The fight for and against the “Free Radicals” in the Brooklyn GOP Primary of 2013 is a big part of the battle between the “Republicans for Change” and the Regular Kings County Republican Party Organization

The “Anti-oxident” wing of the Brooklyn GOP (a group that openly stated that they wanted no independent activity inside the Brooklyn GOP) split early in 2013 into the Golden-plated “Republicans for Change” and the Eatonians, long-time stalwarts of Craig Eaton's Brooklyn GOP County Organization. Both of these non-independent Republican groups have made their early moves on certain blocks of what best can be described as the “Free Radical” Republican independents, organizationally represented by the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, The Brooklyn Tea Party (Republicans) and the LaGuardia Republican Club.

Make no mistake the leadership of the Brooklyn GOP from now until after the 2014 New York State Republican Convention is at stake in the current BOE hearings and the NYS Supreme Court cases, which are now going on over which slates of State and County Committee candidates will or will not appear on the old election machines in the Brooklyn 2013 GOP Primary. However, even after all of that is decided, there probably will be a lot left for Brooklyn Republicans to haggle over until the primary allows rank and file Republicans to vote on all of it. And even after that look for more jostling in mid-September leading up to the  GOP County Convention. Oddly, it is very unlikely that anybody for those elected Republican Party posts will have very much to say about either the upcoming 2014 New York State Convention or any of the statewide issues, except as they might specifically be about State Senator Martin Golden and what he has been up to in Albany. Instead, the arguments will largely be ones for or against Craig Eaton’s leadership of the Brooklyn Republican Party, as against Marty Golden’s newest hand-picked candidate from Bay Ridge to be the Republican County Leader, Timothy J. Cochrane.

Naturally, one would expect that both major sides would reach out to the independent Republicans, or as I’m now calling them the “free radicals,” especially the ones with some group affiliation. And, there have been many such direct and indirect contacts, some have even occurred in ways that could be called "strange," even by Brooklyn standards (but those are stories only for telling over many beers).   For the most part, the independent or free radical Republicans have been bundled into three or four groups: the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, The Brooklyn Tea Party Republican Caucus and the LaGuardia Republican Club, being the most notable. at this time.  By some weird alchemy, natural affinities caused several of the independents to gravitate or move covalently at or very near the beginning of the process - these are the early precipitants (not participants) like Glenn Nocera, Moshe Muratov and the like who went toward the Golden-plating pole; and contrariwise, Joseph Hayon who moved toward where he thought he’d find some good Eaton.

As things move into the next phase of the petitioning-objections-hearing process –  court intervention  –  the game seems to have changed from an early phase that looked like a close contest favoring the Marty Golden-backed “Republicans for Change” to a fairly close split leaning in the direction of Chairman Craig Eaton and most of the leadership of the KCRP organization. A weak Golden-Storobin backed effort against State Committee Members Pincus and Braunstein has already collapsed in the 45th AD. Similarly, the 47th AD, which many had thought would be a major battleground, seems safely in the fold of the Republican County organization, only now with a more deeply ingrained and openly-expressed “anti-Golden Zeitgeist.”

The biggest battle remains to be the one playing-out inside the far-flung boundaries of the 46th AD. The principal formal antagonists there are Dominick Sarta and Clorinda Annarummo from the Seergy Republican Club, with strong backing from the Golden crowd, and Marcus Aurelius Nussbaum and Lucretia Regina-Potter, backed by the independent Fiorello LaGuardia Republicans in Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge, and (either because of or in reaction to the David Storobin alignment with Marty Golden) with strong local support among Republicans in the Coney Island and Brighton Beach corridor. Making this contest even more interesting is the current posture of the Nussbaum-Potter-LaGuardia faction of independent Republicans to remain neutral  as between Eaton and Golden; instead they are formally maintaining their recent independent “free radical” holdout status, coming from the days when the LaGuardia Club was the Regular Republican Organization of the 49th AD; and both Eaton and Golden cast them adrift, attempting-and-failing to take down the La Guardia Club leaders in successive GOP leadership races. Since then, reapportionment completely changed the 49th, placing Lucretia Regina-Potter, Arnaldo Ferraro and other LaGuardia Club board members into the 46th AD.  Also taking part in the 46th jousting and jawboning will be a rump group of Eaton-leaning Republicans, who will be going mano a mano in some of Marty Golden’s strongest EDs against "Republicans for Change" candidate for City Council, John Quaglione.

A similar dynamic is at work in the remaining part of Bay Ridge, the lower Bay Ridge-Brooklyn section of the mostly-Staten Island 64th AD, represented by Republican Nicole Malliotakis. Here,  what remains of the Armand Starace Club will be an important factor in delivering the County Committee votes to either Craig Eaton or Golden’s man, Tim Cochrane.

Something completely different happened in the 44th AD, where a deal was struck by Glenn Nocera and a representative of Kathy Fox, whereby they would about evenly split the State and County Committee slots and avoid any primaries or challenges. Since both sides were backing Joe Lhota, the deal made even more sense for everybody with any other conflicting interests.

What’s going on with the 52nd AD Brownstone Republicans almost defies description. Even though there is only one slate that filed at the BOE for the 52nd AD, and they are completely outside the Marty Golden orbit, they are running as part of Golden’s so-called “Republicans for Change” slate, ostensibly because of that groups’ formal support for Joe Lhota, as opposed to the KCRP Organization that formally backs John Catsimatidis’ candidacy for mayor. Nonetheless, some experts in election proceedings believe that a good portion of the Republican County Committee from the 52nd AD, and possibly its State Committee Members can be removed from the ballot because of various substantive shortcomings to the petition.

AND the 48th AD –  I’m glad I’m writing this on the Sabbath. My four or five sources there have about ten opinions as to what is going on.  I’ll let them write their own comments as to who is with whom, and why Nachman Caller is behind all of it.