Note: I intended this to be just one piece, but to give former Borough President Howard Golden, whence he came from and where he went, his due turned out, even with heavy editing, to require far too many words for just one column, so, in this effort, I’m mostly going to set the scene for his eventual ascension as Brooklyn’s Leader and use a second column to cover most of his period as Beep.
Howie Golden, who just passed away at 98, become Brooklyn Boro President in 1977 and served until 2001, but, in some ways, the best frame of reference for understating him may be to watch “Guys and Dolls.”
The legend goes that when Marty Markowitz first arrived at Boro Hall during the transition to his administration from Golden’s, he couldn’t find a computer in the place, because Golden wouldn’t have them.
Having gotten emails now and then during Golden’s tenure from Golden’s land use guru, Jon Benguiat, I’m thinking someone might have sneaked in a laptop now and then, but the legend, if it was indeed a legend, fit the image.
Golden was a throwback even when I first met him back in 1983, attending a Young Dems dinner, cigarette and glass in hand, working the room, but mostly screaming over the top of his head about Ed Koch’s latest indignity (they hated each other) while visibly a little worse for the alcohol.
Tales of Golden, and his old pal former Queens Councilman/County Leader Matty Troy loudly working the circuit while drinking the town dry were (and still are) a bit of a legend during their Council days, which had by then come to an end. Golden was like a Jimmy Breslin column come to life, with Court Street taking the place of Queens Boulevard.
It was a side of him few saw soon later on, as Golden, a diabetic, quit the sauce in order to save his own life. I’m not sure that anyone ever saw him smile again.
Not even Golden’s worst enemy would say that Howie didn’t love Brooklyn, but, as I’ve observed before, the Brooklyn Howie loved no longer existed. As Borough President, his emblematic showpiece event was “Welcome Back to Brooklyn Day” a big festival in which every year the Borough debased itself by honoring people who made good after they left the place. It was pure Howie nostalgia, with a vision that ranged from Dubrow’s to Lundy’s to the Dodgers.
Golden wanted to revive Brooklyn, but he wanted to do so by looking backwards rather than forward. Although, in fairness, many of the efforts to revitalize Brooklyn often credited to Marty Markowitz were in fact initiated by Golden, including downtown’s MetroTech.
Golden was a product of the clubhouse, back when clubhouses were clubhouses and the machine was really a machine. In their book, “The Abuse of Power,” Jack Newfield and Paul Dubrul portrayal of Golden as a “terminal cynic” give us some of the pungent flavor of the smokey backrooms:
Our favorite insight into the mentality of a machine politician was given us inadvertently one night in September 1974. We ran into Brooklyn District Leader and City Councilman Howard Golden one night during a Democratic primary for a congressional seat. We asked the recklessly extroverted Golden why he and his political club were working so hard to re-elect Bertram Podell, when Podell was under indictment for bribery.
“We’re for Bert only because we have inside information that he’s guilty and will be convicted,” Golden explained in a confidential whisper.
We confessed we did not follow his reasoning.
“Schmuck,” the Councilman said. “If we help Podell win the primary and then he is convicted, that way we get to pick his replacement, and stop that kid Steve Solarz. We want to save this seat in Congress for our guy, Leonard Silverman,”…
But the logic of I’m-for-him-because-know-he-is-corrupt remains the terminal absurdity of the clubhouse ethos. Howard Golden philosopher of the Brooklyn Democracy, has since risen to become borough president. He has the potential of becoming an unconscious Plunkett.
And Golden was not merely a product of the clubhouse cultures, but of the white outer-borough reaction which sprung from the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, as well as from the demographic changes in his home turf.
Golden came out of Boro Park’s Roosevelt club. In the 50s, the area was a bastion of New Deal Democrats whose leadership supported Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic Presidential nomination against NY’s own Governor, Averill Harriman, much to the consternation of the County Organization, but pretty much in response to their own constituents.
Boro Park had been the site of treacherous political battles and infighting, and some of the tales I learned are worth a column of their own. The Roosevelt Club’s leadership never pretended to be reformers. It had its patronage appointees, and it made its judges, but the club’s Councilman, Julius Moskowitz (elected 1961), and its Assemblyman Joe Kottler (elected 1958), were outspoken and often courageous liberals.
Kottler, a former Assistant DA, and a trained actor (most noteworthy as the doorman in “Rosemary’s Baby”) crusaded against prosecutorial overreach, and served as pro bono counsel for student demonstrators; Moskowitz was an outspoken supporter of methadone maintenance programs, outflanking liberal mayor John Lindsay from the left. Both tended to be mavericks, with Moskowitz often voting with Manhattan reformers in the face of organization pressure.
Both were also born in the early part of century, and there were younger men with ambitions, mostly Court Street lawyers, who didn’t want to wait their turns, and didn’t share their liberal principles (or, if they did, could successfully suppress them). They included Howie Golden and his law partner and best friend, Gerry Garson.
Gerry once overheard myself and my girlfriend at a political dinner, talking about the idealistic reasons we had been drawn to politics, and Gerry shot back, “we just got into politics because we wanted to meet judges.”
By 1966, much of Jewish Brooklyn had soured on John Lindsay, to the extent they’d ever liked him at all. Moreover, the Stevenson-loving residents of Boro Park were being replaced by ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Moskowitz and Kottler had just gotten their District Leader to the Civil Court, but rather than trying to placate the Young Turks in their midst, Moskowitz attempted to take the slot himself, but the two older men had, despite some gestures to their new constituents, pretty much lost touch with their changing district, and Golden, who could smell the changes in the zeitgeist, won the job and then took over the club, leaving Kottler and Moskowitz politically homeless. The two electeds, once the best of buddies, angrily blamed each other, only reconciling when it was too late to undo the damage.
Kottler joined the reformers and, seeing the handwriting on the wall, made a kamikaze run for Congress in a district dominated by Staten Island; Moskowitz became a reformer a year after Kottler and got beaten by Golden for Council; it wasn’t even close.
Golden was perhaps the Council’s most outspoken Lindsay critic. When Lindsay, a liberal Republican, joined the Democrats, Golden publicly stated “He was a loser as a Republican. I never hear anybody say anything good about him now, and he’d be a loser as a Democrat.”
Golden concentrated mostly on quality of life issues and local concerns, but rarely missed a chance to take a shot at Lindsay. Though smart enough to take up a liberal issue when he smelled it was a vote-getter, he was often an out and out reactionary; when the gay rights bill came up in 1978. Golden, took to the floor and quoted the Bible (a book one suspects was less close to his heart than “Plunkett of Tammany Hall”) “Homosexuality,” he said, “Is an abomination.” (His record on LGBT issues will be discussed further in Part Two).
Now and then, Golden broke with the organization, most notably backing his friend, Hugh Carey, in the 1974 Democratic Primary for Governor, which ended up making him more valuable to the organization after Carey won.
Most valuable though, was that, unlike much of the Brooklyn Council membership, Golden was super-smart and a shrewd player. No one ever called him incompetent. He worked hard and he played hard.
When Boro President Sebastian Leone was elected a Judge, Golden wanted the job so badly and played it so well, he was able to resign his Council seat to a month early, his confidence scaring off his potential opponents. He knew his delegation would elevate him to the vacancy.
Filling Golden’s Council seat revealed a chink in his armor at home. Still Boro Park’s District Leader, Golden had the seat filled by Eddie Rappaport, a Court Street crony who was so assimilated in his Judaism that he sent his kids to Ethical Culture School. One Boro Park Rabbi was alleged to scream upon learning this that “Ethical Culture ain’t ethical and it ain’t culture. Eddie Rappaport is a shaygets!”
In the next year’s primary, the local ultra-Orthodox establishment backed Rappaport, but the community revolted, mostly supporting a former JDL leader named Dov Hikind. With Boro Park divided, Flatbush’s Susan Alter, an Orthodox, but decidedly non-Haredi candidate backed by reformers won the election, with the Italian vote going to a 4th candidate. Rappaport ran third, but was consoled with a judgeship.
The next year, the local Senate and Assembly seats came up and Hikind ran a strong race for Senate, with another religious Jew, Sam Hirsch, on the ticket for Assembly. For Assembly, Golden ran a deeply closeted non-Orthodox member of his club who held a patronage job. Hirsch challenged him on his residency, Golden’s club challenged Hirsch on his signatures, But the overeagerness of Golden to trade his weak signature challenge for Hirsch’s weak residence challenge made the claque of Talmudic students surrounding Hirsh and Hikind eager to see what was behind door number three, The transcript of the subsequent trial, revealing Golden’s candidate’s living arrangements with his “friend,” was then distributed to only a few dozen select Rabbis for their edification. Hirsch won.
Now, no longer controlling his Assembly seat, Golden suddenly got wise, picking one of his Orthodox flunkies, Noach Dear, as a Council candidate.
Hirsch eventually got himself in trouble voting for Medicaid abortion, and then explaining to a group of Rabbis and political leaders that it was OK, because such abortions were only used by minorities. Golden, smelling a chance for revenge, decided Hikind was the lesser evil and ran him against Hirsch. For Hikind, third time was the charm, and Golden’s club retook the seat.
Meanwhile, Golden assumed the Beep’s office, but his actions contained some surprises. Over the years, Golden’s office not only contained skilled political operatives like Marcie Feigenbaum, Marily Mosely and Ed Towns, but also government pros of the highest quality like Bill Thompson, Jr., Harvey Schultz, Marilyn Bergman, John Benguiat, Greg Brooks, Nannette Rainone, Richie Bearak and George Synefakis. Golden’s office was notable for its competence.
And Howie handled his duties with relish, coming to meetings well prepared, though in his later years, his preparation took the form of index cards he would read off if. He would use Boro Service cabinets and other forums to lace into city bureaucrats with relish, often reshaping the way things were being done.
Running with the slogan “The Future of Brooklyn is Golden,” Golden faced his first primary as beep later that year. Assemblyman Frank Barbaro, a reformer, ran as a fiery populist, who swung a bit more to his left than some of his fellow reformers might have preferred, and was considered by many to be show horse rather than a workhorse. Also in the fray were Ross Dilorenzo, a former a district leader and judge, who was widely suspected of being put in by the organization to take Italian votes from Barbaro, but who ran a serious race from Golden’s right, which may have cost Golden as many votes as it did Barbaro; another opponent was Rabbi Marvin Schick, a former Lindsay Jewish liaison, who probably took more Jewish votes from Golden than liberal votes from Barbaro, but had limited impact.
John Dereszewski, a reformer who was (by virtue of his connections with the local Councilman originally elected as a reformer) the Bushwick Community Board’s District Manager, put the race in perspective:
“1977 gave me the opportunity to view Howard Golden in action as BP, especially after I became Bushwick’s District Manager. I was greatly impressed by his strong and seemingly sincere support for the interests of our borough and, especially, his insistence that the newly formed community boards receive the assistance they merited and were not receiving from the Beame administration. And the support his office provided to Bushwick during that terrible summer of the blackout and all hands fire was greatly appreciated.
1977 was also an election year and Golden was challenged by reform candidate Assemblyman Frank Barbaro. While Barbaro had compiled an impeccable record as a fighting reformer in the Assembly, I was increasingly put off by the vacuous nature of his BP campaign which failed to articulate a clear message. This was in stark contrast to the very strong performance that Golden was clearly exhibiting.”
The Times agreed:
In Brooklyn, we believe incumbent Howard Golden should be selected by his party for his first full term. He was named by the Council in January to fill the vacancy created when former Borough President Sebastian Leone went to the Supreme Court and has filled the post with the energy that marked his tenure as councilman. He forced the city’s attention to the Bushwick housing crisis. He succeeded in modifying development plans for a shopping center in the Gowanus area to meet local wishes. He has fought effectively on the Board of Estimate to increase Brooklyn’s share of city funds. His opponents, Marvin Schick and Frank Barbaro, have good qualities. Mr. Schick combines scholarship with good sense; Mr. Barbaro is dedicated to populist ideals, particularly as they affect tenants and workers. But their experience is too limited to justify replacing an incumbent who has demonstrated a grasp of the problems that affect all parts of the borough.”
The borough’s voters agreed as well.
