Once again a helpful reader has pointed out some errors I made in the Voter’s Guides I published before the primary. The specific complaint concerns the 74^th Assembly District. I had written:

“Former Council aide Gur Tsabar loses a Council race and opens a blog; former Council aide Brian Kavanagh loses the same race and runs for Assembly. Which one do you think is having more fun?”
Obviously, the insinuation I’d made has been proven incorrect.

For an additional correction concerning this race, click here.

On the Friday before the Tuesday (Election Day), the Christian Cultural Center located on Flatlands Avenue, near Starett City, Brooklyn, held a candidates forum. I am told that this church of Rev. Bernard has a membership list of about twenty thousand people; thus as could be expected, many candidates showed up. All those running for Congress in Districts 10 and 11 were there, with the exception of Ed Towns. I am also told that this wasn’t the first time that Ed Towns refused to debate his opponents in a race, that it happened in 1992, 1998 and also in the year 2000. He was re-elected in all those races. Does Ed know something that we don’t? What do you think?

September 25, 2001 was the only time Alan Hevesi ever wanted my vote that he didn’t get it. On September 11th, 2001, I rose early in the morning and voted for Hevesi for mayor, although I knew he’d lose. There was going to be a run-off, and I’d then get a chance to re-evaluate, so why not go for my first choice?

Of course, my vote for Hevesi that day never got counted, and newly sobered by the reality of what had just occurred and the enormity of what lay ahead, I decided to get serious in the rescheduled primary two weeks later. Between Freddy Ferrer’s insensitively premature remarks about moving businesses out of Lower Manhattan, and his public ass-kissing of Al Sharpton, I decided the run-off was now and switched my vote to Mark Green. It was the right thing to do, and I felt terrible. That November, Hevesi appeared on the Liberal line and I voted against him again, although this time, so did he.

It now seems likely that that this year was the last where candidates for New York Sate Supreme Court Justices will be chosen by conventions. This is a result of 2 Federal Court decisions that ruled the present convention system illegal.

Despite talk of switching to an appointive system, the most likely change is that candidate for Supreme Court will, starting next year, be picked in Primary elections. That is because a change to an appointive system requires amending the State Constitution and that will take at least three years.

While many reformers and good government types who sincerely want to have a high quality court system have proposals to improve the way these judges will be elected (public financing, smaller districts, independent screening panels), these changes are so controversial that I doubt the State Legislature will agree to them.

On September 19, I announced: “I’ll be going on modified High-Holy-hiatus until 9/25, although I reserve the right to come back and comment on anything that interests me and won’t keep until then.”

I kept fairly silent, not posting my own pieces, and minimally sticking my nose into the business of others. The one “Room 8” entry I chose not to ignore was this pissing match between EnWhySea Wonk and Rock Hackshaw in which, in keeping with the spirit of the holidays,  I tried to play peacemaker, to no avail, telling them that while a little towel snapping in the Room 8 Locker Room was to be expected (and if one couldn't  take it, they could always join the Chorus instead), if this sort of street brawling continued, I'd have to see to it that Coach benched the both of em. 

I paid a fairly substantial sum to read former State Senator Seymour P. Lachman’s Albany expose Three Men in a Room. The book is a good summary of what those of us who have been reading the newspapers for the past few years already know, with the added benefit of having a former insider confirm than the worst accusations of the outsiders are correct. For those who haven’t been following the descent of our state government into despotism, I recommended it; you in for a big surprise. Hopefully, after all the libraries have made their purchases, Mr. Lachman can convince his publisher to put out a cheap paperback edition, which his education contacts can substitute for existing textbooks in the New York City public schools, those that falsely assert that we live in a democracy. But before that happens, there are some things I’d like Mr. Lachman to add.

The Daily News recently ran a series of articles outing “no-bid” contracts at New York City’s Department of Education. As someone who spent nearly 20 years as a “provisional” public employee, I’m not surprised.

Whether the government is hiring public employees or companies, it faces what I call the “dilemma of discretion.” Allow public sector managers to hire and fire who they please, and the government runs the risk of having their brother-in-law – or the brother-in-law of a politico who is in a position to threaten them – hired. But bind that manager with all kinds of rules, such as a requirement to accept the lowest “responsible” bidder, to hire those who score highest on a civil service test, and to only fire an employee or contractor after a complicated series of steps, and you create a legalistic playground for those who seek to get paid to do a job without actually doing it. Thus the tendency of those trying to improve public services, as well as those trying to steal, to hire provisionals or “consultants,” which New York’s public agencies are stuffed with, and to enter into no-bid contracts.

As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

While the newspapers and various websites have listed the Primary winners for public office, none that I’m aware of, has listed what happened in the contests for Party office. The fights in the Independence Party are too confusing for me to follow, so I will defer to Gatemouth who has previously commented on them and there were no contests in New York City in the Republican, Conservative & Working Families Parties for Party Office. So here are the winners and losers in Democratic Party races for State Committee and District Leader, with a little commentary in cases where I know something.

I’ll be going on modified High-Holy-hiatus until 9/25, although I reserve the right to come back and comment on anything that interests me and won’t keep until then. When I come back, it is my intent to provide extremely nasty, unrelentingly partisan pro-Democratic commentary until the election.

Nuance and thoughtfulness will not go out the window, because, when deployed properly, they are extremely effective techniques. But the goals should be clear: