Curtis Sliwa got close to a hero’s
welcome by the organizers of a Bay Ridge racket held at The Salty Dog
yesterday --- Well,
let’s go so far as to say he got close to a “Local Hero’s” welcome…..
Almost as if to keep Sliwa and his Reform Party from gaining any momentum early in its 2018 campaigning, or even any traction whatsoever, for that matter, the editors at the Daily News came out with a savage attack on the Reform Party on the same day as Sliwa’s unveiling in Bay Ridge
It was like night and day…..
In what some are describing as “Curtis
[Sliwa’s] first public appearance as a possible
gubernatorial candidate” at the
pro-veterans Memorial Day Parade Benefit
event held at the Salty Dog on Sunday,
many,, many people came up to Mr. Sliwa, in his iconic red beret just to
get selfies and other pictures with him in frame. In addition, several other folks walked up to him, talked about his conjectural run for the
governorship and urged him to commit to entering the NYS Governor’s race. Oh, and Curtis Sliwa was introduced by the Memorial
Day Parade Benefit organizers and thanked for his participation in the event.
During the rather lengthy time that
Curtis Sliwa was at the Salty Dog, there was only one other pol In the house ---
Max Rose, the Democrat running
for congress against GOP incumbent Congressman Dan Donovan. However,
my sourceS have told me that several recognizable “unfriendlies” were in
the house, just inside the large
garage-type door in the big area between the Salty Dog’s bar and the old fire engine. They were trying hard to look invisible and probably they were waiting
around for one of their own local stalking horses to show up; they were also obviously rattled about the
fanfare for Mr. Sliwa.
But alas for the leadership of the Reform Party, there is no joy in Mudville…..
On the very same day, the Daily News Editorial Board launched
an extremely harsh attack on the Reform Party as a whole
(See “Vote down this waste of the empty
Reform Party primaries” Daily News
Editorial Board, 4/30/18, Daily News/ Opinion/ Editorial [http://beta.nydailynews.com/opinion/vote-waste-empty-reform-party-primary-article-1.3959753]).
Here’s a taste of what the News’
editors had to say about Curtis Sliwa’s Reform
Party: “Like locusts, the pests of the Reform Party, with only 360
registered voters out of 4,420,737 in the city, are once again causing the city
Board of Elections to waste money, over a million dollars, to conduct
essentially empty primary elections….They
did this two years ago in four districts; the Board responded by only opening a
few polling places to handle the tiny number of Reform voters…. The Reform Party then changed its rules to
let both Reform and unaffiliated voters participate. So it's not just the 59
Reform voters who can cast ballots but 113,518. Which means now the board will
need 230 polling places and 5,000 workers paid at least $200 each…. Reform this, right now.”
Reform Party supporters were quick to see and describe this as an attempted preemptive attack by insiders and their friends, who are afraid of the Reform Party’s
prospects in 2018.
