GOP candidate for City Council in the 46th Counc. Dist. Is “Settled” — BUT [you heard it here first] this candidacy might well become very “UNSETTLING” to others in the Brooklyn GOP very soon

So far, this has been the long and the short of it  —  “Anthony Testaverde Running For City Council!”

According to a Gene Berardelli’s report, “Anthony Testaverde, the Republican District Leader from the 41st Assembly District, announced his candidacy for City Council for the 46th Council District” (See “Anthony Testaverde Running For City Council!” by Gene Berardelli, 5/30/13, Brooklyn GOP Radio -Official- Show Blog [http://brooklyngopradio.blogspot.com/2013/05/anthony-testaverde-running-for-city.html]). Berardelli goes on to say that “Testaverde promises that his campaign is ready to hit the ground running.  ‘My team is ready to hit the streets.  This is the start of something good’.”

Maybe  —  Maybe NOT ! ! !

My GOP sources close to Chairman Craig Eaton and even to Gene Berardelli, who is one of Eaton’s apparachiks, aren’t nearly so sanguine. You see, given the current state of the Brooklyn GOP,  with State Senator Golden’s rump caucus, “Republicans for Change,” trying to wreck the already shaky Republican Party apparatus; advancing a man like Anthony Testaverde is, at best, problematic and, at worst, it is clearly misguided and downright threatening.

Already conflicted in his loyalties between his Brooklyn GOP leadership and his NY State Senate employer, Testaverde’s selection as a City Council candidate introduces a new layer of conflicted impulses. Anthony Testaverde becomes the second City Council candidate in 2013 to emerge from the Marty Golden stable of war horses, joining John Quaglione into the fray for the NYC Council.  Together with that, Testaverde is the GOP district leader in the 41st A.D., an area that overlaps both the 44th Counc. Dist. and the 22nd State Senate Dist. of Testaverde’s employer, State Senator Martin Golden.

Which pull or influence will be the stronger upon Testaverde as he goes forward as the 2013 candidate for City Council for the 46th Counc. Dist.?  And, why are Eaton and company so confident of this guy’s bona fides ?

History and biography tell an interesting tale about Anthony Testaverde. The most important single item on his resume is the one that is the most recent and up to date  —  that he works for State Senator Martin Golden and along with the rest of Golden’s staff.  If you want to see what that means in the hic and nic; by his own admission, he placed himself at the “Republicans for Change” event at Gargiulo’s last Thursday  —   “... because I had to be there....”  Enough said about that !  Now, I’m hearing that “because he is a GOP candidate for the City Council, he says that he intends to be neutral [in the leadership fight between his political leader, Eaton, and his boss, Golden]...,  and he has even suggested that he probably “...won’t even go to the convention in September....”  —   “neutral” —  yeah, right !   Until somebody yanks on the leash, and then Mr. T will be saying,   “[Blah, blah, blah] ...because I had to....”

Perhaps the real measure on Testaverde might be something that is more a biographical-historical item that something he might put on his resume or into his political literature.  Oddly, it might be the one item in his personal political history where his personal loyalty really shines out  —  this is about various things that are related to one – George Smith.

Several years ago, in 2008 and 2009, Anthony Testaverde was in the middle of a fiasco surrounding the attempt to mount a “Mr. Smith goes to City Hall” campaign on behalf of one  —  George Smith. History overtook both Testaverde and Smith, who had long been familiar to Testaverde. As the head of the GOP candidate search committee, Testaverde had brought Smith to several local GOP leaders and together "they vetted George Smith" to be the GOP candidate for City Council in the 39th  Counc. Dist.; and he was endorsed as the GOP organization candidate. Thereafter, Anthony Testaverde filed with the NYC Campaign Finance Board as the Treasurer of the committee known as the “Friends of George Smith” and began the process of obtaining matching funds. Do to a couple of inconvenient items of personal history, apparently "missed" in a vetting blunder involving Anthony Testaverde, George Smith became  thoroughly discredited as a candidate for any public office; and he lost the GOP primary for 39th Counc. Dist. to an  independent Republican candidate largely supported by a coalition of “Brownstone Republicans” and others desperate to block Smith. The problems with the 2009 Smith campaign didn’t end with Smith’s primary loss in September 2009 by mid-2010 “Friends of George Smith” had been audited by the New York City Campaign Finance Board, which found three categories of violations of its rules that resulted in a total of $1,425.00 in “Invalid Matchable Claims.”

Of course there’s some more that I want to cover. However, I had some serious questions to ask Mr. Testaverde, but so far he hasn’t returned my call  —  I’ll give him a little more time.

Stay tuned.