Brooklyn’s Republican Factions Clear the Gate and Head into the First Turn of Race to Control the Brooklyn GOP from the 2013 County Convention through the 2015 Primaries

Unchallenged County Committee Members Insure All Factions Will Be Present at the Convention — Primaries and Jockeying Will Determine  —   >>>WIN <<<   —  >>PLACE <<   — or  >SHOW<

GOP Mayoral Candidates and Primary Might Overshadow and Influence the result of the Brooklyn GOP organizational fight(s)

Many wags had predicted that the “Republicans for Change” faction supported by State Senator Martin Golden would have surged to a clear and insurmountable lead in County Committee designees by this stage of the 2013 election cycle. After all, Golden’s early maneuvers at the Board of Elections had resulted in his man Simon Shamoun’s installation as Commissioner, and several of the higher GOP appointees at the BOE quickly had swung over to the Golden camp. Nonetheless, so far it hasn’t worked out the way some of the wagging class would have you believe it woulda, shoulda or coulda happened.

After petitioning for and filing their signatures, and making all their BOE and court challenges, the two major factions — the “Republicans for Change” and the Kings County Republican Party organization headed by Chairman Craig Eaton — all start with about an equal number of unchallenged County Committee designees ( A technical blunder having cost the Eaton side an almost sixty delegate advantage); with almost 10% of the County Committee delegates still up for grabs in contested primaries.

As I noted above, thanks to BOE employees, the Golden camp and its camp followers looks bigger on paper. But this isn’t about the size of camps and who has a bigger roster of campers. This will all wind up being about running slates of candidates in a bunch of very local races. Therefore having a big bunch of campers who don’t do very much racing,  running or even walking doesn’t really help winning several of the most important races leading up to the convention. What’s more, in most of the contested districts, there are no unified top-to-bottom slates of State Committee and County Committee delegates.  I am not privy to all of the strategies, tactics and techniques that the competing sides will employee to elect their chosen delegates, but it will be more that Republican prime voters have seen for a very long time.


I’ve saved the biggest and the best contested district  for last. In  the 46th AD,   Lucretia Regina-Potter and Marcus A. Nussbaum are running against Clorinda Annarummo and Dominic Sarta for the State Committee, along with a large slate of County Committee candidates still running head-to-head in several EDs.  The 46th AD has the largest part of  “Republican Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights” within its boundaries, however there are huge reserves of untapped Republicans in the southern Coney Island and Brighton Beach end of the district.

Based on petitioning efforts, the Potter-Nussbaum slate appears slightly ahead with a better quality and more organized operation that appears to be built from the bottom up. Whereas a look at the Sarta-Annarummo submissions indicates a very large bulk of signatures gathered by “Outsiders” (non-Republicans, and Republicans from outside the 46th AD), with an especially weak operation in the South part of the 46th AD.

Another factor in this 2013 race is that Lucretia Regina-Potter campaigned alone in the 46th AD in 2012; and one of the factions who had opposed her last year have promised assistance in this leadership race. To counter that, Clorinda Annarummo will rely on her “expected endorsements” from Golden and Grimm — what needs to be noted, however, is that after those two elected officials heavily opposed Potter in 2012, she still garnered a significant vote on her own, and that after involving themselves in that bitter primary, neither Grimm nor Golden carried the whole area in the 2012 General Election, including large swaths of the 46th AD. Since that time both State Senator Golden and Congressman Grimm have had several scandals muddy their local and city-wide press coverage and the public’s view of them. Equally important, pro-gun rights and Tea Party Republicans have no real affection or practical use for either of them.

The same cannot be said about the GOP Mayoral candidates who are also running their own campaigns aimed at the 2013 GOP Primary. Part of the Lhota campaign worked in coordination with Golden’s “Republicans for Change” during petitioning; a similar economy of effort and scale was accomplished by Catsimatidis and the GOP County Organization lined up behind Craig Eaton. Conversely, the McDonald Campaign received signatures from the Fiorello LaGuardia Club in the 46th AD, but did not contribute significantly to the Potter-Nussbaum effort. It is expected that, if the mayoral campaigns continue to coordinate with the factions in the local GOP contests, the advantage will be to/for the Catsimatidis-backed County Organization of Eaton, because of greater resources.  That does remain to be seen in practice, however.

COMING SOON:  an analysis of State Senator Martin Golden’s effectiveness in challenging Kings County GOP Chairman Eaton; Golden's part in launching and publicizing the “Republicans for Change” effort; and Golden's mixed signals in designating and supporting (a) proposed candidate(s) for GOP Chairman leading up to the 2013 Convention and going forward.