Rise of Empire

By Michael Boyajian

I remember being a child in the 1960s on Long Island and during visits to my grandparents’ home in New Jersey and my great grandmother’s home in Fresno and how there was still a 1930s or pre World War II small town feel  to life.

First of all if Linc Restler is a "hipster," he's from the nerdcore division of the breed (and take it from me, it takes one to know one).

But there's a far more important question here than who gets to be the male member (perhaps not the best choice of words) of the Democratic State Committee from AD 50.

The important question is, "who takes over running Steve Cohn's annual Friday before the election political breakfast at Junior's?"

To Hell With Reform; We Must Save Stevie Cohn's Breakfast. This tradition MUST BE KEPT ALIVE!!!

During the overheated press coverage of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, some cynical observers of the press (like me) said this was a classic “summer story”. That is, a minor event or controversy that gets enormous attention in the media because there is less real news happening in August. Previous examples include shark attacks and Chandra Levy. Others said no, this is a major issue that will resonate with voters in November and affect American relationships around the world.

It is the salaries that shock the most.

Six Hundred Grand and change for an Executive Director?

The one thing people who know Vito Lopez acknowledge first is that he is parsimonious. He runs the party’s operations on less money in a year than his predecessor had spent on one of his gold bracelets. One of Clarence Norman’s socks probably costs more than vito’s entire wardrobe.

WARREN COHN: WHO DAT gonna stop the goldrush tonight!!! As far as my race…My opponent is currently up 85 votes and the race is still too close to call with 300+ paper ballots left to count. If you hear otherwise it is false info, straight from the source – W

Much to my embarrassment, my prior post on this matter, predicting victory in the 50^th AD male leader’s race for Warren Cohn, was based on the information that the canvas of voting machines (usually mislabeled as a “re-canvass”) had already been done.

This was not the case.

In last Tuesday’s Democratic Primary elections, two winning candidates for State Assembly were Francisco Moya in the 39^th AD and Robert Rodriguez in the 68^th.  Both are overwhelming favorites to take office as their districts are safely Democratic.

Moya and Rodriguez will join an interesting group of present and former New York City state legislators – those who were unsuccessful candidates for City Council and then were elected to the State Senate & Assembly.

Both Moya and Rodriguez ran in 2009, Moya in a Special Election to replace Hiram Monserrate (the person he defeated last week) and Rodriguez against incumbent Melissa Mark Viverito (in a district that had previously been represented by Rodriguez’ father).

Whenever I endorse a candidate on either the Room Eight New York Politics, or on the Daily Gotham blog-sites, what I am saying is simply that if I had a vote in that race, this is how my vote will go. At no point am I predicting that the person I am endorsing is going to win the race -unless I so specify.  In actuality, there are many times I feel strongly that my endorsed candidate will lose the race. I even said so in one of my recent endorsement columns (see comments-section also) regarding one candidate (Nelson Denis).

Thus, it was a bit frustrating (after I did my last two endorsement columns) for me to field a bunch of
e-mails, phone calls, text and verbal messages, plus subtle warnings from various individuals: including electeds, their minions, staffers, operatives and the like. In fact, I had intended to write a follow up column explaining at length, the reasoning behind my endorsements: but alas, I did not. I hated all the bitching that was coming my way, and I felt another column would only exacerbate the situation. And you all know that I am a non-controversial kinda guy. Right?