The loss of Republican control of the New York State Senate was a long time in coming and it is likely to last for a very long time going forward
There is only one shot left in that old bottle of booze, possible Republican control in the NYS Senate; but, if the GOP State Senate Conference doesn't completely rebound in 2020 and regain ALL the 2018 losses --- they are done having a meaningful say in New York State politics for at least a generation --- if the Democrats control the post-2020 reapportionment of the NYS Senate, the GOP will have a shot at no more than a 2-to-3 minority in the NYS Senate for the next ten years (and that might even be closer to a 1-in-3 minority).....
Things are even worse when it comes to the NYS Congressional Delegation going forward. The NYS Republican delegation to the U.S. Congress suffered grievous loses in 2018 --- mostly along the "Hudson" from Staten Island and Brooklyn to north of Saugerties (and even Chris Collins in Western NYS might still lose his seat by the end of the count[s]; then again, Claudia Tenney still has a remote chance to pull out a win in the Southern Tier on the recount[s]) --- after reapportionment following the 2020 election, the long-term ratio of Republicans to Democrats among NYS Members to Congress is likely to come in at no higher than 1-in-5 (really, think long and hard about that)
Something more than hand-wringing must be done.....
What could that possibly be ?????
61 comments:
Rose is a one termer. Dandy Dan will be doing closings on time shares.
Maybe, Steve Saperstein should run for this seat. Then he can run in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and also be closer to his wife's family in New Jersey.
It’s a shame because that seat was Steve Saperstein’s to lose and he decided to go all in with Liam and the psychos throw in Ted under the direction of Jerry and you had a massive dumpster fire of a campaign.
Steve Saperstein worked hard and did everything you could ask from a candidate. And his friends and advisors and campaign team did the best they could with the resources available.
The problem with Steve's campaign was not internal, it was external: the district. It was genetically engineered by Assembly Democrats to elect an Assembly Democrat. They used extremely sophisticated hardware and software to pack as many voters that fit their precise model into the 46th.
And yes, top-of-the-ticket Republicans have occasionally carried this district. But 30% of those voters drop off and never vote for local offices. And this year, in New York, hardcore Democrats were far more motivated to come out in the first place.
Most Assembly Republican candidates like Steve don't have the fundraising ability to reach all those potential Republican voters repeatedly (by door-to-door, live phone calls, direct mail, and other means) to establish with the voter that there is this important local candidate whom they need to vote for after casting their vote for Mayor or Governor.
And even if Steve had somehow raised the $250,000 to $300,000 necessary for such a campaign, Assembly Democrats and their closest labor supporters have the capacity to spend -- practically overnight -- a million dollars to promote his opponent, without breaking a sweat. If they saw polling suggesting Steve was within striking distance, they could likely have spent a second million. Not to mention bringing in hundreds more live bodies to work the streets, buildings and phones.
Steve deserves praise for going out there and giving his all.
Sounds like someone is fishing to get back a client. That $250,000 number is unrealistic for many first time candidates especially challenging an incumbent. But that wasn’t the case this time was it? We had an open seat and this was Steve’s second run fresh off a City Council race. He raised and spent $50,000 when Mathylde couldn’t raise two nickels and barely won a brutal divisive primary. Ethan even kept the WFP line. Yes Mathylde eventually got help from the State Party, but let’s be honest so did Steve because he could only raise $4,000 because he alienated a lot of good people in the party. But unlike situations for any other candidates, the County GOP under Ted Ghorra poured most of their resources into Steve’s campaign, something that’s never been done before. Those resources could have been better spent on Marty or Dan Donovan’s race especially if the seat is “unwinnable”. Whether the seat is winnable or not is debatable especially since Steve Lilikakis had a lot less resources when he ran a few years ago for the same seat but against a then much more powerful and better financed Russian-American incumbent and did about as well as Saperstein. Maybe this district is “unwinnable” but you can definitely get a lot closer to winning than Saperstein. Steve assembled a team of operatives basically unwanted and unwelcome in any other campaign and expected the money and volunteers to come pouring in. That foolish reasoning reflects poorly on the candidate. Trying to spin a double digit loss to a candidate as weak as Mathylde as a positive development is a fools errand. Almost as dumb as when he claimed she was in bed with real estate developers because she hired Hank Sheinkopf to advise her campaign.
Why all the apologists coming out for Steve? RAAC has Steve up by 14 a month before the election and he blew it. The how or the why doesn’t interest me much, why so much attention to someone who failed and underperformed twice now.
RACC did one poll for Steve, and it never showed anything but him far behind Frontus.
RESPONSE: THE "SINCE I SAID IT" EDITION
TO GERRY O'BRIEN AND SOME OF THE OTHERS ABOVE.....
SINCE THE TITLE OF THIS POST INCLUDES "ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL..." AND SINCE THE 46TH AD IS ONE OF THE PLACES "... ALL AROUND NEW YORK STATE..." WHERE REPUBLICANS LIKE STEVE SAPERSTEIN "...GOT A DRUBBING..." --- YET ANOTHER DISCUSSION OF THE SO-CALLED >>> SAPERSTEIN RACE <<< IN THE 46TH AD MIGHT BE BOTH RELEVANT AND USEFUL
UNFORTUNATELY, THIS DEBATE BY THUMBNAIL COMMENTS DOES NOT ALLOW FOR A >>> FULL & FRANK <<< DISCUSSION OF ALL THE IMPORTANT MATTERS THAT NEED DISCUSSING (FOR EXAMPLE, EVEN THE O'BRIEN COMMENT ABOVE IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO ALL THAT MR. O'BRIEN HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS CAMPAIGN)
Given the unrealistic constrictions of this debate, let me cut to the chase and have my say.
First, Steve Saperstein is one of the few local Republicans that got votes from my very closest BSI (so did Anthony Caccamo and a few others, but not either of the incumbent GOPer-Conservative Party guys running in Brooklyn that lost their seats in Albany and Washington).....
Second, the Saperstein campaign was more than anything else "typical" of Brooklyn GOP campaigns, of late --- and it absolutely, definitely was a "Medium" on the spectrum of recent campaigns in the 46th AD being "... neither rare nor well-done." (In fact, Lucretia's last run for this seat had many more "positives" --- and she had the very strong headwinds of Jerry Kassar's, Fran Vella Marone's and Marty Golden's perfidy and >>> active connivance on behalf of Democrat Pam Harris <<< to deal with [discussed on this blog at the time], but I digress.....)
Third, in summary fashion let my final comment on Steve Saperstein's 2018 race for the Assembly in the 46th AD be this: Steve's decision to run and then everything about Steve's campaign in this assembly district in 2018 was wrong from the start; and it was doomed to fail --- in spite of any and all of the many >>> lucky breaks <<< that fell his way during the race.....
Let me close by saying that I think Steve Saperstein is a decent and intelligent man, however in 2018 he was a very bad GOP candidate on a slate of even worse GOP candidates; and all of them got overwhelmed by a local Democrat "Blue Wave."
6:31 if that’s true shame on Steve’s canpaign for lying to us. And if that’s true shame on RACC for spending so many resources on Steve’s campaign. And if true Ted Ghorra needs to go because instead of helping Marty he threw all of County resources into the Saperstein campaign for what? If he was that behind why did they go all on for him instead of helping Marty?
I don't recall any news releases from Steve's campaign about poll results. Because by law, if you release more than a certain amount of data, you must release the entire poll (and doing so gives your opponent info you probably don't want them to know).
Maybe you are referring to the posts on this site by people with zero campaign experience and zero involvement in Steve's race. There has been a lot of that.
As to RACC, they can only spend money on Assembly races. Putting some money into Steve's district for him is what they are supposed to do. You can be confident they did not break the bank, and when their incumbents were feeling some heat, or another challenger showed better opportunities for winning, RACC shifted resources in those directions.
Helping Steve was a good idea. It invariably helped Marty (and Donovan), by adding some new workers who handed out material for all the local GOP candidates. Do you seriously think Marty would allow resources he needed to be diverted to Steve or anyone else? Marty still has the first nickel he earned.
And also, what county resources were there to throw to Steve? Ted's toupee?
Is Ted in the Witness Protection Program yet?
Even in this hostile climate the Republican Assembly picked up two seats. Steve was running under almost ideal conditions and he disappointed again. Last year he ran in a district that Trump won by 75% and got trounced. As for the poll showing him up by 14 let’s cut the crap, Steve’s Campaign was shouting that from the rooftops, that was the source but perhaps you’re right when you say it was from people not in the know. And the state and county resources was appropriated by the two well known and enormously disliked Manhattanites and cost Marty dearly because no one wanted to go in to the Office and deal with them. Marty had to have the Asian groups put up their bilingual posters on third avenue because no one else would do it while Saperstein people were running the show in the office.
Steve screwed himself by choosing the wrong campaign team..where did he think having a drunks, psychos and interns leading his campaign would get him?
On election night, Liam wa one very unhappy camper. People were not happy with him and letting him know all about it,
If you look at a saperstein election results. He did his job on the Brighton and Coney Island side of the district. He overperfofmned trump and Malliotakis willingly 3-1 there. Unfortunately, Donovan and Golden dragged him down. Saperstein actually performed better than golden in many EDs. Considering that Saperstein won SD23 , where mailliotakis lost and considering overall in sD22 he lost by 10 points on the bay ridge Dyker side of the district where the GOP wins by 2-3(look at Q results) it shows that Golden and Donovan screwed saperstein . Steve did his job but was let down in bay ridge bad. These are the facts . Voters came out heavy against Donovan and Marty and saperstein was a casualty. He was the best candidate in Brooklyn, just look at the numbers by ED breakdown and you will see!
Saperstein got 45 percent in a blue wave year. That’s unheard of. Any other year he would’ve won 60-40. Donovan didn’t want to invest any money in Brooklyn.
7:41. Do u enjoy talking out of ur a$$? Saperstein over performed trump in that district. He had 60 people out and he won heavy there. I was on his campaign and saw that Bay ridge - Liam were total assholes. Liam hustled Steve to not run. Liam will get what’s coming to him.
Ghorra was with Grimm all along, and I even hear, is pushing Grimm to run again in 2 years. Ghorra didnt lift a finger for Donovan and is now telling everyone that Grimm would have beaten Rose by a landslide.
Ghorra also didnt work for Marty. He talked the talk but didnt walk the walk. He pretended to be helping Marty but put whatever efforts he had (albeit none) into Sap because he thought Sap would be his if elected and he could control him.
Pool Ghorra. He must go now!
The turnout was blue v red.
Only so much impact a campaign can have on that.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital with broken ribs. I hope this qualifies as local news. Shes from Coney Island Avenue.
9:00 am is fake news and bullshit overall.Steve got 40% dragged Marty down not the other way around. Looking at a a couple of EDs and comparing Trump and Malliotakis is the mark of a pathetic campaign. Davidzson was backing Steve which is huge. Davidzson hates Malliotakis and has a rocky relationship with Golden. Maybe he would have done better in Bay Ridge if he didn’t have the psychos running his operation. Poor Golden was abandoned because no one wanted to go near the Campaign office.
9:06 more fake news. Last year against Deutsch Saperstein couldn’t crack 40% in a district that Trump carried by 80% facts not bullshit. Oh what? Saperstein did well there this year running as a Russian Jew against a Black candidate with no money? And while backed by Davidzson...wow Steve should have been our Senate candidate...ridiculous. And if Steve’s campaig had twenty canvassers let alone 60 they were all paid for by County and boy Marty Golden could have put these people to a lot better use than Steve did that’s for sure.
9:56 pull up the results and see for yourself. Nobody is comparing anything- the numbers don’t lie. Your blind bias is so pathetic. Again I was on the ssperstein team. Rose and Gounardes had a field operations. Donovan had John Orlando a complete and pathetic loser who knows nothing. The saperstein team was begging for bay ridge to pay for something. The Donovan camp had no bodies and no pull operation . Glad to see them go. It’s time for new beginnings. Bay ridge is not the focus anymore. Kassar is a sabotage person. He was so confident Marty was going to win they Vetoed everything. Marty has 500,000 on hand - you mean to tell me he couldn’t spend $10,000 on canvassers to pull out the vote? Glad the ship burned down honeslty. The entire party is absolute shit full of people with personal vendettas. It’s so sad.
Its true Marty & Donovan had no ground game by election day.
Nicole is all we have left. The question is does she give up her seat to run against Rose?
If Cats gives her the nod she'll take the plunge.
On this day 90 years ago a young man named Herbert Hoover won in a landslide.
That was the last good day the GOP had.
Borelli and Malliotakis are both running for Congress. Rose even predicted that already. That primary will make Grimm vs. Donovan and Marty vs. Andrew look like love fests.
Instead of seeking the "nod" from a tightfisted billionaire who thought water bottles and nailfiles were more important than professional ads, Nicole should concentrate on building real grassroots support. And, she should stop being a one way street.
9:00 am, Golden screwed Saperstein???? This is another indication of why Golden lost such a close race. The biggest mistake he made was not booting the ingrate and his cast of incompetents out of the office, but Jerry had their back so it never happened. Golden is the only reason Saperstein had any credibility whatosever and continued backing him after a handful of people showed up at his Coney Island fundraiser. Both the State and the County poured resources into Saperstein campaign. What Steve and his brain should say to Marty is one thing and one thing only and that's "thank you".
I think the salad days for the GOP ended with Hoover.
Golden has screwed lots and lots of people over the years along with Kassar.
And I have spoken to dozens of people in Bay Ridge who are very happy he is gone.
Good riddance
Cats is not a big fan of Nicole. She treated him with utter disrespect in the 2017 mayoral race because kassar made her feel so important and special.
And she lost miserably in that race.
She has no chance of being a congresswoman.
This is America; that means the salad course comes before the later courses. If you think that salad days are over, get over yourself. The heavier meat dishes and gourmet stuff is yet to come.
Cats and Nicole are close. Yes the Kassar relationship didn’t help with Cats and others. Mistakes were made well after what happened between her and John during the Mayoral. Mistakes were made on the Mayoral some colossal “blunders”. But most people fail to realize is she did much better than Lhota with a fraction of the money and against two other well funded credible alternatives in Albanese and Dietl. Dietl was going after her much more than the Mayor. The Mayor was also at an all time high in popularity and was doling out billions in popular programs like universal Pre-K. And she faced the Trump factor. Truthfully it may be hard for her to win the Primary but if she does Max Rose will be a one termer.
If Nicole can't stand up to Golden and Kassar how can she stand up for us..
Unfortunately , even with Golden gone she probably will still be calling Kassar every day to guide her in whatever she decides to do..which means the upper East side Psychos stay
1:23 Some of you don’t give Nicole Malliotakis enough credit. People unfortunately take it for granted that she has an insta feed of what Jerry and the lovely couple are up to. She doesn’t have a clue. She still doesn’t know about Bob and the subway incident she would freak out if she knew. She also defied Jerry twice and backed Craig in the leadership fights. Their relationship soured last year in the Mayoral when she was promised the moon to keep out Craig. They’re also sneaky by loudly exaggerating their closeness to her which discourages people from speaking out about them.
The moron who thinks they are a history buff needs to brush up on some basic facts about Hoover. First point is Hoover was not a Republican. Second he destroyed the great reputation the FBI had.
Nicole's actions by allowing Morgan and Alexandra to stay and be seen close to her shows she respects them, especially over Chamberas and Capano.
I thought Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice already did it.
Oh my, the misery on here is delectable.
The Brooklyn Republican Party needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Anybody connected in any way with the Brooklyn GOP ticket in 2018 has the stench of a dumpster fire all over them. That list begins with the all the loser 2018 candidates and it also includes all three of the 2017 City Council losers, Little Johnny Quags, Little Liam and The little chameleon Bob Capano. More than anything else, all of Golden's bitter-enders have to go. Shamoun and Ghorra have to get the boot ASAP.
The Great GOP Chairman's Race Rundown:
1-1 Favorite: Marty Golden. Out of work, out of luck, and his election night inability to concede an obvious defeat showed his ego demands the chairmanship. Plus, he can use the title to shoehorn at least a few more GOP events into the Manor. We suspect he can do a mean Johnny Crews impersonation.
5-1 Favorite: Liam McCabe. The trifecta: Most experienced, most disliked, most distrusted. Sure he's been toiling in the political vineyards longer than anyone, including Marty, but as a Conservative for 97% of that time. He's unreliable a few months of the year, his stunts backfire, and he's not half as smart of his girlfriend, whom even more people dislike.
7-1 Favorite: John Quaglione. Zero GOP organizational experience, little GOP campaign experience (outside of his two losing races, his political work has all been on the public tit, working as a Golden staffer). Also unemployable (a Marty employee his entire adult life has left him bereft of skills), except maybe for some diocesan group that takes pity on him (they are charitable organizations, after all) and needs someone to explain the latest abuse or discarded baby story.
9-1 Favorite: Ray Denaro. A relative newcomer, who in the early stages of his first campaign for District Leader decided that he absolutely had to run for City Council too. Made no impact in the Council race, no organizational experience. Doesn't blog anonymously (but who among us truly does?).
10-1 Favorite: Steve Saperstein. Also a newcomer, and now, a member of Q's elite 2x Loser Club. Not from the greater Bay Ridge area, so most of Marty's supporters consider him ineligible. Also, not Irish or Italian, so they definitely won't support him.
20-1 Favorite: Arnaldo or Lucretia. All the ignorance, all the arrogance, all the time.
8:11 given these abysmal options I’d almost rather have Ted Ghorra stick around.
6:06, you are making the assumption that Ghorra was around in the first place. We know where Liam was when he disappeared. Where was Ted? Solving murders in some quiet southern town? Ice fishing in Minnesota? Exploring the Great Barrier Reef?
Let me put some of the Ted Ghorra wig rumors to bed.
The mixup comes from the fact that Ghorra is a Davey Crockett kind of populist Whig (and potential future "Know Nothing"); and Ghorra wears a coonskin cap at a jaunty angle on his head to show his loyalty to his spiritual leader, who was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee.
Poor Sap. He's on Twitter still defending his campaign but trying to distance himself from Liam and the Upper East Side psychos by pretending not to know what Steeplechase is.
He lost that race when they told him it was a good idea to go to the Bay Ridge Community Council debate and drive hard at Frontus who was respected, even by republicans who wouldn't vote for her but thought she seemed like a decent person. Then Marko and Kassar had to try to start a literal brawl, which everyone in Bay Ridge and Coney Island saw, and that was that. Sap was doomed by playing Liam's aggressive politics and not being the nice guy he could've been. He's smarter and has a better pedigree than Frontus, but he got advice that was just bad bad bad and he paid for it with the loss.
We don’t need any more Jerry puppets ie Liam and Ray Denaro. And Lucretia and Arnaldo ust isn’t even funny to hear as a joke.
Yeah, beating up on the nice black lady made Sap look like ... a sap.
I'm told that Saperstein initially befriended professionals regarding his race and that he eventually blew them off in favor of Ted, Liam, and the lovely couple from Manhattan. Not only did this fubar his campaign operation but also derailed his plans for fundraising. Such a shame, this was the time for him to win the seat. He should not blame others, he made these decisions he put these people in positions of authority even though they were absolutely blown out of the water in the Grimm primary by John Orlando and Fran Vella Marrone. Steve seems like a pretty smart and humble (enough) guy, so I don't think he thought he was a better politician than Grimm, I think they all conned him and sold him a bill of goods that no one but him ever expected to arrive.
i have to be honest .. im not sure what the hate is for saperstien and denaro. Both are young, decent people.. they both aren't under the thumb of ted or jerry.. they both ran against young, popular incumbents in the city council race but worked hard .. sap was a result of a blue wave and a top of the ticket that couldn't get 5 people to volunteer and they were incumbents......i worked on the saperstien campaign and i can tell you that both distanced themselves from liam because they were sick of the kassar meddling..but kassar is as good as useless now that he has no power..sap is a good smart man and denaro actually is active in his community.....does the gop have more to offer?
Sap and Denaro camp now blaming Marty Golden for their underwhelming performances. Now that’s rich!
Liam McCabe was last seen wandering around on Tuesday night like a mad dog. This was after the results came in so it must've been around 10:30 PM. He was either on the verge of or already knee deep on a bender.
Liam was seen staring into the windows of a Moroccan restaurant, breathing heavily with disgust in eyes. I was hoping to have interrupted a hate crime with force. Last I saw him, he was headed toward the Bay Ridge Manor.
Among local Republicans and other hangerons, everybody seems to be a bunch of losers and whiners over this 2018 Republican trainwreck. All the finger pointing is so infantile. If you were a Republican anywhere near the Southwest end of Brooklyn in 2018 you must look in the mirror and ask, "What was my part in all of this?"
There aren't any good or right answers but honest answers would be a good start.
Politics aside, I think the nasty references to Liam’s well known battle against alcoholism are disgusting. If anyone hired him and feels cheated talk about that, if anyone feels he is a bad person even, talk about that, but show some decency and stop talking about alcoholism because too many good people have succumbed. Love him or hate him his fight with addiction shouldn’t be used against him.
11:55 our part in all of this is that most of us set aside personal difference and tried to help Marty. Only to be frustrated by the worst campaign team MARTY could assemble and I’m not talking about poor Ian or some of the others. The senior leadership was awful they just mailed it in and shame on Ed Cox and the state party for not intervening. And shame on Jerry Kassar for bringing in those two from Manhattan to work on Marty’s campaign, no one wants to deal with them. The lack of volunteers on Marty’s campaign the last couple of weeks was startling and it’s no coincidence that people stopped going to the office when they were around.
My comment is directed at the 4:38 PM commenter
References to Liam’s infamous and sadly recurring battle against alcoholism are entirely appropriate and relevant if we are throwing around Liam's name as a possible future Chairman of our Party or as a future candidate for local or national office. Liam and his personal demons shouldn't be off limits by any means especially if Liam himself is putting his name out there in the master mix. If we are to speak plainly, Liam is an unpredictable and uncontrolled loose nut who is likely to cause unintentional damage to himself, our Party and innocent civilians.
2:15 Liam’s addiction troubles should be left out of this. Nasty remarks about his battle are inappropriate. You want to criticize him on other more important issues I think you’ll find plenty of significant topics to discuss.
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