By ANNA SPIVAK
While Staten Island takes the “torta” as the most Italian county in America, voters beyond the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge didn’t back Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who is proud to be the grandson of Italian immigrants.
With the U.S. census reporting that 37.7 percent of Staten Island’s residents have Italian ancestry, some call the borough “Staten Italy.”
With roots grounded in Sant’Agata de’ Goti, Italy, a small town northeast of Naples, de Blasio spoke with pride during the campaign about his grandfather, Giovanni, and his Italian heritage. He even gave interviews in Italian, having minored in the language in college, helping him to become well known in Italy.
But while de Blasio won the city in a landslide, the ethnic tie didn’t help him on Staten Island, where Republican candidate Joe Lhota won 53.2 percent of vote to de Blasio’s 44.2 percent.
That’s not to say there is no Italian pride in de Blasio’s victory.
“Mayor-elect de Blasio, a Brooklyn resident, is the fourth Italian American to hold the office of Mayor of New York City,” the National Italian American Foundation said in a statement, noting that re-elected New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also has Italian ancestry. Both, it said, “are proud of Italy’s rich heritage and culture and have been longtime supporters of NIAF and its mission.”
Dominic Carielli, director of the Center for Italian American Studies at Brooklyn College, said candidates can connect to voters through shared ethnicity.
“It’s important to have a good sense of who someone is,” he said. “Especially with the distrust of politicians.”
Because New York has “such a large immigrant population,” Carielli said, it is important for these groups to know that their mayor relates to the struggle for the American dream.
Carielli said many Staten Islanders lean to the GOP. “They tend to be a very conservative, Republican, middle class community,” he said. “It’s not a progressive kind of community.” De Blasio ran as a self-proclaimed “true progressive.”
Staten Islanders criticized de Blasio for not connecting to them on their home turf during his campaign.
“De Blasio hasn’t been out of his way to blaze the Island trail,” Staten Island Advance reporter Tom Wrobleski wrote. “The stops he made were relatively low-key and didn’t involve much retail campaigning.”
Dining at Denino’s Restaurant and Pizzeria in Port Richmond in October and boarding a 3:30 p.m. ferry from Whitehall Station in Manhattan to St. George Terminal in Staten Island in early September were two of the stops included in the candidate’s itinerary.
A few of the Democrat’s other stops included a borough Democratic dinner, a Hurricane Sandy event, and a meeting with the Advance editorial board.
“Staten Island tends to be very isolated,” added Carielli. “[Politicians] can’t have everyone in their corner so it’s important to reach out.”
While some scrutinize his efforts on Staten Island, other residents are optimistic about the Italian taking office as mayor.
Matteo Nicolosi, 50, a Staten Island resident for over 20 years with strong ties to family in Sicily and Catania, says his family “feels good about de Blasio being elected mayor.”
“It’s too soon to tell if he’s paid enough attention to Staten Island,” said Nicolosi. “I think Staten Island is happy about the change.”
Nicolosi, who heads a successful construction business on Staten Island, said that de Blasio’s “down-to-earth” personality adds to his likability.
The president of the Staten Island Democratic Association, Tom Shcherbenko, added that de Blasio has had friends in Staten Island “since he was a city councilman,” himself included. Shcherbenko volunteered for de Blasio’s campaign and has even put a photo of himself alongside the new mayor and his wife as his Twitter picture.
Showing his Italian skills at October’s Columbus Day Parade in Bensonhurst, de Blasio addressed the crowd and spoke about how proud he was of his cultural background.
“Italians feel a little ambivalent about government,” he said. “But that means we demand the government actually serve people in their neighborhoods. And that’s the right way to think about it. That’s what I’ve gained from my heritage.”
Photo: Campaign promotion for Bill de Blasio calls for Italian-Americans to back him. Most didn’t.
By JESSICA JUPITER
While Bill de Blasio is preparing himself to become the next New York City mayor, supporters are patiently waiting to see if the mayor-elect fulfills his promises. Among them is one of the city’s largest unions, 1199 Service Employees International Union, which played a huge role in his campaign during the primary election. The board’s unanimous decision to have the union back de Blasio during the primary was the first time in 20 years that 1199 SEIU made such a stance.
NEWS ANALYSIS
The union, which represents more than 200,000 health care workers, was drawn by de Blasio’s emphasis on the working class during debates. Union President George Gresham has said that Bill de Blasio was the “easy choice” for 1199 SEIU. Another factor that played a role in the outpouring of support from the union included the fact that most 1199 SEIU workers are African Americans, a group that gave 96 percent of its votes to de Blasio, according to exit polls.
Now, the mayor-elect, who classified himself as the “progressive alternative” in the election, is faced with ensuring the continued support of 1199 SEIU. Soon after de Blasio was elected, the union released an ad campaign highlighting some of de Blasio’s objectives like universal pre-K and increased access to health care. The campaign, which cost the union around $100,000, addresses inequalities “both in terms of the economy and health care access.”
The dollars spent for this campaign, however, can be considered chump change in comparison with the union’s monetary support for de Blasio during primary elections. During the primary, 1199 SEIU spent an estimated $204,000 on “independent” spending in de Blasio’s behalf.
The mayor-elect recently showed his gratitude by recruiting 1199 SEIU president Gresham to his transition team, which will help appoint commissioners and other high-level city officials. This gives Gresham and 1199 SEIU an opportunity to not only better lobby the city government, but to actually have a direct influence over policies regarding health care.
As the only large union to publicly endorse de Blasio during the primary, 1199 SEIU may expect the mayor-elect to be more sympathetic to its proposals than to other unions’ proposals.
“In this case, the union expects Mayor-elect de Blasio to support low-income workers in the public sector who labor at wages not too much higher than McDonald’s or Wal-Mart employees,” said Brooklyn College Political Science Professor Manny Ness, an expert on the political history of the U.S. labor movement. “The union has been pushed by members to endorse progressive Democrats who are more supportive of equity. In this case the union made a brilliant endorsement that will help rank-and-file workers and polish its image, which has faded.”.
With immediate challenges of labor contracts, budget deadlines, and a $2 billion deficit awaiting the mayor when he is sworn into office, however, it is unlikely that the health care union’s proposals are highly ranked on the list of de Blasio’s concerns. Gresham seems content with the union being secondary, however, saying, “I have to believe that the labor unions who have waited so long to get treated with dignity and respect are willing to wait a little longer to see that he gets organized.”
It shouldn’t be expected, however, that 1199 SEIU is going to sit idly by waiting until de Blasio reaches its needs on his overwhelming list of tasks. Members of the union have joined the New Day, New York Coalition, a left-leaning group looking to re-create the city’s relationship with big banks.
According to the recent study, “Leveraging New York’s Financial Power to Combat Inequality,” done by the coalition, the city spent more than $700 million a year on Wall Street through fees on its pension funds and bad deals. Pressing for better wages for tellers and other low-level bank employees, the coalition hopes to “draw attention to the ways Wall Street and big corporations continue to siphon resources away from average New Yorkers and point toward solutions that would help reduce inequality and build economic fairness.”
“They will be hoping [de Blasio] follows through on pledges on issues ranging from police stop-and-frisk to the living wage bill to an improved school system,” said Richard Steier, editor of The Chief-Leader, which reports on labor.
As a one-time labor organizer, de Blasio seems confident in addressing these concerns of the labor unions. Though he steers away from making any direct promises, the mayor-elect continues to stress the issues surrounding the unions.
One concern is the union’s city employees. “There is a small contingent of the union’s membership (about 4,000 workers out of more than 100,000) who are municipal employees – the rest are employed in private hospitals and health-care facilities, for the most part – who are without contracts going back several years and they will be hoping for fair treatment at the bargaining table,” Steier said.
After 20 years of outspokenly pro-business mayors, unions like 1199 SEIU are ready for stronger political power in the New York City government. The unions are ready for the momentum to shift their way.
Photo: Bill de Blasio supports workers at Long Island College Hospital. (Office of the Public Advocate).
By FARAZ TOOR
Last month, New York City voters declared that Bill de Blasio and his progressive agenda were what they wanted in a mayor for the next four years. Meanwhile, Staten Islanders declared that they didn’t care what the rest of the city thought.
Although de Blasio won 73.3 percent of the vote for mayor, easily defeating Republican candidate Joe Lhota, on Staten Island, Lhota won the majority. It suggests again the notion that Staten Islanders feel isolated from the rest of the city, even if they don’t want to secede from New York City anymore.
NEWS ANALYSIS
While it was expected that Lhota would win Staten Island because the borough has repeatedly voted for Republicans for mayor, Lhota’s strength of victory was surprising, as he won the borough by eight percentage points. The entire South Shore of the borough went to Lhota, and almost every voting district in the mid-island voted for him. Even a chunk of the North Shore gave the Republican candidate its votes. Lhota won every Staten Island neighborhood except for five small areas in the North Shore, all but one by double digits.
De Blasio “never really concentrated on Staten Island,” said Richard Flanagan, chairman of the political science department at the College of Staten Island.
A New York Times interactive map shows that even though de Blasio won among white voters citywide, he lost heavily in that demographic on Staten Island. Lhota lost among homeowners, citywide, by more than 20 percentage points, but he won handily among Staten Island homeowners.
Staten Islanders say their vote wasn’t only a matter of supporting conservative policies.
“There’s no special affinity between him and the borough,” Flanagan said about de Blasio. Flanagan also said that de Blasio’s liberal stances didn’t “play very well” on Staten Island, but he said that de Blasio’s lack of attention to Staten Island was more of a factor in the voting.
Lhota needed to win very big on Staten Island, and made the borough a centerpiece of both his primary and general election campaigns. When asked during a debate about the happiest moment of their lives outside family events, de Blasio said it was his graduation from NYU; Lhota said it was cutting the ribbon at the ceremony that closed Fresh Kills Landfill when he served as deputy mayor under Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Much like Giuliani, Mayor Michael Bloomberg also built strong support in Staten Island.
“Staten Island was always more important to Bloomberg and Giuliani because they depended on the votes,” Flanagan said.
“His policies were very wishy-washy,” Scott Plissner, a 53-year-old Staten Island Republican, said of de Blasio’s campaign platform. “I think he’s going to be a problem.”
Staten Island’s dissatisfaction with Democratic candidates stretches much further back than this year’s mayoral election. Consistently over the last 13 years, Staten Islanders voted for Republicans in almost every one of their elections. Staten Island was the only borough that elected a Republican borough president, and it did so in six previous elections. And in the City Council races, the Island had two of the three Republican Council members elected in the entire city. v
Staten Island differs from the other boroughs, more like a town than a city. Its residents depend on the car for transportation, much more so than people in other parts of the city. Staten Island has fewer transit options; its public transportation system is mostly the Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses. The only train line, the Staten Island Railway, only covers one side of the Island. The ferry provides a link to Manhattan.
The borough was even isolated when Hurricane Sandy hit; Borough President James Molinaro charged that the American Red Cross had failed to respond as quickly as it should have and urged residents to stop donating to it.
In the mid-1990s, Staten Islanders felt so isolated from city government that they voted to secede from the Big Apple and become a separate city, with their own mayor and City Council.
“Their biggest concern was, at the time, that basically Staten Island was being ignored in reference to almost everything that had to do with the state,” Gretchen Finke Cassidy, a 55-year-old Staten Island resident, said of the seccessionists. “Other boroughs got money for improvements – road improvements and improvements for social services – while Staten Island got nothing.”
The process gained headway after the state Legislature granted the right of self-determination in 1989. Legislative leaders in Albany thought the initiative would die quietly, but the State Senate, the Assembly, and then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, who stayed neutral on the issue, failed to stifle further legislation. In 1990, residents of Staten Island opted to secede, and on November 2, 1993, in a second referendum, Staten Island residents voted 2-to-1 to approve the charter.
The Fresh Kills Landfill was a major source of concern. “When people’s voices weren’t heard about the dump, that fueled a lot of the secessionist [feelings]. You could smell the dump from where you got out of your home,” Cassidy said, noting it was near the Staten Island Mall. “And when you got over to the Mall, the smell of the dump was so bad it would knock you over.”
In 1995, the secession bill passed the Republican-controlled State Senate, but met its end in the State Assembly, which was controlled by New York City Democrats. According to the Staten Island Advance, Speaker Sheldon Silver, from Manhattan, said that the bill must be accompanied by a “home-rule” message from the City Council, which wouldn’t give it.
The movement lost a great deal of its might after that, and no successful push has made headway since. In 2008, State Sen. Andrew Lanza introduced new legislation for secession, but nothing has happened with that movement. Even two years after the secession movement failed in the State Assembly in 1995, polls showed that Staten Islanders no longer wanted to secede from the city. Today, the calls for secession are almost non-existent; some of this may be attributed to the city’s shutting down the Fresh Kills Landfill and making the Staten Island Ferry free, two of the borough’s major demands in the mid-1990s.
Scott Plissner, a 53-year-old Staten Island Republican, said that financially, Staten Island probably couldn’t have handled being on its own. But the underlying sentiments that gave rise to the secession movement haven’t died.
“His policies were very wishy-washy,” Plissner said of de Blasio. “I think he’s going to be a problem.”
Said Plissner: “Year-by-year it’s getting worse. You hear it every year: Staten Island, the Forgotten Borough.”
By NICHOLAS LOPEZ & DAVID BELTRAN
Former City Councilwoman Melinda Katz on Tuesday handily won the race for Queens borough president over Republican Candidate Aurelio “Tony” Arcabascio and Independent candidate Everly Brown.
Katz, the front-runner who was expected to win, gave an early victory speech in front of 40 to 50 people, with local politicians and officials also in attendance at the Queens County Democratic headquarters.
In a borough where people speak 160 languages, Katz said it was her job to represent them all and work with colleagues in the City Council, State Legislature and fight for equal access, as she dedicated the evening to her parents and family.
“We need to make sure that we fight so that our children can raise their children right here in our borough and I’m extremely excited to be the next borough president,” said Katz. “This is a culmination of the career of my parents. They taught me this is a borough worth fighting for.”
She noted that she hoped to hire a new deputy borough president within the next few weeks.
“I hope that the deputy borough president would help me form the rest of the staff in policy initiatives before January 1,” said Katz.
Helen Marshall, the current Queens borough president, expressed her approval of Katz as well.
“She will do a good job and if she needs me for anything,” said Marshall as she paused to turn directly to Katz before finishing, “You got me!” and the two hugged.
Roberta Trager, a Forest Hills resident who knew Katz when she was a little girl and was invited to the candidate’s house when the campaign started, was also elated to see Katz emerge the winner.
“I always had faith in her,” said Trager. “She grew up in Forest Hills and knows what it is to be a Queens resident, very sympathetic to the senior citizens. She cares about us, about the benefits that we can have. She has an awful lot of experience and we as residents of Forest Hills feel very strongly to have someone like Melinda represent us. You couldn’t pick a better candidate.”
By JENN KUFA
Voters in northern Queens decided Tuesday night to send yet another member of the Vallone family to the City Council.
Paul Vallone, son of former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr. and brother of City Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., defeated Republican Dennis Saffran to represent Council District 19, which includes College Point, Bayside, and Little Neck.
With 72 percent of precincts reported, Vallone led with 57 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Saffran.
Although Paul Vallone has little history in city politics, his family has been well respected for years. Vallone is currently the managing director of the Vallone & Vallone law firm. He was previously a member of Community Board 1 and is an active member of the 109th Precinct Council.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Gov. Andrew Cuomo were among the many politicians who endorsed Vallone, a testament to his family’s influence.
Vallone won the Democratic primary by fewer than 200 votes. The race became closely contested after the previous officeholder, Republican Dan Halloran, resigned after he was arrested in April on corruption charges. Saffran, the only other Republican running, became his party’s nominee.
Halloran said Tuesday that he would cross party lines to vote for Paul Vallone. Halloran said Saffran misled the public by using a photo on his campaign website showing Saffran with Giuliani, who backed Vallone.
The photo Saffran used was tagged with a 2001 quote from the former mayor: “Dennis has worked together with me on many of the measures that have made New York a better and safer place to live, work, and raise our children.”
Giuliani then recorded a robocall in Queens, stating his support for Vallone and calling Saffran’s campaign move “deceptive.”
Saffran has criticized Vallone for not taking stances on several issues. He’s also criticized Vallone, an Astoria native, for using his family’s history as a means to win the election and for not being decisive enough on crime issues.
In his campaign, Vallone has said budget cuts caused crime to rise in the district. He promised to get more funding for his district in northeast Queens in order to correct the crime issue.
Peter Vallone Jr., a Democrat who represents Astoria, ran for Queens borough president but lost to Melinda Katz in the Democratic primary by 10 percentage points.
Photo: Paul Vallone
By Alyson Kaufman
Democratic candidate Chaim Deutsch won the race on Tuesday for Brooklyn’s 48th City Council District in south Brooklyn, handily beating his Republican opponent David Storobin.
Storobin lost despite his opposition to gay marriage in the large Orthodox Jewish community of Brighton Beach, Midwood and Gravesend, a position that was essential to his winning the Senate race against Councilman Lewis Fidler in 2012, a post he held only briefly.
Speaking at a fund-raiser on Oct. 23, Storobin claimed that his Democratic rival, Chaim Deutsch, doesn’t live “anywhere near” the Brooklyn district they are competing to represent, and therefore lacks awareness of the area’s recent struggles.
“When the boardwalk is broken, when a business gets shut down, I see it every day,” said Storobin. “[My opponent] needs a map to figure out where this place is.”
According to the Board of Elections, however, Deutsch does reside within the 48th District. “I’m not interested in talking about my opponents,” said Deutsch. “What I’m interested in is talking to the residents of southern Brooklyn and listening to their concerns about the critical quality of life issues the district faces and how to best address them.”
Deutsch will be taking over for his former boss, Councilman Michael Nelson, for whom he was chief of operations. “I think he is, without a doubt, the most qualified person for the job,” said Nelson. “He knows the whole operation, he knows how to get things done. He’s helped so many people over the years, and he has the wherewithal and the connections to help people not only with disasters, but with day-to-day stuff too.”
Deutsch defeated Igor Oberman in the Democratic primary, however the rivalry continued as Oberman ran on the Working Families ballot for the 48th council district. As a private citizen, Oberman donated $250 to Republican candidate David Storobin during his campaign for state Senate.
A campaign spokeswoman for Oberman said that his support for Storobin was due to their “long-lasting friendship” and that there were “effectively two Republicans running in that race.” This references Simcha Felder who, after beating Storobin, joined the Republican caucus in Albany. “You have to support your friends and the people that will do right in the office,” said Oberman’s spokeswoman.
By LAURA D’ANGELO
Voters in a southern Brooklyn district stretching from Sheepshead Bay to Canarsie elected Assemblyman Alan Maisel to represent them in the City Council on Tuesday.
With 37 percent of the precincts reporting Maisel, a Democrat, led Republican Anthony Testaverde with three-quarters of the vote. He will replace Council member Lew Fidler, a Democrat who couldn’t run again because of the city’s term limits law.
Maisel, elected to the Assembly in 2006, served as the past head of the District 22 Community School Board for two terms and has been involved in civic, community, and political activities for the past 37 years. Helped by heavy funding from a real-estate-backed political action committee, he defeated insurgent Mercedes Narcisse in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary.
As far as what he will do for Council District 46, Maisel emphasized the budget and fiscal responsibility.
“Maintaining essential services and making necessary community improvements while our city continues its economic recovery,” he said in his profile with the New York City Campaign Finance Board. “This means involving people in determining how city budget funds are spent in our community.”
During the campaign, Maisel said that his experience as an educator has made him a good problem-solver, and that is part of what will make him the right choice as a representative. He is a former teacher and retired assistant principal.
By CONNOR SYRACUSE
Democratic incumbent Vincent Gentile won re-election Tuesday in the race for City Council in a district covering parts of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst.
With 93 percent of the votes counted, he led Republican John Quaglione with 63 percent of the vote to 35 percent, winning easily in neighborhoods that sometimes elect Republicans.
Gentile was elected in 2003 in a special election after serving three terms in the State Senate. He ran with a long list of union endorsements, including the United Federation of Teachers and the police unions.
Quaglione is the deputy chief of staff and press secretary for Sen. Marty Golden, who formerly held the Council seat. A Republican, he also ran on the Conservative and Independence Party lines.
After leaving the polls today, Matthew Robicelli, owner of Robicelli’s bakery in Downtown Brooklyn, said he supported Gentile. “I voted for Vinny because I’ve never seen a politician care more about his community,” said Robicelli. “Owning a small business in Brooklyn is very hard and bringing it back to Bay Ridge was a hard decision but having Vinny on our City Council helps — he always supports small business and helping the neighborhood businesses to have a shot at growing.”
In three heated debates, the candidates battled over who would bring more city funding to the district. Quaglione said the district had been first in city funding when Golden was the Council member, but that it had fallen to next-to-last.
Gentile countered that the district receives less money because other districts require funding for public housing, drug clinics and homeless shelters.
Gentile also said that he kept his integrity intact because he refused to vote to raise the property tax or put tolls on the East River bridges – at the cost of more possible funding for the district.
“I won’t sell out my district to get a few extra shekels from the Speaker,” Gentile at an Oct. 7 debate. “To sellout for that small pot? Never, never will I sell out.”
By ANNA SPIVAK
Republicans won the race for Staten Island borough president Tuesday and were ahead in two of the GOP-leaning borough’s three Council races.
With more than half of the votes counted, Council member James Oddo led with 71 percent of the vote in his race for borough president against Democrat Louis Liedy, a retired public school teacher.
Oddo took to Facebook to “thank everyone for the amazing outpouring of love on social media today.”
Council member Vincent Ignizio, the Republican incumbent representing the South Shore, faced a challenge from Democrat Chris Walsh, a city sanitation worker and former president of a longshoremen’s union local. Ignizio led with 74 percent of the vote, way ahead of Walsh, who had 26 percent.
Council member Deborah Rose, a Democrat, was well ahead with 73 percent of the vote in her North Shore district. She ran against attorney Mark Macron, the Republican candidate.
In the Mid-Island district, an area hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, Democrat John Mancuso and Republican Steven Matteo went head-to-head in the Island’s tightest council race, pursuing the seat that Oddo now holds. With 56 percent of the precincts reporting, Matteo pulled ahead of Mancuso with 62 percent of the vote to 38 percent.
A big part of Mancuso’s campaign called for adding cameras to all police cars. “When they [arrested persons] go to court, police will have proof as to what crime was committed,” he said, adding that the public would also benefit “if a police officer does step out of line.”
Matteo, who is chief of staff to Oddo, has focused, alongside his boss and Ignizio, on cleaning up the Island. He has said that the litter problem has become more “noticeable.”
“Litter is a black eye to our neighborhoods that diminishes our quality of life,” Matteo said. “We have to work together to fight this ugliness.”
Hot topics across all three races in Staten Island circled around deteriorating roads/traffic issues, education, transportation, and Hurricane Sandy recovery.
In a series of heated debates hosted by the Staten Island Advance, Rose and Macron sparred over issues concerning the North Shore’s New York Wheel and Empire Outlets Project, crime, stop- and-frisk in particular, and education. Macron charged that the councilwoman’s efforts to stop crime have been “soft and weak.”
By ANDREA AUSTIN, DEANNE STEWART, ALEX ELLEFSON and LAUREN KEATING
Ken Thompson became Brooklyn’s new district attorney on Tuesday night, defeating six-term incumbent Charles Hynes by a wide margin.
With 60 percent of the votes counted, Thompson had 72 percent of the vote to 27 percent for Hynes. Thompson will be the first black district attorney of Brooklyn and only the second in state history.
“The people of Brooklyn have voted for a man who started out with the odds stacked against him as a child and made that man the district attorney of Brooklyn,” Thompson said in his victory speech.
After initially withdrawing from the race following a 10-point loss to Thompson in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, Hynes decided to run on the Republican and Conservative lines.
Ending a bitter campaign, Hynes conceded defeat at his campaign headquarters in a Bay Ridge restaurant. “It’s a substantial vote,” he said of his opponent’s margin of victory. “It gives Ken Thompson a clear mandate which he didn’t have after the primary.” He added: “I’m surprised it was so wide.”
Hynes said he had mixed feelings about running for district attorney again until he found out that convicted former Brooklyn Democratic leader Clarence Norman – “who I put in prison” — was rumored to have played a role in Thompson’s campaign. Norman, a former assemblyman, was sentenced in 2007 to three-to nine-years in prison for extorting money from candidates for judgeships.
Thompson denied the charge that Norman was active in his campaign, but Hynes made it the centerpiece of his re-election drive.
“I will do everything in my power to make damn sure that Clarence Norman, Jr. never influences the Office of Brooklyn District Attorney,” Hynes said during a news conference at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
Thompson responded that Hynes’s allegation about Norman was “an outright lie,” saying he had nothing to do with his campaign. “It’s a desperation move by D.A. Hynes,” he said.
Thompson accused Hynes of doing little about wrongful convictions – pointing to a lawsuit aimed at actions of Hynes’s top deputy, Michael Vecchione, over the conviction of Jabbar Collins, who was released from prison after serving 15 years for a murder he says he didn’t commit. Hynes is scheduled to testify in November in a $150 million lawsuit filed by Collins.
In an ad for Thompson’s campaign, actor Holt McCallany said, “Charles Hynes has been in office for almost 24 years and his tenure has been plagued by incompetence, corruption, prosecutorial misconduct, and abuse of power.”
Hynes repeatedly accused Thompson of not being qualified enough to manage the district attorney’s office. He likened Thompson’s campaign to a Seinfeld episode, saying, “It’s a campaign about nothing because he has no experience.”
Thompson, who served five years as a federal prosecutor, helped convict a police officer in the 1997 attack on Abner Louima, one of New York’s most notorious police brutality cases. He is largely known for representing a hotel housekeeper who alleged that she was sexually assaulted by the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Some say that Thompson handled the case to gain publicity.
Over the last 10 years, Thompson has run his own private firm with one other partner and 15 employees. Though he has criminal justice experience, Hynes supporters argue that he doesn’t have the supervisory experience that the district attorney of such a large borough needs.
Only about 20 percent of Democrats voted in the primary election. This small turnout is one of the factors that led Hynes to say that if he could gain the support of Republicans and some Democrats who didn’t vote, he could have a real chance at winning. Hynes has spent a lot of time campaigning in Bay Ridge, where Republicans are influential, and politically moderate areas of southern Brooklyn.
After losing in the primary, many of Hynes’s biggest past supporters endorsed Thompson, including ultra-Orthodox Jewish Satmar sects, Frank R. Seddio, chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic organization, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Hynes’s former spokesperson George Arzt and City Council member Letitia James, the Democratic candidate for public advocate. Thompson also has strong support from Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and was endorsed by The New York Times.
However, Hynes has been praised as a law enforcement innovator. “He’s the first one to give victims of domestic violence a beeper,” said David Schwartz, who served as an assistant district attorney of Kings County from 1993 through 1997 and is a supporter of Hynes’s campaign. “He’s one of the first ones to have a gang unit, his drug treatment programs are copied throughout the country, his return to the system programs; he’s one of the innovators of bringing defendants back into the system, into society. He understands the recidivism rate. He has programs that actually help people come back into society and live a lawful life.”
Thompson said he would focus on keeping guns off the streets, take a closer look at stop-and-frisk arrests, and push for less arrests for small amounts of marijuana.
Referring to his win, Thompson said, “The duty of a prosecutor is not to convict. The ultimate duty is of a prosecutor is to do justice.”
