Sunday, September 22, 2013

Are the GOP 2013 City Council Candidates Gone or Just Forgotten ?

Maybe, the GOP Candidates for City Council -- Quaglione, Sullivan, Storobin, Testaverde and Hayon -- have been placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program 


Let the Council Candidates Speak at the Convention About the Kinds of Council Campaigns that have been Run in 2013



Sometime back in June, various GOP factions petitioned on behalf of a handful of City Council candidates. Thanks to a variety of efforts, those candidates made it onto the ballot.  Since that time what has happened to these poor souls.  Are they on the roadside somewhere buried in shallow unmarked graves ?

How are candidates for seats that have been long held by Democrats supposed to pull upsets when their underfunded campaigns are held in check until some time that will be less than two months before the general election ?

The reality is that in 2013 much less has been done for each and every GOP candidate for the council between their selection June and the November election than would be normal in a typical municipal election year.  Instead of pursuing any kind  of ACTIVE early summer or late summer campaign, the combined GOP operation in Brooklyn (all sides in the current split)  has allowed most of the clock to wind down  on its candidates without most of their making any substantial headway against their Democratic opponents or improving their standing in the communities where they are running.

With a full-scale mayoral primary going full blast around Brooklyn, the GOP City Council candidates should have been featured players along with their allied mayoral candidates -- or if deftly maneuvered, with both of the major candidates, Lhota and Catsimatidis.  If anything like that did happen, then it was like the unheard tree falling in the uninhabited forest --  it made no audible noise or any other impression on the people who count  --  THE VOTING PUBLIC.  (However, I must admit that before the GOP mayoral primary, it was fun playing "Where's Waldo?" with the photos of  GOP mayoral candidates to see if one could spot a Testeverde, Sullivan, Storobin or Quaglione in the backrows of people around the main characters or,  if in the front row, half-cropped out of the shot.)

It's been told to me by one of the council candidates that at least three out of the five guys running for council and mentioned in this post are angry and upset that they have been left to hang out to dry by  the combined GOP operation in Brooklyn (all sides in the current split).  One or two are particularly annoyed by the very faction that solicited and obtained their support and cooperation, and then completely back-burnered any effort for or on behalf of the cooperating council candidate.

How about letting the GOP City Council Candidates, Andy Sullivan, Anthony Testeverde, David Storobin, Joseph Hayon, and John Quaglione, speak at the GOP County Convention and tell the  delegates what the combined GOP operation in Brooklyn (all sides in the current split) have done for their various campaigns. There should be enough mud hitting the fan that everybody on all sides will have some spatter on them.

In spite of all that,  somebody then needs to stand up at the convention and proclaim that  100% of the blame for what has happened to the Republican Council Candidates should fall on State Senator Martin Golden and his wholly owned subsidiary "Republicans for Change"....   It was clearly foretold, on this blog and elsewhere, that any full-scale organizational fight inside the Brooklyn GOP in this election cycle would blow up the 2013 Republican campaigns for  City Council everywhere in Brooklyn.  In a perfect world, the person standing up and making that speech would be John Quaglione, the biggest victim in all of this.  That won't happen, of course, either because he still doesn't see it; or, more likely, because he lives in a very constrained environment, he just can't tell what he really knows.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

John Quaglione only does what Kassar tells him to do.

Galewyn Massey said...

That's only one of the constraints in JQ's environment.

Galewyn Massey said...

UPDATE: BACK TO THE FUTURE EDITION

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT MARTY GOLDEN MIGHT LOSE THE CONSERVATIVE LINE IN 2014? ACCORDING TO MIKE LONG, GOLDEN'S ANTI-GUN VOTE COUNTS DOUBLE AND "...CERTAINLY OPENS UP THE DOOR..." IF THERE IS A PRIMARY

Since these last two comments were about State Senator Martin Golden's staffer, John Quaglione and the constraints of his environment, it's not too much of a reach to do an "UPDATE" here about his boss(es). There is an interesting post from Ken Lovett that appeas on today's Daily News/Daily Politics blog. Lovett says that it is an expanded version of something from his "Albany Insider" column (odd that must have been a very tiny item indeed given the size of what appeared in his News' posting) (See "Vote For Gun Control Law A Double Negative In NYS Conservative Party Lawmaker Rankings" by Ken Lovett, 9/23/13, Daily News/Daily Politics [http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2013/09/vote-for-gun-control-law-a-double-negative-in-nys-conservative-party-lawmaker-]).

According to Mr. Lovett's post: " ...[t]he small but influential state Conservative Party is prepared to shoot back at state lawmakers who voted for Gov. Cuomo's gun control measure in January. *** A 'yes' vote will count twice in the negative column as the party reviews 25 bills as part of its annual ranking of state lawmakers used in its endorsement process...." The source quoted by Lovett was none other than Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long.

It's "lucky" for State Senator Martin Golden that this censure has much less bite to it than what was done just a couple of years ago. In 2011, the CPNY outright refused to endorse anyone that voted to legalize gay marriage. Nonetheless, according to Mike Long, "It certainly opens up the door in some cases where it could be detrimental if a primary came about."