GOP Council Members from other counties to select Brooklyn’s Election Commissioner
Has anybody told Craig, yet ? ? ? He’s gonna be pissed....
According to Celeste Katz in her Daily News/Daily Politics blog/column: “GOP Councilmen seize opportunity to appoint election commissioners in Queens, Brooklyn, overruling county party leadership — With the shrewd power play, the three Republican representatives on the City Council will now have some influence on who the city's Board of Elections can hire and fire.” (See: Celeste Katz' post/article of the same name, 2/7/13, Daily News/Daily Politics [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gop-councilmen-election-power-play-party-leadership-article-1.1258511#ixzz2KK63UWnL]).
Big doins....
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Revised 2/9/13
5 comments:
Several of my Baker Street irregulars have called to tell me that I messed this story up completely, but their versions don't add up either.
A few of the Brooklyn GOP regulars are bent out of shape, just not in the ways that I thought.
There is some realignment going on inside the Brooklyn GOP with a probable connection to the Brooklyn -Staten Island districts and the Brooklyn GOPers most involved in those. The Brooklyn piece of the Board of Election coup is probably related to some or all of that.
UPDATE: The February 8th Daily News / Daily Politics blog post, "In GOP Power Play, Commissioners' Jobs May Not Be Only Ones In Flux At NYC Board Of Elections" by Celeste Katz makes for some very interesting reading, especially the tiny part about the newly appointed Republican NYC BOE Commissioner for Kings County, Simon Shamoun (See Katz' posting Daily Politics/ Daily News, 1/8/13 [http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2013/02/in-gop-power-play-commissioners-jobs-may-not-be-only-ones-in-flux-at-nyc-boa-0]).
Here is all that Ms. Katz had to say about the Brooklyn appointment and appointee: "The councilmen ... unanimously agreed to dump Brooklyn GOP Commissioner Nancy Schacter-Mottola and replace her with Simon Shamoun, a lawyer and party activist who’s also listed as a state committeeman for the 46th AD on the party’s website. *** Shamoun, who opened a new law practice with a partner not long ago, I'm told "grew up in politics around" Republican state Sen. Martin Golden, who remains a fan."
Mr. Shamoun's selection is surely more intriguing than Celeste Katz' squib suggests; and certainly there are many in Brooklyn who would agree that the Republican Councilmens' selection process was the result of, to use Queens County Republican leader Phil Ragusa's word, "machinations".
Some people are saying that Marty Golden pushed the Republicans on the City Council to dump the prior Brooklyn GOP BOE Commissioner and name to name Shamoun.
Response to “Anonymous”: That’s very interesting, because the earliest item about this was State Senator Martin Golden’s message, “Congratulations to our new Brooklyn Commissioner for the Board of Elections, Simon Shamoun! Thank you Commissioner Nancy Mottola-Schacher for your years of service and dedication to democracy.” It was posted on Golden’s Facebook page on 1/31/13 and that Facebook posting included a photo of Mr. Shamoun being sworn in.
The earliest published report of the appointment of Simon Shamoun as the Brooklyn Republican NYC BOE Commissioner came from Jerry Kassar in his “Common Sense” column posted on the Spectator-News Blog on February 5th ( See “Jerry Kassar's Common Sense: Mayor Ed Koch” 2/5/13, The Home Reporter and Sunset News – The Brooklyn Spectator [http://www.homereporternews.com/opinion/jerry-kassar-s-common-sense-mayor-ed-koch/article_b493313c-6fd3-11e2-884c-001a4bcf887a.html]).
This raises an interesting couple of questions: What did Jerry Kassar know about this “machination”? – AND – When did he first know about it? Certainly, I assume that he knew about it on or before January 31st.
At any rate, here’s what Kassar had to say about it in his column on Tuesday, 2/5/13:
“Congratulations to Simon Shamoun, the new Republican commissioner of elections for Brooklyn. Simon is a practicing attorney in Bay Ridge and Republican Leader of the 46th Assembly District who once served State Senator Golden, who I serve as chief of staff, as his counsel. *** He will have his work cut out in bringing about change to the board which has come under considerable criticism in recent years. Just this past November, voting lines stretched in some places for over an hour. And the final certified count in Brooklyn’s elections was not available until December 21, a full six weeks after Election Day. *** There was also a change in Republican commissioners in Queens and there is talk that there will be other changes. The Republican delegation to the City Council headed up by Jimmy Oddo -- clearly concerned that the Board of Elections was dysfunctional and needed reform -- initiated these changes in conformance with New York State law and the City Charter. They can only act on Republican commissioner positions when an opening exists.”
Everybody should note that Mr. Kassar completely mis-describes the legal requirements for the “...Republican delegation to the City Council headed up by Jimmy Oddo ...” to act. It also requires the GOP County Chairmen to fail to act in naming BOE Commissioners in a timely fashion.
One suspects that Kassar and his friends out-maneuvered Eaton and his friends — yet again !
UPDATE: By one account Commissioner Nancy Mottola-Schachter's removal from the NYC BOE was supposed to be a complete surprise to Kings County Republican Chairman Craig Eaton, who protested that he had nothing to do with it and that the removal of his authority to pick the Commissioner was like a stab in the back.
Others argue that Eaton is dissembling about all of it to avoid any upset by the Sheepshead Bay/ Brighton Beach old-timers in this GOP leadership election year. They point out that Eaton's first expression about any of it was to formally thank Commissioner Nancy Mottola-Schachter for all her years of service to the public and the GOP; according to them, Eaton didn't express any opposition to removing Commissioner N M-S until after she made some protest about it. Also the same people point out that neither Eaton nor the Brooklyn GOP Law Chairman attempted to bring an Article 78 Petition to protect Commissioner Mottola-Schacter's and supposedly Eaton's interest in his exercising his right to re-nominate the sitting Commissioner.
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