2013 Primary election results

Good morning! I hope you all are happy waking up in a City that soundly rejected Christine Quinn last night. She came in with 15% of the vote. Bye-bye, Bloomberg lite!

The likely winner without a runoff is Bill DeBlasio. As of last night, he had 40.2% of the vote, with Bill Thompson coming in at 26%. Whether or not there is a runoff, however, let me point out once again that the political careers of Christine Quinn, John Liu and Anthony Weiner are DONE.

Scott Stringer bested Eliot Spitzer in the Comptroller's race and Letitia James and Daniel Squadron will go head to head in a runoff for Public Advocate.

Locally, Melinda Katz soundly defeated Peter Vallone, Jr. and even with the 9% or so of the vote that Tony Avella allegedly took away from Vallone, he still would not have beaten her. So much for Italian power.

In district 19, The latest numbers are Paul Vallone 2,723 votes to Austin Shafran's 2,579 votes with 98% of precincts reporting. Neither Huffington Post nor NY1 has called it for Vallone, although he claimed victory. So, in November, it MAY be Vallone and Republican Dennis Saffran. Will Saffran win because most Dems picked anybody but Vallone? Time will tell. (Apologies for previous mistake. Shafran got WFP endorsement, but NOT their line. He is challenging the election results.)

In the 22nd CD, Costa Constantinides handily beat John Ciafone.

In the 24th CD, Rory Lancman creamed Andrea Veras.

In the 27th CD, it's still a race between Daneek Miller (3,756) and Clyde Vanel (3,360) with 98% reporting.

In the 28th CD, Ruben Wills beat Hettie Powell.

In the 31st CD, Donovan Richards beat Michael Duncan.

And in the 32nd CD, Lew Simon beat William Ruiz.

Also, thankfully, in the 34th CD, which covers mostly Bushwick but half of Ridgewood, Antonio Reynoso sent Vito Lopez packing once and for all.

Sadly, because we are a one-party town run by a political machine, there were no primaries in the 20th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, 26th, 29th or 30th districts and all incumbents ran unopposed.

In kind of a surprise, in Brooklyn, 23-year incumbent DA Charles Hynes was defeated by challenger Kenneth Thompson.

UPDATE:

Tony Nunziato and Phil Ragusa were also reelected as GOP state committeemen.

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Lever machines busted across borough

I'm getting reports from Ridgewood to Bayside that the old lever machines that were brought back for this year's elections are not working properly - levers are broken or not registering votes correctly. Let me know if you experience this. Please leave poll site location and description of problem.

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GOP war gets down and dirty

2 GOP candidates for State Committee decided to challenge Phil Ragusa and the status quo, and this was the result:



Mr. Bacarella was on the board of Unisphere, Inc when Estelle Cooper was stealing from it?

Well, wasn't Phil Ragusa the treasurer of said organization?



There actually is no proof that any of the allegations of identity theft or forgery are true.

Those attacked struck back...





Well, you can't argue with that...

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Avella & civic leaders rally against BSA application

(Bellerose, QUEENS) On Saturday, September 7, Senator Tony Avella, Bellerose civic leaders and residents rallied against the Indian Cultural and Community Center (ICCC) for moving ahead with their Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) application despite the recent release of a report by the New York State Office of the Inspector General that criticized the ICCC’s involvement in a state land sale.

Two years ago, Avella reached out to the Inspector General and the Attorney General and asked for an extensive review of the New York State Dormitory Authority’s sale of 4.5 acres of land on the Creedmore psychiatric-hospital campus in a no-bid deal to the politically connected nonprofit group for a fraction of its value.

This past week the Inspector General released their report which showed clear and convincing evidence that the ICCC not only “exploited loopholes in the statute and lapses in oversight by the Dormitory Authority” but purposely sought to deceive that agency as well as members of the community and elected officials regarding their intention to build residential housing on property which is the subject of the applications currently before the BSA. The findings in the report have been referred to the Attorney General’s office.

Despite this information, the ICCC is moving ahead with their BSA application, which is scheduled to be heard at a public hearing on September 10th.

Avella stated, “From the very beginning, I have had my suspicions regarding the ICCC’s involvement in this shady land deal. The Inspector General’s report confirms my suspicions, that at the very least the ICCC intentionally engaged in deceptive practices with the intent to mislead the public about its intentions with this property and at the very worst engaged in possible illegal activity. Obviously, this is completely unacceptable and the public deserves better. That is why I am pleased that this matter has been referred to the Attorney General for further review. We must get to the bottom of any misconduct committed by anyone involved with this land deal.”

“I am calling on the Attorney General to fully investigate the potential illegal conduct of the ICCC and for BSA to postpone any hearing until such a review is conducted,” concluded Avella.

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Thinking of voting for Quinn & Stringer? Think again...

Dear friend,

I wanted to provide you with an update on our investigations into the legality of the Trump SoHo "Condo-Hotel" at 246 Spring Street, a development which GVSHP from the very beginning opposed, claiming it would violate zoning regulations.

After months of inquiries and investigations by GVSHP, we have discovered that the city officials have repeatedly violated their commitments regarding the Trump SoHo, allowing the controversial development to avoid legal requirements that were the condition for its construction.

As you may recall, GVSHP and other community groups opposed permits for the towering Trump SoHo because the "condo-hotel" violated local zoning prohibitions barring residential and residential-hotel development. Had city officials enforced the existing zoning as we argued, the project could not have been built as planned.

Instead, the City, City Council Speaker Quinn, and Borough President Stringer insisted over our objections that the planned development did not violate the zoning, and its construction must be allowed. They offered instead a "legally binding restrictive declaration" as a condition of the development proceeding, which they claimed would ensure in perpetuity that it obeyed zoning restrictions. The deal required that the Trump SoHo undergo annual independent audits of its records to prove that the development was not being used for illegal residential or residential-hotel purposes. Trump SoHo was legally required to submit the independent audits to the City each year for their inspection and review to ensure the law was being followed in every case.

In the intervening time, GVSHP had found numerous indications that city officials knew that the Trump SoHo was being used for purposes that violated the zoning. We brought this to the attention of the City, Council Speaker Quinn, and Borough President Stringer, and repeatedly asked for the inspections required by the "legally binding restrictive declaration" to substantiate whether or not the law was being broken. We received no response from the City, the Speaker, or the Borough President.

In response to this stonewalling, GVSHP filed a Freedom of Information request, which city officials were legally obligated to follow, demanding that the City, the Speaker, and the Borough President release any materials pertaining to the legally-required audits.

As a result, we discovered some very disturbing information. We found that in the six years since the Trump SoHo's construction, none of the legally-required audits which were supposedly a condition of the project being built had ever been submitted. Incredibly, we additionally found that neither the City, the Speaker, nor the Borough President had ever asked for any of the legally-required audits, even though their review by city officials was supposed to be the means by which the project's conformance with the law would be ensured. Finally, and perhaps not surprisingly, we found that no penalties had ever been issued for the Trump SoHo's failure to submit the audits, as provided for under the terms of the agreement under which the development was allowed to be built -- see letters here.

In response to our Freedom of Information request, city officials have now been forced to ask for the past six years of the Trump SoHo's legally-required audits. However, so long after the fact, it is inconceivable that such a request will result in any sort of meaningful investigation into whether or not the development has been violating the law. This failure to in any way enforce the terms under which these city officials allowed the highly-controversial and legally questionable Trump SoHo to be built -- in spite of well-grounded contentions before, during, and after the building's construction that it violated the zoning -- is deeply disturbing. GVSHP is now investigating all options for next steps in light of this egregious breach of commitments to the public.

Sincerely,

Andrew Berman
Executive Director
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

(If they'll screw over the Village, just think of what they'll do to Queens!)

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All thanks to Everly Brown

"Residents reached out to our local leaders: Borough president/ Helen Marshall, Councilman/ Leroy Comrie and many others. Our request was to clean the abandoned property at 107-58 164 Street.

Local leaders ignored residents/voters. Thereafter,residents were forced to proceed with a protest. Residents invited: Everly Brown, Melinda Katz, and Peter Vallone, because the three are asking for our votes to be the next borough president.

Only one person marched with residents on 6/29/13 against landlords who abandoned their property. That ONE PERSON IS EVERLY BROWN. He MARCHED with us while Katz and Vallone looked the other way.

Thanks Everly Brown. As a result of Everly Brown's intervention, the site was cleaned. Queens residents, please show thanks to Everly Brown at the POLLS.

Vote for Everly Brown for borough president. Brown will continue to serve Queens residents. Send this message to your friends, family etc.

1 & 2 photos are before the protest. The last photo is after the protest." - Pamela Hazel, Jamaica

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19th CD parishioner lists given to pro-Vallone PAC

The mailers get even more interesting. The Catholic Citizens Committee PAC somehow got hold of parishioner lists from the churches within the 19th CD and sent out 2 mailers to those folks: one for Peter Vallone and one for Paul Vallone.

The Catholic church is prohibited from making endorsements, so I suppose they formed a PAC to get around that.

And they wonder why people don't go to church the way they used to. The unholy alliances must stop.

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