Storm Clouds gathering over State Senator Golden and his re-election effort

Report:  Dems and WFP are targeting Golden in 2014

Brooklyn GOP has decided that when it comes to any campaign to re-elect Marty Golden it’s going to be strictly hands off  —  other key Republicans have said they will work for any Democrat against Golden

Inside the Golden campaign there are mounting problems   —   starting with signatures

According sources familiar with a Working Families’ Party generated coalition to put the NYS Senate completely under Democrat control, a top target this fall is going to be State Senator Martin Golden, of Bay Ridge (See “Labor-Dem-WFP Coalition Targets Sen. Golden (Updated)” by Liz Benjamin, 6/6/14, State of Politics (NY) [http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2014/06/labor-dem-wfp-coalition-targets-sen-golden/]).  A few of the things that Liz Benjamin mentioned in he article in NY State of Politics were the following: “Two years ago, Golden’s Democratic challenger, Andrew Gounardes, lost to Golden, 57 percent to 43 percent, but performed surprisingly well in Golden’s home turf of Bay Ridge....”  ***   She added,  “Also worth noting: Golden was a close ally of former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who used his considerable wealth to bolster the Senate GOP’s coffers while he was in office. Now that Bloomberg is gone, the Republicans have lost their most prominent individual contributor.”

Not mentioned in the Liz Benjamin article are Marty Golden’s problems with other Brooklyn Republicans.

As a result and in response to State Senator Golden’s 2013 failed attempt to take over the Brooklyn GOP leadership, those who won the Brooklyn GOP fight for the Brooklyn party organization in 2013 pretty much have taken a formal “Hands-Off ! ! !”  policy toward it’s only remaining all-Brooklyn elected official –  the one and the same Marty Golden. What that means is that they more or less want Golden to lose his state senate seat, but they don’t want to be blamed for directly causing Golden’s defeat. To the uninitiated, that’s the classic passive aggression approach of the Brooklyn GOP and it’s results are usually bad politics for everybody involved.

Those aren’t Golden’s only problems inside the GOP. His 2014 Re-election team is a loose amalgam of Marty Golden loyalists that include: at or near the top of the list, the Brooklyn Conservative Party; so-called “Republicans for Change,” the losing faction in the 2013 fight in the Brooklyn GOP; and Golden supporters outside the Brooklyn Republican or Conservative Parties. Not very many of those people are eligible to gather signatures for Golden to run on the GOP line. As a result, Golden’s petitioning effort has turned into a catch-as-catch-can operation that has to use paid help, staff and other volunteer notaries and commissioners of deeds, out of district “volunteers,” and other irregular signature-gatherers.

An example of the problems that Golden’s “team” has confronted gathering signatures is that a few “hostiles” were in a position to observe the petitioning effort at the Golden-sponsored Victory Rally a the Bay Ridge Manor on June 3rd. Those observations included seeing the actual gathering of signatures, hearing what was said by and around the signature gatherers while they witnessed the signatures, and who was at and what went on at the event as a whole.  Based on that, already there is a major question about the validity of any signatures gathered at the June 3rd Victory Rally at the Bay Ridge Manor; and there are even some experienced observers who think the process and surrounding facts were tainted enough that a broad enough challenge to those signatures, even those that might be facially valid, would sink the entire Golden 2014 petition.

Another example of how bad things are for Golden’s effort, for the first time that anybody remembers, several Republican activists have reached out to their Democrat “friends” and actually offered  to help in the campaign against their Republican State Senator