Dateline: Lewes, Delaware
A few notes on why the Lopez Scandal matters.
Two years ago, I wrote this in advance of the primaries for District Leader in Brooklyn:
Brooklyn District Leaders had long gotten used to County Leaders who served the function of Paul Sorvino in "The Goodfellas." When the organization was in a non-war setting, local crews were allowed a great deal of autonomy, paid the boss his tribute and came to him to settle disputes. An effective leader kept the peace and divided up the pieces, and was usually allowed a second helping for his troubles.
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.
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 regular 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 the Borough Park victory, this spring 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.
I further noted:
But, with Lopez studiously trying to leave no corner of the County without an enemy, Cohn, known for easygoing generosity and an ability to agree with everyone about everything while freely bestowing checks as if they were dollar bills being handed out to beggars at an Hasidic wedding, was widely considered the one person in the Party capable of serving as the figurehead of any anti-Lopez coalition.
Lew Fidler would have to give up his Council seat to be County Leader and had no interest in doing so. Darryl Towns was interested in going to Congress or the Borough Presidency, and a failed attempt at becoming leader would not help him attain these goals, and neither would a successful one.
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.
If the leaders ever stopped being too afraid to share what they actually all thought with each other, then a coup would actually be a lively possibility; and once those barred from the race by position or personality were eliminated, Cohn would pretty much be the last man standing.
And once again, the leadership would go from dictatorship to figurehead. It would be the restoration of Clarence Norman, except the organization would probably not restore its extortion operation, instead leaving it entirely to the freelancers. Still, for the process junkies a weak leader would surely be preferable to a strong one.
Now, beyond the names of a few players at the table (Cohn and Towns have gone), and some facts about the players who remain (Fidler had only one year left on his Council term, and nowhere to go), let me outline what has changed.
Though some wounds have become less raw with the crawl of time, Lopez has enemies all over the place. They don’t like each other and they don’t trust each other, and prior to yesterday, they did not think they could win, but they might together constitute the majority of the Party’s Executive Board.
Further, one can no longer say that Vito’s power didn’t emanate from his position as County Leader, Vito’s position as County Leader emanated from his power.
It would be an exaggeration to say the County Leadership is all that Vito has left, but it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration.
And the falling of dominoes tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy.
Add to all this the cringe-worthy details of these stories of a huge fat old man with a nasty temper and the power to hire and fire forcing his hand into places on the bodies of young females where it lacks permission to be, again and again, and one must ask:
If this can occur without punishment, why was Anthony Weiner’s purged for creative masturbation?
Then, there is the matter of self-preservation.
Query: if you were Steve Cymbrowitz (or Ben Akslerod), Bill Colton, Alec Brook-Krasny, Helene Weinstein, Simcha Felder, Andrew Gounardes or John Mancuso, would you want Vito Lopez to still be sitting as County Leader in November?
It has come to the point where Vito Lopez's biggest worry is no longer an ambush by his enemies.
Vito Lopez's biggest worry is now an ambush by his friends.