Back in 2004, Domestic Partner and I made an offer on a house in Windsor Terrace, which was accepted; to make the barely relevant short, the deal fell through. Quite often, I think back wistfully about the driveway and the high quality public school we forsook for proximity to the hip and trendy (and an indoor swimming pool every time it rains). But now I am grateful, for I have no need to ever make a decision on who to support for Judge in the 5th Municipal Court District race between Democrat In Name Only (DINO) Noach Dear and pro-life Republican-Conservative, in name and views (Troglydite), James McCall.
The most famous joke from the Golden Age of Radio (and I don’t mean Jean Shepherd, although I do miss him) involves legendary cheapskate Jack Benny being held up at gunpoint. The robber says “Your money or your life.” Long pause, as laughter builds. Pause continues. Finally Benny exclaims “I’m thinking”. My hero, Michael Kinsley, once wrote a column comparing the Benny joke to a law in South Carolina which gave convicted rapists the choice between life imprisonment or chemical castration. This may or may not have been cruel and unusual punishment, but it certainly beats having to vote in Bay Ridge this year for Judge.
As someone who helped to open this can of worms as a blog cause celebre (more by baiting Mole333 than through my own efforts; Gary Tilzer will insist that I did it to detract “reform” attention from the Surrogate’s race, but if anyone was really paying attention, they probably wouldn’t have supported his candidate) the whole thing is making me a bit tired. Many of my friends have now declared Jihad against any politician who endorsed Dear. Towards this, I have mixed feelings.
Certainly, one can understand Marty Markowitz’s empathy for another pol who shares his experience of getting a fine without doing the time. But Markowitz’s rejection of the recommendations of bar association screening panels, who unanimously found Dear to be UNQUALIFIED, raises issues about how, as Mayor, he’d make his own “merit selections” to the benches of Criminal, Family and Civil Courts (some of whom eventually get assigned to Supreme Court). Many Americans (possibly including myself) stand ready to cast our vote for President of the United States of America, solely on the basis of potential judicial appointments, despite the fact that the fate of the world might also be at stake. By that standard, a pol’s record on judicial selection would be a legitimate issue in a mayoral race as well.
But while that is fair enough, I cannot buy the logic of my friends who advocate a lifetime boycott based on solely on this issue. Those who backed Dear cynically joined a parade they thought was unstoppable to appear to be leading it, and now, with sweet and painful irony, they are denying the leading role they were only pretending to play. Pretty funny, actually. They delivered virtually nothing. Orthodox Jews daven twice a day. They are easy to pull. Dear pulled them. No one else voted. Dear won.
Some Dear supporters even had better motives, Senator Diane Savino insists she did so for the laudable goals of keeping Dear out of the State Senate, where he was almost certain to join Carl Kruger as another member of the Democratic conference actually controlled by Joe Bruno (although, one cannot help but notice the significant piece of Orthodox Borough Park she represents). Are those who supported Dear worthy of a slap, or worse? Sure. I eagerly await the opportunity to take Ms. Savino over my knee and give her a good long slow potch in tuchis, giving her ample time between each blow to reflect upon her sins (Vinnie Gentile can just go stand in a corner). But, while I think the Dear thing is an important factor when evaluating a candidate, it is not necessarily the only factor I will be considering. I am not mortgaging my critical facilities to Noach the Roach; if I do, the terrorists win.
I will add that some of the Dear endorsers (Vito Lopez, Diane Savino, Dominick Recchia) have stuck their necks out on gay issues in the past, despite representing hostile turf. They may have thought they'd earned a free pass. Guess they were wrong, but, in evaluating them, one must be cognizant of their entire records. Markowitz's record on gay issues is also quite good, but given that he spent a decade representing Park Slope, he's earned fewer points in the courage department, and thus, while his past record must also be considered, he should also probably get less of a dispensation. Gentile, who took money and help from Lambda, and then voted against SONDA, probably undid all the good work he's done the past several years healing that gaping wound. Dov Hikind probably regarded it as pest control (as, undoubtedly, did Lopez and some of the others).
Despite my boredom and distaste, I feel an obligation to lay out the details of the Dear/McCall choice, such that it exists, in the hopes that voters will use their critical facilities to follow their conscience and divine the proper response. Since this a district whose voting history indicates a Republican victory is not unthinkable (it would have occurred in a 1984 judicial race if the Republicans and Conservative have picked the same candidate, but regularly happens in National, State and Citywide races), it’s an important vote. As this is not Dragnet, my analysis won’t be “just the facts, mam”. Consider it “a public service announcement, with guitar”; to paraphrase the Clash: “Know Your Right-wingers”
Dear, you already know (if not, try this). The most noteworthy thing about McCall is his politics. One source, in the position to know, describes McCall as a “Right-to-Life zealot.” While this is not necessarily a disqualification in a race where both candidates can fairly be described as “anti-choice”, and neither is likely to be deciding a case on the matter, it is not a description which inspires enthusiasm.
McCall has been around a long time. He started out in the 70’s as a member of Park Slope’s left leaning Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats. This is not as unusual as it sounds. First of all, CBID was at that time emblematic of the old Irish Labor Left of Mike Quill and Paul O’Dwyer. There were angry and spirited debates between those who wanted to remake the US as a social democracy (too British for some), and those who preferred the model of the People’s Democratic Republic. Social issues generally took a back seat to economics and foreign policy (the preferred blend was Berrigan Brothers lite).
In 1975, State Senators Carol Bellamy and Karen Burstein got the bright idea to amend the State Constitution to include a gender based Equal Rights Amendment. The Federal Amendment was two states away from ratification, and this was to symbolically help push it over the top. Instead the New York Amendment, and one in New Jersey, failed at the ballot box. Federal Ratification stopped dead, and actually went into reverse. Guess they reckoned that if cosmopolitan New Yorkers couldn't handle such new fangled notions, how were they going to do it down on the farm?
Back in Brooklyn, CBID voted in favor of urging a “No’ vote on the ERA. Feminism was a bourgeoise conceit designed to divert the true revolutionary spirit from the struggle of the workers. Coincidentally, this was also the position of the Communist Party USA. Meanwhile, the old regulars in the same AD, since infiltrated by a bunch of pragmatic, socially liberal non-Irish CBID exiles tired of singing “The Internationale”, endorsed Equal Rights.
The local struggle was as much about culture as politics. CBID was the Irish club, the "regulars" were Italian, the Jews split. For years, as Sunset Park turned more and more Latino and Asian, the area’s Community Board Chair, Bea De Sapio, who came out of the “regular” club, insisted on serving Italian food at the Board’s Christmas party; many of the Board’s Latinos took offense, until an oldtimer told them not to take it personally, Bea was still trying to show the Irish who was in charge.
There is no indication that McCall’s conservatism extends to economic issues, he's served as a union delegate, and a friend claims to have seen him reading “The Nation”. As a ambitious young man of Irish extraction interested in politics, CBID must have seemed quite the congenial home in the late 70s. In 1980, they ran McCall as the “reform” candidate in a State Senate primary for the right to lose against Republican incumbent Chris Mega. Since the “regular”, a former Republican Councilman named John Gangemi, held similar social views to McCall’s, no one raised much of a fuss. Or much of a vote; McCall lost.
CBID’s Assemblyman, Joe Ferris, was a courageous and fiery presence, voting against re-electing Stanley Steingut as Speaker. Yet, on the matter of a woman’s right to chose, the flame barely burned, as courage turned to cowardice. When it came time to vote on funding for Medicaid abortions, Ferris regularly absented himself from the floor. In 1980, “regular” Louise Finney (despite her name, Jewish), an ardent feminist, ran against Ferris from the left (at least on social issues) and came close to beating him.
Apparently, Ferris’s failure to vote offended McCall as much as it did Finney, and in 1982, McCall challenged Ferris in the primary, and again, in the general election, on the Right-to-Life line. By 1984, no longer a Democrat, McCall was running against Chuck Schumer for Congress as a Republican. In each of these races, McCall opposed the positions of the gay community, sincerely, but without undue emphasis; his real enthusiasm apparently lied with protecting the unborn. No one recalls any attempt by him in any of these races to exploit hatred in order to win votes. As time went on McCall became a perennial Republican candidate for local judgeships.
As one of these men is going to be serving on the bench, and the problems with Dear are not merely ones of ideology, I undertook some detailed fact-finding, specifically soliciting opinions from folks most likely to consider McCall a political enemy. Opinion was mixed. No one cast doubt on McCall’s legal credentials. Generally, McCall was considered to be a competent attorney who well served his clients while also being fully cognizant of his ethical obligations to the system. He has practiced law for over two decades, spent the last few years working for a judge of good reputation, and in past races, has been found to be qualified by the New York and Brooklyn Bar Association screening panels (by contrast, Dear, has failed to appear before any panels, apparently preferring to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open his mouth and remove any doubt).
McCall is considered personally pleasant, with a low key demeanor. By contrast, Dear’s personality is comparable to that of a rabid pit bull with a thorn in its foot. Moreover, McCall seems an honorable individual, with an innate sense of fairness. These are not words that Dear brings to mind. A left/gay activist who knows McCall told me he believes McCall is personally without prejudice. He used the “eccentric” to describe McCall’s views, but he also used the word “ideologue”. He’s voting for McCall, but a close friend of his, who’s bi, and thus perhaps more concerned about the availability of legal abortion, used the term “zealot”. He was not alone.
How important is this? Civil Court Judges mostly try low-level tort cases. If McCall wants to up an award when a woman in a car crash is pregnant, is that the worst thing in the world? The opportunities to exercise one’s zealotry in Civil Court come few and far between.
Noach Dear is not a zealot. He once told David Dinkins’ Jewish Affairs guy, Herbie Block, that Dov Hikind was a whore and could be bought off. “No”, said Block, "Hikind’s an ideologue, you’re the whore”. It is hard to picture Dear bending the law based on a matter of principle, if only because it’s hard to picture Dear doing anything based on a matter of principle, or even showing interest in a matter of principle, as opposed to a matter of principal and interest. On the other hand, there are other inducements sometimes available. It is hard to picture Jim McCall ever selling out for a box of cigars. In Dear’s case, this is only hard to picture because Dear would likely find such a cheap offer insulting, and hold out for something better. Gerry Garson became a judge and never picked up another lunch tab. The only thing reassuring about Dear is that all the Kosher restaurants in Downtown Brooklyn have closed.
Would McCall bend the law based on a matter of principle? A very liberal judge I know once said “law is for the Appellate Division; I do justice”. How nice for us in her case, but, with more conservative judges, adherence to the letter of law is generally preferable to "justice". Civil Court Judges do get assigned to Family Court, and Supreme Court. In both those courts, a judge with an undesirable ideology, combined with fervor verging on zealotry, can do a lot of damage. Luckily, Dear will never display the competence necessary to attain such an assignment, but McCall might.
Is there really a case for voting for an unqualified, poorly comported, unprincipled slimeball with (probably) lightly held, but repugnantly expressed, right-wing social views to defeat a qualified, well comported, principled mensch with extremely strongly held, but civilly expressed, social views of the same sort? McCall is going out on the circuit speaking before “reform” clubs in an effort to allay such fears, while Dear continues his “Barteleby the Scrivener” strategy by responding to each invite by saying “I prefer not” (actually, he does not respond at all). Here’s hoping the clubs ask tough questions and the answers elicit are helpful to the undecided.
No matter who I recommend here, I have a feeling they will do something as a Judge I will live to regret. The likelihood that Dear will be arrested before he serves out his term makes a vote for him seem more appealing, on the other hand….
Long pause as laughter builds. Pause continues.
“I’m thinking”.