Last month, I wrote about the recent Brooklyn Dems’ County Committee meeting, and related antics and fiascos, but one cannot understand where we are, and where we may go, without understanding where we were before.
The modern era of the Brooklyn Democratic Party really started with 1961.
Brooklyn’s Democratic Leader was then Joe Sharkey. He was not only County Leader, but was also the Majority Leader of the City Council—the position we now call Speaker. Plus, Brooklyn controlled the Assembly Minority Leadership. Sharkey worked hand in hand with John Cashmore, the Borough President and, incidentally, the model for the dad in Harry Chapin’s song, “Cats in the Cradle,” in controlling a Borough Hall, which had its own Public Works Department.
Joe Sharkey also attained power by being loyal to Mayor Wagner.
Until he wasn’t.
But Joe Sharkey didn’t leave the Mayor, the Mayor left Joe Sharkey and the other bosses.
Wagner wanted power previously held by the machines and got it, passing a Charter change stripping them of the Borough Departments of Public Works. But it was the rise of reformers, mostly in Manhattan, which spurred the real change.
There had always been insurgents in party politics, and they sometimes won, but these reformers were not merely about changing who did business, but the nature of how business was done.
In 1960 Reformers, under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt and former Senator and Governor Herbert Lehman, ousted several Manhattan local electeds loyal to Manhattan boss Carmine DeSapio, including Congressman Ludwig “Lou” Teller.
By contrast, in Brooklyn, reform victories that year were far less notable, although Roosevelt and Lehman did support for a District Leadership the victorious race of a longtime political hanger-on who sold bail bonds. That new leader was named Meade Esposito, and it is said he really won because he went knocking on doors asking voters if they had any parking tickets that needed “taken care of.” He collected thousands of dollars-worth. But when his opponent heard Esposito was fixing tickets and contacted the authorities, they found that Esposito had actually paid all the tickets personally.
Wagner apparently couldn’t stop talking about what happened to Lou Teller, who was branded on posters as “DeSapio’s Choice.” Wagner himself had once been DeSapio’s choice, and in 1961 declared war on the bosses and ran for re-election, running against his own record, with Reform support.
The other bosses were given a choice, and stuck by DeSapio, and ran their own blue- ribbon candidate, State Comptroller Arthur Levitt, a product of Brooklyn’s Madison Club, against Wagner.
Wagner knocked the stuffings out of them. Reform candidates allied with Wagner won notable victories across the City, especially Manhattan. They even won a Council seat in Brooklyn, in Madison Club turf.
Shortly after Wagner’s re-election, Sharkey sent a delegation of Brooklyn’s most influential Democrats from the regular factions, including those who’d stuck with the Mayor, to make peace.
“Bob,” said one leader, “we know you’ve been through a hell of a fight, but Joe Sharkey has done a lot of good for all of us throughout the years, and he’s been good for the party. It’s Thanksgiving after all, a good time for forgiveness…”
WAGNER: “Now wait just a minute. What did Joe Sharkey try to do to me in the primary? He tried to fuck me. Now fuck him.”
And the meeting was over, and so was Joe Sharkey. He lost the council leadership and he lost the County Leadership.
When it looked like Sharkey might be replaced by a leader Wagner didn’t like, Wagner demanded instead that Sharkey be replaced with an ethnically balanced three-man committee known as “The Troika.” None were notably reformers; in fact, one, former Brooklyn Sheriff Aaron Jacoby, had been forced to leave the statewide ticket in 1954, to avoid dealing with old allegations of tax evasion, but all, including the Reverend Gardner Taylor, a former member of the Board of Education, who was one of the City’s most prominent civil rights leaders, were Wagner loyalists (The third member was a banker named John Lynch, whose most notable quality was that he was neither black nor Jewish).
The New York Times reported that the first act of the Troika was to appoint a Rules Committee, a proposal which could have been ripped from today’s NKD platform: “a revision of Brooklyn Democratic rules to encourage wider participation in party decisions, regular meetings in district clubs and larger club memberships.”
We are still awaiting the report of that committee.
Admittedly, some things have changed. Back then, it was the reformers who wanted the Party to stop dictating the votes of its area’s elected legislators lest they face punishment from the party; now it is the reformers who often propose the party impose such punishment.
The irrelevance of the Brooklyn Reformers back in 1962 was further demonstrated when the Troika was replaced in a few months. In fact, for all the Reformer’s identification with liberalism, Wagner ended up siding with the less liberal candidate, Assembly Minority Leader Tony Travia, against the more liberal Stanley Steingut of the Madison Club. But, truth be told, ideology played little role in the Brooklyn wars and there were liberal and conservatives, and blacks and whites, on both sides.
Steingut won, with the help of Esposito, but Wagner never recognized Steingut as Brooklyn’s leader, and Steingut essentially ruled over half a county for most the decade, a situation in some ways replicated today. Wagner attempted more than once to remove Steingut, backing former Steingut loyalist Esposito.
Steingut’s real interest was the Assembly Democratic Leadership, which was once held by his father. In the 64 election, Dems won the Assembly and Steingut challenged Travia for the Speakership. Steingut, quietly backed by Bobby Kennedy, was the choice of the Democratic Conference but Travia, backed by Wagner, took the battle to the floor. A similar battle took place in the Senate. For six weeks, there was no Speaker and no Senate Majority Leader, and no business got done until Governor Nelson Rockefeller delivered most of the GOP votes to Travia, making Rocky a better Democrat than Jesse Hamilton and Diane Savino. In exchange, Rocky got a regressive sales tax increase, which Steingut had pledged to block.
The Brooklyn wars eventually got settled in finality by Lyndon Johnson, who appointed Travia to a Federal Judgeship. Steingut agreed to give up the County Leadership in exchange for what he really wanted, leadership of the Assembly Democrats, and a Steingut rival was unanimously installed as County Leader. Steingut and his rival then monetized the burial of their hatchet by going into the insurance business together.
I am told that mob boss Frank Costello once took a young Irish boy under his wings in the manner of Vito Corleone and Tom Hagen, and that when Costello felt compelled to retire to Europe, he introduced the boy to a friend, and told the boy, who later became a judge, that this gentlemen shall now be the one you call “Papa.” Papa’s real name was Amedeo “Meade” Esposito, and according to Jimmy Breslin, Esposito was later under the control of one Paul Castellano.
I don’t know whether this is true, but endless hours of wiretaps of the cab stand run by mob boss Paul Vario, which served as the model for the one in Goodfellas, revealed that Meade was a fairly constant topic of conversation.
But that was one side of Meade, who was now the County Leader. There is another. Meade loved to tell the story of the two bulls.
The father and son bull are at the top of the hill looking over the cow pasture.
The young bull says “Daddy, look at all those cows. Let’s charge down the hill and fuck one of those cows.”
The old bull says “no son; let’s walk down the hill slowly and quietly and fuck ‘em all.”
So, Meade takes over as Leader of a large but weak and divided Brooklyn Organization, keeping the Assembly Leadership, despite a fight from Queens.
Years later, Steingut is beaten for his seat by an inside job engineered by the Leader of Meade’s own club, Tony Genovesi, and replaced by Meade’s handpicked Assemblyman, Stanley Fink. Meade leaves no fingerprints.
Almost immediately upon becoming leader. Meade takes back the Council Leadership Brooklyn hasn’t held since Sharkey.
In the late sixties, the Reform movement in Brooklyn actually gets some traction, but whenever Meade loses to them and sometimes when he doesn’t, he seduces them. He sits down with reporters and curses the Vietnam War. He offers draft counseling at his own club and tells a liberal reporter he personally supports medicalizing the treatment of narcotics addicts. When liberal Fred Richmond loses to John Rooney for Congress, Meade installs him at the City Council. When Carol Bellamy, who beat two regular State Senators in succession, wins Citywide office, he installed Bellamy’s Reform club President, Marty Connor, in her place.
In 1969, Meade backs Wagner for Mayor, taking out his own candidate, Hugh Carey, and loses the primary, and then backs Mario Proccacino in the general and loses again, but still gets patronage from the winner, John Lindsay, and when a vacancy occurs for Borough President, Lindsay backs Meade’s guy in spite of the pleas of Lindsay’s Liberal Party supporters.
In 1973, Esposito backs the Madison club’s Abe Beame for mayor and Meade is put in charge of dividing up the patronage, as the Brooklyn organization takes over the City government. Perhaps coincidentally, the City is near bankruptcy by the end of Beame’s term.
In 1974, Meade backs the wrong guy for Governor in the primary against Brooklyn’s own Hugh Carey, but there is no challenge to his leadership. By contrast, when Queens Leader Matty Troy backed the wrong guy against Abe Beame, Beame installed a new County Leader named Donnie Manes in Troy’s place, bringing new meaning to night of the long knives.
In 1977, Beame’s primary loss daunted Meade not one minute, as he quickly switched in the runoff to the victorious Ed Koch, shouting “there is no quid pro Cuomo.” Among his rewards were control of the Department of Transportation to Meade’s home club, where an ex-cop named Frank Seddio became an Assistant Commissioner.
Meade once said, “Hey, I’ve been dancing on a Charlotte Russe for 16 years and I never dented the cherry.”
Assemblyman Dan Feldman tells a story about what happened when the Brooklyn DA had retired and Feldman endorsed his political mentor, Liz Holtzman, against the County choice.
Feldman got summoned by Meade to breakfast at the Arch Diner on Ralph Avenue. Feldman entered the Arch a few minutes early and, like in Goodfellas, Meade was already sitting there. “Look,” Meade said, “I know you’re her friend. You had to endorse her. I understand that. But you are part of the regular organization. Can’t you at least take it easy? You don’t have to campaign with her all the time.”
Feldman said “Meade, you’re my friend. If you were in trouble, I would help you all the way. That’s what I have to do with Liz.”
Then Meade said “Okay. I understand. Fine. But there’s a City Council race in your district, and I happen to know that you’re not personal friends with any of the candidates. So you’ll support my guy, okay?”
Feldman says he was by no means crazy about Michael Garson, but he agreed, learning a bit about how Meade exercised control.
But all things come to an end and Meade left office under a cloud of investigation, eventually convicted of paying for a vacation in order to influence Mario Biaggi, a member of Congress who happened to be one of his best friends. Ironically, Biaggi’s granddaughter is now one of the leftwing legislators giving old-line Democrats so much agita.
Meade’s departure left a vacancy in the leadership, and Meade did not back his prodigal son, Genovesi, believing he had been too openly salivating for Meade’s departure, instead, backing Borough President Howie Golden.
Genovesi was a brilliant and ruthless political tactician, when it came to running campaigns, and a man of guts and vision, but, despite his role in running Fink’s Assembly majority, was, in this instance, somewhat less adept in the backroom.
Golden wanted the leadership primarily to help his Borough by strengthening his beloved Borough Presidency, seeing that Donnie Manes having both positions in Queens gave Manes more leverage on the old Board of Estimate, to Golden’s disadvantage.
Howie did really love Brooklyn, but the Brooklyn he 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. He wanted to revive Brooklyn, but it was by looking backward 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.
There is full scale war in Brooklyn—most, but by no means all, of the reformers ally with Genovesi, and Golden wins.
Golden makes peace by negotiating a deal with Genovesi in order to win the vacant leadership of the Council. The deal is that Brooklyn unites and gets both the Council Majority Leadership, for Golden’s Sam Horwitz and the Finance Chairmanship, for Genovesi’s Herb Berman, by getting Manhattan votes reform votes, cutting out the other County organizations.
But the Bronx’s Stan Friedman and Queens’s Donnie Manes, put the knife in Howie’s back by picking off one Manhattan vote, and electing Peter Vallone. Later that week, Manes put the knife into his own wrists, for reasons unrelated to Vallone, but not unrelated to his leadership.
Howie Golden could not dance on a Charlotte Russe—he had bad relations with Ed Koch and bad relations with David Dinkins, both of whom he held in contempt. He was a reformed alcoholic who gave up drinking and seems to have never smiled again.
Ironically, though Golden took the County Leader job to expand his leverage on the Board of Estimate, which soon came to an end when a Federal Court decision required the abolition or extreme modification of the Board, on one person-one vote grounds. This threatened Golden’s power more than any Mayor, or Tony Genovesi. Golden fought against a charter change which abolished the Board of Estimate, and would not allow him to continue in both roles, but lost. So, like Steingut, Golden gave up the job he didn’t really want to have the job he wanted.
Clarence Norman’s rise
In the leadership battle which followed, both Golden and Genovesi backed Mike Garson, a southern Brooklyn Leader, but the Assembly Speaker, Brooklyn’s Mel Miller, a former reformer turned regular, backed Assemblymen Clarence Norman, a Miller loyalist. And, in a close battle, Norman, backed by most of the reformers, wins.
If one doesn’t count Gardner Taylor’s short interval as part of the Troika, Norman is Brooklyn’s first Black Democratic County Leader, but a lot of the behind the scenes players remain unchanged. Norman almost immediately buries the hatchet by unsuccessfully backing Garson for Council (Garson loses to Anthony Weiner, but still manages to disgrace himself nearly as much, even while keeping his pants on) and then making Garson a judge, but Norman cannot make peace with Genovesi, and Norman is seen as inept. Norman’s first act as Leader is to back one of his reform supporters, Joan Millman, for an open Council seat, but she loses to Ken Fisher, the son of Travia’s consiglieri, Harold Fisher. Norman backs his best buddy, Carl Andrews, for an open Council seat and he loses to Yvette Clarke. Norman is seen as, at best, the boss of one half of the County, and he doesn’t always win there. Most of the white leaders are with Genovesi, and day-to-day management of white Brooklyn, to the extent Norman has any control, is handed to Party Secretary Steve Cohn. If Meade could be said to leave no fingerprints, Clarence left them everywhere, even though he usually appeared to be all thumbs.
Trouble for Norman starts coming from the courthouses, where Carl Andrews and Ravi Batra, whose firm employs Norman, of counsel, are seen to be hogging an awful lot of the patronage, not letting anyone else wet their beaks. Meanwhile, rumors abound that support from Norman requires one to financially retain his political operation; this is openly written about in Evan Mandery’s book about Ruth Messinger’s 1997 mayoral campaign. One of the Norman hogs at the slop-trough documented by Mandery is now our State Attorney General.
And the party weakens; a scandal involving a dispute over court patronage involving Ravi Batra results in a list of favored appointees for referees and receiverships no longer being walked around to judges. Brooklyn loses the Assembly Speakership. Brooklyn gains and then loses the Senate Minority Leadership, and the losing Minority Leader, Marty Connor, openly blames Norman for his loss; holding a small “Counter Dinner” the night of Norman’s County Dinner. And then Norman allegedly tells the wrong judge to hire his operation, and what little is left of Norman’s leadership falls to a series of indictments.
Given the opportunity to change things, the local district leaders sought strength and they got want they wished for, which is an abject lesson in being careful about what you wish.
Ben Smith, then running the Politicker, a local NYC political blog, saw the elevation of Vito Lopez as more of the same, writing a piece called “Meet the New Boss” as in the Who’s line, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. But a famous blog piece begged to differ:
Same as the old boss? Not.
The old boss was an incompetent bumbler who refused to punish traitors who backed Republicans and usually sat on his hands during general elections, which he regards as a day off. The new boss is a highly organized, brilliant tactician, who was one of those traitors, and often spends general elections actively working for Republicans.
The old boss was a small time grifter only interested in his party issued credit card. The new boss is the builder of a multi-tentacled social service empire supporting a well-oiled political machine (including large consulting fees for the boss), as well as actually and competently delivering social services.
The old boss was a cipher in Albany, interested only in bringing some money to his father’s church and the right factions in Chabad. The new boss is a major Albany player, often for good, sometimes not, but always for himself.
The old boss built his career on Hasid bashing (not entirely without cause), and then made his peace. The new boss built his career on Hasid bashing (not entirely without cause), and may just have made his peace.
The old boss usually played progressive and often put right wingers on the bench. The new boss often plays conservative and made Abbie Hoffman’s attorney, and a bunch of like-minded Guild lawyers, including Margarita Lopez-Torres, judges.
If he didn’t knock you off the ballot (and sometimes he took a dive) there was little consequence to defying the old boss. The new boss would rather let you stay on the ballot so he can take the extreme pleasure of publicly slaughtering you in the street in the presence of others to set an example.
You could piss on the old boss’s fancy Italian shoes in front of his wife, and he’d still come back to next year looking for a favor. The new boss carries an old grudge like a concealed weapon, except he doesn’t conceal it.
We’ve traded Fredo for Sonny (or maybe Tartaglia for Barzini).
Clarence wore a watch that cost more than Vito’s entire wardrobe. Clarence struggled to control half of the County; Vito fought to control everything. As the blogger later wrote:
The prior leader, Clarence Norman, was thought a little too accommodating, perhaps because primaries were seen in the Leader’s shop as generating profits for the “operations” run by the Leader’s friends. Lopez was seen as more effective on behalf of incumbents. Sitting judges no longer had to engage in unseemly fundraising to pay off parasitical “consultants” who would otherwise run primaries against them. The quashing of such activity served a good government purpose, though this fortuitous by-product was probably just an inadvertent bonus rather than the real intent.
Within a couple of years, dissatisfaction set in, but no one dared declare war. As a local blogger wrote:
“Whatever his accomplishments, the Lopez honeymoon was now over. The complaint was that, rather than imposing peace, Lopez had started trying to impose candidates, in baronies outside his home turf. He even started going after incumbents. Grumbling ensued from many hardcore regulars who were once his strongest supporters.
In the Vito Lopez catechism, it seemed that one could not suffer a slight deviation from the County Line and still be considered 99.44% pure, anymore than one could suffer a touch of pregnancy and still be considered chaste.
Emboldened first by the obsession to put his protégés into the local City Council seats that most impacted his home turf, then by his victory in one of those races, and later by [a] Borough Park victory…Lopez embarked upon what at first looked to be a Stalin-like series of purges, in which not only enemies were targeted, but friends as well.
Lopez was studiously trying to leave no corner of the County without an enemy, but no rival was emerging.
To beat Lopez, one needed a candidate, for you couldn’t beat someone with no one.
Further, you couldn’t beat someone with someone when no one trusted each other. As the sage political boos John Gorman put it in “The Last Hurrah”:
“Many’s the time in the ward and in the City too I’ve seen all the boys all split up and without a chance to win, and still you couldn’t get them to join hands. And that’s because no man is willing to give up his enemies unless he’s a saint or unless he’s sure of the payoff…I don’t know what we can eliminate the saints from our discussion here today. As for the payoff, there’d be no payoff unless they won.”
There were other problems; one was that Vito’s power didn’t emanate from his position as County Leader, Vito’s position as County Leader emanated from his power. Eliminate Vito, and one still would have Vito to deal with, only he’d be angrier. “
As I noted last month, Vito’s advantage was also his problem, everyone feared him, but no one loved him—and the minute anything emerged which wiped away the fear, he had no friends left. When the Lopez sex harassment scandal emerged, the terminal cynics who backed him were rushing to the microphone so fast to call for his removal that the Reformers, who been doing that for years, nearly got crushed in the stampede.
Which left us with Frank Seddio, who would rather cook you some cannolis than dance on a Charlotte Russe. Seddio was jolly man known for his epic St Joseph’s Day party, feature homemade pasta con sarde, and his epic Christmas display, featuring a nativity scene with real livestock.
Frank Seddio staged Nativity scenes; his predecessor staged crucifixions.
Seddio pulled off a brilliant victory in his first battle for the Council leadership, dumping the other County Leaders, and joining with the Mayor and progressives to elect Melissa Mark Viverito as Speaker. But his next time around, Queens Leader Joe Crowley and Bronx Leader Marco Crespo shunned him like the plague and what Citywide power Seddio had left stemmed mostly from a good relationship with the Mayor for going down with the ship in the last Council leadership battle.
Seddio’s other travails and triumphs were detailed last month, as were those of his successor, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, whch bring us to the current day.
So, as Philip Roth’s Dr Spielvogel once noted: “Now Vee May Perhaps to Begin.”
