Tag: Ad Watch

So, as noted in the previous post, local government employment has soared by over 100,000 over 15 years in the portion of New York State outside New York City.  Could population trends explain this?

Not exactly.  In fact, local government employment has fallen steeply relative to population in the city, and risen in the rest of the state.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, New York City’s population rose from 7.3 million in 1990 to 8.15 million in 2005, a gain of over 800,0000.  Accordingly, the number of local government workers per 1,000 residents fell from 64.4 in 1990 to 55.1 in 2005, a substantial decrease of 14.4%.

Every spring for the last 15 years, my company, Prime New York, has mailed to @1,000 politicos, our newsletter – Prime News. It lists the previous year’s election results for public & party office plus information about enhancements to our voter file. This year’s edition should be hitting the mail this week.

But if you can’t wait or if you don’t normally get it, it’s now available on-line at our brand new Prime New York website.

You can get this year’s Prime News here and you can access the website here.

Rock Hermon Hackshaw

As far as I know Noah “Nick” Perry was never a math teacher-and I have known him for about 20 years. He is educated, resilient, crafty, and tenacious. Over the years he has also demonstrated some political ambition, and he has never been afraid to articulate it. Back in 1998, when I was leading an insurgent charge in Brooklyn, he and I almost came to blows at the Board of Elections on Adams Street. He was attempting to knock one of our guys off the ballot, and while overhearing his conversation, I found him to be abusive and threatening (verbally), thus we got into each other’s face- so to speak. Now this was uncharacteristic of Nick, since he is usually mild-mannered and does possess the desired decorum of an elected official, however he is Jamaican–born, and there is a tendency amongst most Jamaican men not to back-down when confronted, for fear of being labeled a “pussy”. Maybe that fear has kept Nick in the race for the 11^th Congressional District all this time. Very few people think that he has a chance of winning, and even a third grade student knows, that when you run for congress from an assembly seat that you have held for 12 years, you must subtract your old seat. It’s simple arithmetic.

Last week, I posted a comment that lazy reporting in the NY Times resulted in them echoing GOP Senate candidate John Spencer’s line that he never denied his affair with a secretary who he promoted to Chief of Staff.

Today (Thursday), the Times comes back to the story and this time comes close to the truth –  

After refusing to discuss the relationship for years, Mr. Spencer acknowledged it publicly in 2002. 

There are few people who would deny that Elliot Spitzer has done a decent job as Attorney General of New York State. I would think only a handful maybe, and probably Republicans mostly. Some of his detractors say he is a bit aggressive and “macho”, others say he is a bully. Others yet claim that he is an “alpha–male” all the way, possessing too much testosterone. Point being, there is no real attack on his competency and/or capability. In most regards, this is good for Spitzer.

The only area where Spitzer seems vulnerable is the one where his relationship with Albany legislators can be gauged. The least you can say is that he has been quite accommodating. Can anyone find the public attacks on Albany (from Spitzer) in the past decade? And for sure, most elected officials are lining up in droves to endorse him. Not surprisingly, his endorsement list will be an Albany “who is who” list.

Here’s a headline designed to cause cognitive dissonance among the entire membership of "Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn" and most of their allies. I can’t wait to watch Chuck Barron’s Head explode when he tries to process this:

"California Town Uses Eminent Domain to Block Wal-Mart"- New York Sun, May 9, 2006.

Bertha Lewis was probably pleased. Marty Markowitz probably had mixed feelings.

Bertha, what will you do when Bruce Ratner tries to open a Wal-Mart?

A political consultant recently asked me if it was true that 70% of the vote in a statewide Democratic Primary came from New York City and it’s suburbs. I responded that I have heard and believe that was true for years but have not recently checked.

So I decided to look into past primary turnout and here it was I found.

I looked at the Democratic enrollment and the turnout from the last two statewide primaries – 2000 & 2004. Neither of these years are great because the primaries were pretty ho-hum – in 2000 Hillary had a minor Primary opponent and in 2002 Andrew Cuomo withdrew right before the Primary. But I thought it was better to use them rather going back 8 years.

According to ABC News The Note, the New Republic has a profile of George Allen that might interest those who have been debating the Vote for Cuomo-Not the Homo issue.

Some highlights –

"Another classmate, who asks that I not use her name, also remembers Allen’s obsession with Dixie: ‘My impression is that he was a rebel. He plastered the school with Confederate flags."

"It was the night before a major basketball game with Morningside High.The mostly black inner-city school adjacent to Watts was coming to the almost entirely white Palos Verdes High to play. When students arrived at school on game day, they found graffiti spray-painted on the school library and other places. All five people who described the incident say the graffiti was racially tinged and meant to look like the handiwork of the black Morningside students. But it was actually put there by Allen and some of his friends. ‘It was something like die whitey,’ says Campbell."

As both readers of my blog know, I recently concluded that only two candidates for Congress in the 11^th CD, David Yassky and Christopher Owens, met the minimum standards to be fit for service, but while I found Yassky more promising, I was reluctant to support him because he is a white candidate in a black majority district. I sort of feel ashamed about this, but my reluctance to support him is a pragmatic judgment, not a moral one.

Yassky's whiteness is going to hang from him like a target and every two years he is going to face another racial crusade. This presents several problems. The first is that it does little for community comity. The ugliness of this race has already been damaging to community relations in Brooklyn, and will become more so as the primary approaches. This animosity is fueled by other candidates (especially Chris Owens), free lance community opportunists, and parasitical institutions of the Fifth Estate like Ed Weintrob’s repulsive collection of Brooklyn Paper rags.