Debates, street campaigning, door-to-door

Some of the Democratic clubs hosted debates among the candidates. Some civic groups did as well. I remember a debate in the gym at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic church, on 129^th  Street in Belle Harbor, down the block and across Neponsit Avenue from where I lived until I was nine years old. Pauline Emanuel, my fourth-grade teacher at P.S. 114 on Beach 135^th Street, showed up to cheer me on. An old regular Democratic clubhouse in Woodhaven hosted another debate; as did Rockaway Independent Democrats, the reform club my mother helped to found in the 1950s and that had supported me in my 1970s City Council races; and a few reform Democratic clubs in Brooklyn hosted others. Usually, the moderator would ask questions, and the three of us would take turns answering, rather than debating each other directly. I don’t remember whether Noach Dear ever participated. I don’t think he did, and if he did, it could not have been more than once.

I noticed something about the way the audiences responded to Katz and Weiner. Of course, I thought I responded with far more intelligence and substance than either, but Katz clearly gave much more relevant and substantive answers than Weiner. However, the audiences responded much more enthusiastically to Weiner, whose comments were “cute” in the attractive sense of that word, or self-deprecating, or funny. I persuaded myself that I got a good audience response too – probably wishful thinking. In retrospect, my responses must have been substantially more substantive, and substantially less effective, than Katz’s.

Knowing what the nation later learned about Weiner’s personal behavior, it may seem odd for me to attribute his success to “emotional intelligence.” Some might prefer to characterize his behavior as reflective of emotional idiocy. But the ability to charm, persuade, and mislead requires empathy, a close relative, if not the equivalent, of emotional intelligence. Studies have found that fraud perpetrators not only score higher on empathy than do other property offenders, they even score higher than a comparison group of college students. So Weiner’s odd personal proclivities could very easily coexist with an empathic understanding that underlay his ability to win over voters.

Democratic politics in the Rockaways had so deteriorated that an unstable and generally bizarre person from the reform club, Lou Simon, had defeated Sy Sheldon after the latter’s long and unimpressive tenure as male district leader (and Simon remains the district leader there). But I won the endorsements of the other reform Democratic clubs after debates at the forums they provided. Wishful thinking notwithstanding, the more intellectual audiences clearly gave me better responses than they gave Katz or Weiner. Of course, when told that he had “the support of all thinking Americans,” Adlai Stevenson quite correctly noted “That’s not enough. I’m going to need a majority.” It wasn’t enough for me either.

If Weiner out-campaigned me in debates, he did even better on the street. He gave short, brief, confident answers to questions. He joked and charmed and endeared himself. Preternaturally thin, his appearance and appeal regularly impelled older women – the largest voting bloc – to pinch his cheeks and urge him to eat more. His poise and charm coexisted with his patently urgent plea for voters’ support.

In contrast, while I did not actually say “if you want to be an idiot, vote for someone else,” I probably made it clear enough that that’s what I thought. On countless occasions I urged voters to “look at the record and make a rational choice.” Voters do not ordinarily do that, and my campaign was no exception.

While Weiner raised about as much money as I did, I believed he needed less time to do so, since Schumer was not actively opposing his fund-raising efforts, as he opposed mine, and may have helped him. Therefore, Weiner had more door-to-door time than I did. I think I rang all the doorbells in Trump Towers, a huge set of middle-income housing projects in Coney Island (built by Donald Trump’s father), and in the Dayton Towers apartment buildings along Shorefront Parkway in Rockaway, another such rich mine of middle-income voters. But Weiner rang them all several times, according to reports I received. Whatever Katz was doing, it did not win her a large percentage of the vote outside her own district. But as the final tally would ultimately reveal, that was almost enough for her to win.

 

The “Go” Game

In 1982, a scholarly journal called Political Methodology had published an article of mine, “Games of Skill: Wei-ch’i and a Democratic Primary in Brooklyn,” in which I explained the political strategy with which I won my 1980 Assembly race in terms of the game called “go” in Japan and “wei-ch’i” in China. In go, unlike chess, players best dominate by building strength at the various corners and edges of the board. In the article, I applied the theory literally, showing my techniques of building support in the various geographical reaches of the district.

As noted in a previous post, I contemplated the theory more metaphorically in the congressional race, thinking that my accomplishments for drivers, subway riders, tenants and homeowners would build support in those demographic cohorts of the district. Even in ideological terms, I thought I had put down the right “markers”: in late 1997, as I was gearing up for the race, I asked for and received a letter of endorsement from the New York City Police Benevolent Association, a generally conservative group; and based on my work with women’s groups combating domestic violence, I expected and received the endorsement of the New York City chapter of the National Organization of Women, a generally liberal group.

However, I thought I could apply the theory geographically as well. After all, historically the big Democratic votes in the 9^th congressional district came from my own 45^th Assembly district, where I would surely do well, and the 39^th and 41^st, respectively Tony Genovesi’s, based in Canarsie and Mill Basin, and Helene Weinstein’s, based in the half of Sheepshead Bay east of my half, where I thought I also had reason to do fairly well, all in Brooklyn. Since I had supported Genovesi in his brief and abortive effort to depose Silver as Assembly Speaker, I thought I would have Genovesi’s support. On a personal basis, I had pestered the very overweight Genovesi into joining Artie Malkin and myself for racketball games, thinking it would benefit his health. In fact, for his size, Tony gave us a decent game, since he used to be a good handball player and still had some moves. On the Queens side, the 22^nd covered most of Rockaway, where I grew up, and Howard Beach, where I had lost my City Council races to Walter Ward, but where I thought I still had friends, like Betty Braton, the district manager who had supported me in those races. Of course, Melinda Katz would be strong in the 28^th, the Forest Hills district she represented, but otherwise, I thought I could be the Queens candidate as well as the Brooklyn candidate.  

Beyond such calculations, I simply did not think I could lose to any of these opponents. Indeed, early on in the race, probably in March, 1998, my pollster, Global Strategies, called me and Louis in for a celebratory meeting. Their polls had me beating my opponents by comfortable margins. Jeff Plaut, one of the principals of the group, offered me a congratulatory cigar. This made perfect sense to me. My work, over all those years, benefitting so many key constituencies, I thought, had brought me widespread support.

I really didn’t think I could lose to my opponents, all of whom I considered lightweights. Somehow, after all my years in politics, I still had the notion that substance and merit would prevail. Congressman Jerry Nadler half-joked, at one point, that I had written more books than my opponents had read. My qualifications so clearly outclassed theirs that I could not imagine, for example, that the New York Times would fail to endorse me, even with Schumer’s Luca Brasi on the editorial board (see post #73). I even imagined that the Post and News would feel compelled to endorse me.  I should have taken more of a lesson from the Saturday Night Live skit when Jon Lovitz, playing Michael Dukakis in his debate with Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, finally said what every Democratic intellectual must have thought the real Michael Dukakis was thinking that year: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy!”

My “bundlers”

I had a few “bundlers,” or people who raised money from their friends for me. Greg Milmoe, a partner at the Skadden Arps law firm, raised about thirty thousand dollars from some wealthy clients and friends. Lenny Cecere, a real estate man, Adam Rowen, a physician and pneumo-thoracic specialist, and the late Wilbur “Bill” Levin, former president of Independence Bank and then Kings County Clerk, each raised about five thousand dollars from business associates and friends with whom they were close. None of them had any vested interest in my election. They raised money because they were my friends, believed in me personally, and thought my election would serve the public interest.

Jerry Nadler and Eliot Engel, two members of Congress, each raised a few thousand dollars for me – Jerry from business people involved in the effort to revitalize shipping in New York, an effort which I had tried to assist; and Eliot from Kosovo Albanians, since Engel’s efforts on their behalf, strenuous at that time, eventually made him the member of Congress most responsible for the American intervention that helped protect them from further genocidal efforts in the former Yugoslavia. Like the four mentioned previously, their personal relationships with me motivated their efforts, although I’m also sure they knew that I would happily have joined in pursuit of the policies they wanted to advance.

One last bundler may have had less pure ambitions. Rabbi Milton Balkany had asked me, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, to intervene with the Department of Correction on behalf inmates he claimed had been unfairly penalized in one way or another. Before I did so, I carefully researched each case. His claims, the first few times, proved accurate. His claims on behalf of another inmate did not. I confronted him with his errors, and he immediately apologized and withdrew his request. After a year or so had passed since my last intervention at his request, he sent me a sizeable contribution to my Assembly campaign account; it might have been as much as a thousand dollars.

He had me as his lunch guest at the Bais Yaakov girls yeshiva he ran in Borough Park, and once for dinner at his elegant home a few blocks away. A Hassidic rabbi with a flowing white beard, Balkany exuded warmth and graciousness, along with extremely sophisticated and articulate presentations.  His political sympathies and campaign contributions generally flowed toward Republicans, including raising over $300,000 for Senator Robert Dole in the 1980s, a $25,000 check for George Pataki’s first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and a $19,000 check for Rudy Giuliani’s reelection campaign in 1997. He gave the invocations opening both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives in 2003.

What I did not know was the Balkany got paid for his interventions on behalf of these inmates. Such donations to his non-profit school would find their way back to him, by way of salary or other means. In 2004, as part of an agreement to defer prosecution on an unrelated matter, federal prosecutors required Balkany to stop lobbying federal prison officials. In 2011, federal judge Denise Cole sentenced Balkany to four years in prison for still another unrelated matter, this time a shakedown scheme.

Balkany raised about $30,000 for me. I did not doubt his integrity until well after the congressional race, and indeed stayed in touch with him until about 2002, when I began to learn about his record of less-than-pure activities.

Fund-raising for Congress

Raising money, as always, tormented me. To this day I feel bad about old friends I hadn’t spoken with in years who responded generously when I called to beg for money, and with whom I quickly lost touch again thereafter. For example, Nathan Abramowitz played chess with me on our high school chess team, went to Fordham, served as a platoon leader in the Vietnam War, and became a partner at the Mudge, Rose law firm. Some of my fellow members of Columbia’s heavyweight freshman crew team are in that category too. Another is Ira McCown, a couple of years ahead of me in college and my squash partner at Harvard Law School. Holly Hendrix, a fellow member of Columbia’s Van Am service society who became president of Union Theological Seminary, similarly responded with his characteristic warmth and generosity. These very good people, and others like them, probably feel that like a typical politician, I only reached out to use them. I suppose I did, but without personal wealth or substantial vested interests committed to my success, I had no choice but to beg everyone I ever knew. Now, having reverted to being a normal person, i.e. not a politician, I cannot keep in touch with the hundreds of wonderful people who contributed.

Federal law limits contributions to congressional campaigns to one thousand dollars per person. Someone could contribute a thousand dollars each for a candidate’s primary and general election campaigns, but in my case, since I had lost the primary and had no general election, I had to return the money contributed for the latter campaign. Since I had to raise several hundred thousand dollars, and most contribute less than a thousand, this would require a lot of telephone calls even if everyone said yes, and most people say no.

Joe McLean, from the McLain Clark political group, somehow found me. His organization would take a percentage of the money they helped me raise. Joe seemed like an honest guy, and I think he is. He placed a young woman named Tammy Shake in my campaign. She did, essentially, what Louis Bochette did in the District Attorney race, but with computer-assisted lists. After exhausting my personal lists, Tammy made me call unending lists of donors identified as sympathetic to Democratic candidates. I don’t remember the real percentage, but distant memory tells me something like one out of a hundred would actually contribute. That seems wrong, because out of a hundred calls, which might take an hour, I would only reach ten or fifteen people – most of whom, again, would decline. Yet, under Tammy’s direction I raised perhaps three hundred thousand dollars. Combined with the contributions from my personal lists, about $75,000 from my “bundlers” (see below) and about the same from unions, I raised a total of about $600,000 – the same as Katz and Weiner. Dear raised as much as the three of us put together.

I had compiled a strong pro-labor record in Albany, and a number of unions each contributed at the five thousand dollar maximum they were permitted by federal law. I assume they were counting on me to continue to support the labor movement, and indeed I would have. However, I lost an important range of support from labor because at the urging of certain respectable clergy members, I had publicly asked the FBI to investigate allegations of correction officer misbehavior at a prison in western New York. Council 82, the union then representing New York State correction officers, which had strongly supported me in the past, regarded this as a betrayal. They told the leadership of AFSCME District Council 37, the powerful umbrella group for New York public employee union locals, that if DC 37 supported me, Council 82 would leave DC 37. This made it impossible AFSCME’s national to support me, which in turn prevented me from presenting myself as the “labor” candidate. (Ironically, a year later, in 1999, Council 82 lost the right to represent New York State’s correction officers.)

Other than from labor, I did not raise much money from Washington-based “PACs” – political action committees, created for the purpose of collecting donations from people or entities with common political interests and then contributing to candidates.  I had been the New York State Legislature’s leading proponent of gun control, earning an F-minus from the National Rifle Association for my efforts. Anthony Weiner had actually opposed the major gun control effort to come before the New York City Council, and Katz and Dear played no significant role on the issue. But the gun control PACs refused to support me.  I suspected, and later confirmed, that Schumer had actively discouraged individuals and organizations from supporting me. Since he played a leading role in gun control efforts in Congress (although the NRA gave him a slightly higher grade – a plain F – than the F-minus it gave me) the gun control PACs, I suppose, must have been especially responsive to his influence. Still, this experience helped me share the general skepticism of politicians toward “holier-than-thou” civic groups.

Characters: Noach Dear – “a piece of work”

Noach Dear has his good points. Now a judge, he has stood up for suffering debtors against sleazy debt collectors. Even as a rascal, his uninhibited forthrightness had a certain charm. At one point in my congressional campaign, some mutual friends introduced me to a few wealthy Syrian Jews from the Ocean Parkway neighborhood, from whom I tried to raise money. None contributed, but one was open enough to tell me that Noach had done too many favors for him and his friends for them to help an opponent of his — me. He went on to reassure me, though, that he knew what Noach was – because Noach had told him. They were marching together in some parade, he said, when he began mildly berating Noach for a vote on some City Council item apparently at odds with the views of the Syrian Jewish community. Noach responded, “Look – I know what I am. I’m a prostitute!”

In my personal dealings with him, that kind of bizarre forthrightness was part of an openness and warmth that made it difficult for me to dislike him personally. However, friends of mine involved in certain business ventures with Dear complained bitterly about his behavior. I found his political behavior absolutely appalling, and thought he was a terrible public official.

A former professional saxophone player, he had served as District Manager of Community Board 12 (much of which covers Brooklyn’s Borough Park community) and helped Howard Golden attract the growing Orthodox Jewish population of Golden’s Borough Park-based City Council district. When Golden became Brooklyn Borough President, he helped engineer Dear’s succession to the City Council seat. Unlike the politically moderate Golden, however, Dear rose to prominence as a fierce opponent of gay rights who “often compared homosexuals to criminals and deviants.”  The Village Voice noted his “lifetime of hostile rhetoric towards gays, blacks, and women.”

Dear also created a charitable foundation, ostensibly to help Soviet Jews, but used the proceeds to pay for trips for his family and other personal expenses, for which was required to reimburse over $37,000 to the foundation and was censured by then-Attorney General Robert Abrams.  The foundation also paid him about $250,000 a year. During our congressional race, he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions (perhaps a third of the money he raised for that campaign), for which his campaign was fined $45,000 by the Federal Election Commission. Dear’s campaign treasurer, Abe Roth, also served as the CPA for Sholom Rubashkin’s Agriprocessors, the Iowa “kosher” meatpacking plant that mistreated animals and workers alike.

Most of my “member item” money – the infamous “pork barrel” or “slush fund” money that legislative leaders allow individual members to direct to pet causes – went to pre-kindergarten programs in the public schools in my district. However, out of respect for the work that Catholic schools and yeshivas also performed for the children in my district, and cognizant of the financial pressures many of them faced, I had sought ways to help them as well. I led the fight to reimburse those schools for administrative costs imposed on them by the earlier enactment of a law requiring them to exclude children who had not been immunized, and of course to keep records in order to do so. My amendment to the “mandated services” statute created the first new stream of public revenue in a long time made available to non-public schools in the State of New York. Its enactment won me effusive plaudits from the Orthodox Jewish community.  But Noach was “one of them,” and had done so many political favors for individuals and individual organizations that I could not win any substantial support in the Orthodox Jewish community (not counting my own Orthodox synagogue, the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, most of whose members at the time, like me, were not actually Orthodox).

Ultimately, on September 11, 1998 the New York Post would endorse Noach in the race, while noting “some ethically questionable choices [he had made] in the 1980s,” calling me “a serious student of government,” but noting that I was “a truly straight talker, almost to a fault,” perhaps really meaning it was a fault.

The political configuration of 1998 and the 9th congressional district

The political configuration of 1998, though, posed far worse threats to my congressional prospects than that of 1994, although I refused to admit that fact to myself or to others. Nine years had passed since my D.A. race, so much less of the name recognition that campaign had generated would remain than in 1994. And, in 1994, 30-year-old Anthony Weiner had served on the New York City Council only for two years. By 1998, Weiner had six years of incumbency in a district that largely overlapped my Assembly district,but in cluded about twenty percent more voters.  Before that, he had worked for Schumer for six years. I had worked for Schumer from 1977 mid-way through 1980. Weiner started working for him in 1985. Perhaps Schumer had learned to encourage ambitious staffers to run for office, instead of treating them the way he had treated me. Or, more likely, Schumer saw a far more kindred spirit in Weiner – a young man burning with political ambition, unburdened by strong ethical or policy convictions, who would do anything to advance himself. In any event, their relationship remained so strong that even after six years as a member of the City Council, and now as a candidate for Congress, Weiner still acted as if he were a member of Schumer’s staff. I learned this at a 1998 outdoor summer event at Kingsborough Community College, overhearing Weiner on his cell phone counseling Schumer that the event had drawn a large enough crowd to warrant Schumer’s attendance.

Weiner wasn’t my only problem. In 1994, 29-year-old Melinda Katz had only just been elected to the Assembly, succeeding Alan Hevesi, for whom she had worked as a baby-sitter, and who backed her against a Democratic district leader who the Queens County Democratic organization preferred. Hevesi was, as Tom Robbins wrote in the Village Voice in 2009, “a fierce backer of his young protégé.” By 1998, she had compiled a thin record of accomplishment, but enough to justify her candidacy to herself and to Hevesi.

At 49 years of age, after eighteen years in the Assembly, I had won significant legislative victories for drivers (such as forcing the Parking Violations Bureau to pay a “fine” to drivers it had harassed unreasonably for tickets already paid or wrongfully issued), subway riders (such as establishing the Transit Corps of Engineers which, during a critical period, raised the morale and performance of transit engineering from unsafe to professional levels), tenants (such as ending the practice of double-billing tenants for rent paid in cash by requiring the issuance of rent receipts), and homeowners (such as establishing the Tax Assessment Small Claims Court, which reduced the perfunctory affirmation by the Tax Commission of tax assessment increases on homeowners from 97 percent down to 77 percent).  No other legislator could match my record of achievement on behalf of those four interest groups – drivers, straphangers, tenants, and homeowners. If I won their support, I should be able to beat any opponent. Dozens of my other legitimate legislative accomplishments had tangibly improved the lives of New Yorkers. I had proven myself highly effective in the role of a legislator working in the interests of my constituents.

So I should win a race for congress overwhelmingly, right?

Thinking About Congress

Sometime in late 1993 or early 1994, Schumer included a lunch meeting with me in his schedule for an Albany visit. At that time it seemed quite possible that Mario Cuomo would not run for reelection, given his weak poll numbers. More New Yorkers thought Cuomo should not run for reelection than thought he should, according to an April 1993 Marist poll.

Only five years after my primary run for Brooklyn District Attorney, voters would likely remember my name in large swaths of Brooklyn. If Schumer ran for Governor, I would run to fill the congressional seat he would have to abandon. Noach Dear, an Orthodox Jewish member of the New York City Council, seemed to be the most logical threat to my candidacy, should such a campaign come to pass. The burgeoning religious community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park included many of rapidly expanding wealth; Dear could raise tremendous sums of money from that group. Indeed, the New York Times noted his role as one of a small group of key fundraisers for Vice President Al Gore.  But Schumer assured me that despite his “fund-raising prowess,” in the Times’s words, Dear’s appeal was too limited for him to pose a serious threat to my candidacy; Dear could not get more than a fifth or a quarter of a Democratic primary vote in that congressional district.

Schumer’s interest in running for governor surprised me. I told him that I doubted that Moynihan, who had served as New York’s Senator since 1977, would run again in 2000, and that I thought Schumer would be the clear front-runner for that seat. Furthermore, Schumer had built a national reputation and power base in Washington. Why would he want to come back to Albany? He had a clear answer: “I don’t want to be one of 100 Senators shouting up. I would rather be the one in charge,” or words to that effect.

But when Cuomo decided to run, Schumer declined to fight him in a primary for the Democratic nomination. However, he did not wait for Moynihan to retire; he took on an uphill fight against Al D’Amato in 1998, thus opening his congressional seat to a successor that year.  Not only did Schumer win that fight, he did not become merely “one of 100 Senators shouting up.” He quickly rose to leadership, and within his second term became the second or third most powerful member of the Senate.

In some ways, Schumer’s decision not to run in 1994 gave me a sense of relief. Still-fresh memories of my 1989 campaign for District Attorney still pained me, so I had some reluctance to jump into another battle. But I did not want to end my days as the 80-year-old Assemblyman from Sheepshead Bay. Congress would offer fascinating new vistas. I salivated at the prospect of learning foreign affairs and the politics of Washington D.C. from that vantage point. When Schumer announce his candidacy in 1998, I had to run, or be forced to torture myself with “what if?s” forever after.

Characters: Don Halperin

State Senator Donald Halperin became my closest friend among my fellow legislators. If ever a politician remained entirely immune to the ego inflation common among elected officials, it was Don. Not even a shred, a molecule, of arrogance attached itself to this man.

In 1970, while in his third year at Brooklyn Law School, Don assembled his friends from college, law school, and the Manhattan Beach neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he would live his entire life, and took on a pillar of Brooklyn politics, the long-term incumbent State Senator Willie Rosenblatt, who had served since 1945. Don won, and became the youngest person ever elected to the New York State Senate.

When I took office in 1981, I quickly learned that having Halperin as my own state senator conferred a tremendous advantage. State senators and Assembly members from the same neighborhoods often have occasion to introduce each other’s bills in their respective houses as lead sponsor. In Tales from the Sausage Factory (pages 62-64), I explained how the Assembly passed a tenant protection bill of mine in my very first working day of session, and the bill became law – because Halperin carried it in the Senate.

Only Halperin, among the Senate minority Democrats, regularly won passage for a great many of his bills. In fact, he got more bills passed than many Republicans – an astonishing feat in a legislature where majority parties generally give very short shrift to minority party legislators. What made Halperin so unusual? By the time I arrived, he had already been around for a decade. More important, everyone liked him – and liked him a lot. His total and obvious decency just shone.

His extraordinary sense of humor, no doubt, contributed to his popularity. Back home in Brooklyn, Sunday mornings often found him and me on the same breakfast meetings track: synagogue men’s clubs, Jewish War Veterans Posts, B’nai Brith chapters, civic associations, parent-teacher associations, whatever. We sat together as the treasurer of a small B’nai Brith chapter in a low-income neighborhood took pledges from members, many of them in small multiples of “chai,” the Hebrew word for life, but also, because of the numerical value of Hebrew letters, indicative of the number 18. Most of these pledges were twice chai, three times chai, or chai by itself, but one member pledged “six times chai.” This treasurer did not have an especially quick head for arithmetic, and struggled with the multiplication for a while. Halperin nudged me. “Dan, Dan,” he whispered. “Pledge ‘pi chai.’”

I did not personally observe one of the most famous Halperin stories, but heard about it. At one point Halperin served as the ranking Democratic minority member of the Senate Codes Committee, chaired by the formidable Dale Volker. Dale had been a Buffalo police officer, and later a lawyer. He led the battle for the reinstitution of the death penalty in New York, which he won in 1995 (nominally – the State never executed anyone under that version of the statute).  No one incarnated the “law and order” stance better than Dale. His appearance and demeanor also tended to the strict and forbidding, with a typical police officer’s bristle-cut hair style, erect and military bearing, and a dour countenance.

If you kill someone’s dog, courts in New York have held that you become liable not merely for the economic value of the dog, but for the emotional pain you have caused the owner as well. For a number of years, a fervent cat lover had lobbied Albany legislators to extend such liability to anyone responsible for the death of a pet cat. A compliant legislator introduced the bill, but most other members satirically dubbed it the “flat cat” bill, suggesting the image of a cat that had been run over.

As committee chairs customarily do, Volker would have his Codes Committee staff schedule the bill for a “kill” calendar (pun not intended) near the end of session. Among many such pieces of legislation considered trivial, it would be treated with a motion to “hold” by the chair, and the committee members would unanimously support the motion without debate, thus consigning such a bill to oblivion for at least another year.  Any member of the committee wishing to debate the bill could object to this procedure, but toward the end of session most members had too little spare time to bother.

Volker brought up the flat cat bill, with a motion to hold. Halperin politely objected, and requested debate. By this time, Volker knew Halperin well, and knew something was up. “Okay, Senator,” he allowed, bracing himself for what he knew would be some kind of classic Halperin performance. “What is your objection?” Don began. “I understand that people love their cats, as well as others love their dogs. But this bill actually poses an equal protection problem. After all, people can become very attached to other pets as well – birds, for example. I believe that if we are going to protect a pussy, there is no good reason why we should not also protect a cockatoo.”

Legend has it that Volker made valiant efforts to match Halperin’s straight face, and succeeded for several seconds.

In 1993, Governor Cuomo appointed Halperin as New York State housing commissioner. But with Cuomo’s defeat in the 1994 election, Halperin was out of public office for the first time in his adult life.  The loss had no effect whatsoever on his demeanor. Without vanity or vainglory as a public official, he remained exactly the same out of office. Nor did his transition to the private sector, as a lobbyist in a law firm, diminish his sense of humor.

Some years later, around 2004, I met another good friend from the Legislature, Oliver Koppell, at his law firm at 40^th Street and Park Avenue, and we began walking to a nearby Chinese restaurant. As is our habit, we got deeply involved in a conversation about politics, philosophy, or both well before we even reached the restaurant, so by the time we sat down, we were mostly oblivious to our surroundings. The waiter began setting the table as we sat, placing silverware, napkins, and water glasses in front of us. However, the waiter performed so clumsily that he was almost impossible to ignore. A good ten minutes in, he was still reaching over us to place items on the table, and eventually he was reaching from behind me, with one hand on either side of me, simultaneously placing two items on the table.

At this point, we could not help but notice that he was not Chinese. He also was not wearing a waiter’s uniform. He was Don Halperin.

Life with Don was not only jokes. It was also fun and games. One afternoon, early in my Assembly service, Don asked me to meet him in Coney Island, near but not in our respective districts. At that point I was ready to agree immediately out of respect for my senior colleague from the upper house, assuming we had some matter of importance to go over, perhaps in confidence. Actually, the early 1980s saw tremendous growth in the sophistication and popularity of computer games. Don had brought me to the Coney Island amusement park to try some of the new ones.

He kept in great physical shape. He had swum competitively in high school and college, and still did 75 pushups each night. When he told me this, I tried it one night in Albany, since I always considered myself to be in pretty good shape too. However, not having practiced pushups for a while, for the next week or so my colleagues and constituents, watching me walk around, must have thought I was practicing my impression of Quasimodo.

Sometime in the 1990s Don brought a karate instructor to Albany, and at 7 a.m., once a week, we brushed up on our martial arts skills.

In the physical skill area, Don most impressed me with his continued ability to perform a kazatski dance, in which while remaining in a low squatting position, you alternate kicking each leg out straight, quickly and in time to the Russian music.

Ironically and tragically, Don fell victim to a rare form of cancer, and died at the age of 60. His obituary in the New York Times included a classic Halperin story, resonant with his humor and humility. Writing about his trip to a reunion in Los Angeles of New York transplants there organized by a friend he knew from his Boy Scout troop in Brooklyn, the obituary closed by noting, “Of his journey to the city that stole the Dodgers, Mr. Halperin said, ‘I retaliated by making a long, boring speech.’”

Characters: Marty Markowitz

Among the many, many speeches I gave during the District Attorney campaign was one to the 71^st Precinct Police Community Council. Police community councils, enlisting volunteers who want to make sure that their local police contingent responds to the needs of the community as they see them, sometimes draw big crowds to their meetings when some incident or condition arouses that wider community. The neighborhood, and thus the crowd at the meeting, was one hundred percent black, except for three of the speakers: me, one of the police officials, and then-State Senator Marty Markowitz. Assembly Member Clarence Norman spoke, to polite applause. The police official spoke, to polite applause. Another black elected official spoke, to polite applause. I spoke, to polite applause. Then Marty Markowitz spoke.

Markowitz had represented a mostly Jewish district in southern Brooklyn. Almost without impact in Albany, Marty represented his constituents with fierce tenacity. I visited his office for some reason in the early 1980s, and heard him screaming at some commissioner on behalf of a constituent who needed some bureaucratic attention. I recognized the constituent: he was an obnoxious semi-lunatic who regularly annoyed his neighbors; Markowitz would have won more votes by insulting him publicly. But he was Marty’s constituent, and that was enough.

After the 1980 census, though, the Republican-controlled Senate leadership redistricted Markowitz so that his new constituency was almost entirely black. Marty stood in front of the crowd. “I know who I am,” he said. “I’m a short, fat Jewish guy. But don’t think that means I don’t understand your problems.

“My office is on Church Avenue, on the second floor. Some guys stand in front of it all day, dealing drugs. So I went down to talk to them. I said, ‘Look, I’m a State Senator. It doesn’t look right for you to be selling drugs right in front of my office.’ They thought about it, and answered me, sounding very reasonable. ‘You make a good point,’ they said. ‘You should move your office.’”

I’m sure my rendition doesn’t do justice to Marty’s performance. The crowd went nuts. They loved this guy.

The precinct council people tended to be older. When walking among younger black constituents, Marty sometimes carried a “boom box” with him, tuned to hip hop music. He seemed to become one of them, to the extent possible. I think he was sincere.

He was still single when we served together in Albany, although he was approaching 50. The legislative scene in Albany in those days included lobbyists’ receptions for legislators with enticing spreads of food and plenty of alcoholic refreshment, before the ethics laws restricted lobbyists’ ability to provide that sort of thing. Mary Lee King was not a lobbyist, but for decades ran the ZAP courier service, specializing in expedited delivery of memos to legislators for lobbyists facing some urgent legislative deadline. Mary Lee, a grandmother, still wore extremely short skirts. Six feet tall and gorgeous, she always made a strong and extremely pleasant impression. As I chatted casually with her, Marty sauntered over. From his five foot five inch level, he slowly raised his eyes to take in Mary Lee’s full dimensions. “What’s the use even fantasizing,” he mused very audibly, and walked away.

Marty’s years representing black Brooklyn won him enormous popularity. When he represented white Brooklyn, he solicited enough money from private sources to put on fabulous popular music concerts in Midwood and Brighton Beach, drawing thousands of people, at which he would give appropriate recognition – advertising – to the corporate sponsors. When he moved to black Brooklyn, he continued to preside at the original concerts, in his trademark white tie and tails, but added concerts in his black neighborhoods.

In 2001 [David Eichenthal and Howard Graubard corrected the mistaken date in the earlier version of this post] he ran for Brooklyn Borough President against Ken Fisher, a very intelligent white member of the New York City Council, and Jeanette Gadson, a very capable black deputy to Borough President Howard Golden. Golden of course disliked Markowitz for having tried to unseat him in previous years, before borough presidents were term-limited out. Toward the end of that race I had breakfast with Steve Cohn, my old subcommittee counsel (see post #57). Steve grew up with Ken, and considered him to be virtually a brother. I asked him how the race was going. “Well,” he said, “Marty will split the white vote with Kenny, and he’ll split the black vote with Jeanette.” Steve was too loyal to Kenny to say outright that Marty would win. But his meaning was clear enough.

The New York Times ran an endorsement in that race. After noting that Fisher “clearly prefers wrestling with global policy issues,” the Times endorsed Markowitz, suggesting that he “hir[e] technical experts to deal with complex areas” and thus “free himself to do what he does best, promote and help Brooklyn residents,” or, essentially, “The borough presidency is a job for an idiot. We endorse Marty Markowitz.” And Marty has in fact been a great borough president.

The Democratic County Organization, Norman Rosen, and the Politics of the 1989 D.A. Race

Notwithstanding all this, I might well have beaten Hynes but for the third candidate. Norman Rosen, who Liz had defeated in 1981, thought his candidacy was still viable in 1989. Howard Golden had not returned my favor of endorsing him, or my reluctant acquiescence to his request for me to take on the burden of the district leadership. Mario Cuomo had called him. Using the influence of the Governor’s office, Cuomo persuaded Golden to endorse Hynes. Years later, Hynes tried to claim that the Brooklyn Democratic organization had backed me, on the basis of the hair-splitting distinction that Golden had only endorsed Hynes in his capacity as Borough President, not as County Leader.  But the lawyers in Golden’s Democratic county organization either worked for Hynes, or, as it happened, worked for Norman Rosen. This became very significant.

Rosen had joint petitions with Council Member Louis Olmedo, who had previously served time for extortion. My campaign showed that so many of Rosen’s signatures were false or fraudulent that when we challenged them in court, Judge Joseph Slavin threw Rosen and Olmedo off the ballot. John Leventhal, a lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic County organization, later a New York State Supreme Court judge, appealed to the Appellate Division, whose Second Department unanimously restored Rosen’s name, but not Olmedo’s, to the ballot – based on the same signatures, and with a brief opinion. This probably reflected the influence of the Democratic county organization as well.

If readers find this behavior by an appellate court shocking, they should be assured that it was not unprecedented. In a Democratic primary seven years earlier in Brooklyn’s 12^th congressional district to succeed Shirley Chisholm, regular organization candidate State Senator Vander Beatty lost to reformer State Senator Major Owens by almost 3000 votes out of about 34,000 cast. It was credibly alleged that Beatty then sent functionaries to the Board of Elections purportedly to review the records, but actually to change them right then and there. Beatty then brought suit for a re-run based on the irregularities which he claimed had been committed earlier. The trial court granted him his re-run, and the Appellate Division affirmed. In that matter, the State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, finally put a stop to the affair, on the basis of evidence that the New York Times had earlier described as being as clear as a bright yellow line painted down the middle of the road, leaving Owens to enjoy the victory he had so clearly already won. But the New York Times had no editorial interest in exposing any irregularities that worked to my disadvantage in 1989, and the Court of Appeals did not review the matter.

The significance of Rosen’s restoration to the ballot went beyond the sheer numbers. Rosen shared with me the same ethnicity, as well as a pro-death penalty reputation, thus splitting off some of the votes I would have won on either basis. Phil Caruso, head of the Police Benevolent Association, told me that I would have the PBA’s endorsement if I succeeded in knocking Rosen off the ballot. A shrewd politician himself, he knew that I would have a much better chance in a two-way race. In a two-way race, with the PBA endorsement, my campaign would have stood in much clearer contrast to Hynes’s.

Ultimately, Hynes would get 51% of the vote, to my 35% and Rosen’s 14%. So my vote and Rosen’s, together, still added up to less than half. But in a two-person race, with the PBA and likely other endorsements that would have come my way as well, chances are I would have beaten Hynes.