Prospect Park than it did for her owner, who was also attacked, I made up a mechanical for a petition to run my 97 year old Holocaust survivor mother in law, Miriam Tyrk, on the “Shoah E’nuff” party line. Only my wife’s tongue clucking and under the breath sigh of “If you do that, I wouldn’t want to be you” stopped my son and I from collecting signatures necessary for ballot access.
But, as I said before, I think a vote for another candidate sends a message, and if you have a message to send, a write-in is surely a better way of sending it than voting for a GOP anti-vaxxer, which would be seen as merely a sign of derangement.
I’m not saying people should write-in Miriam Tyrk for City Council, but it certainly would get some notice.
Then, whatever you do, get your ass to Bay Ridge to campaign for Justin Brannan.
