Connor to Try Again

We've just heard from Ken Diamondstone that Marty Connor will appeal the Supreme Court decision to allow Diamondstone to appear on the ballot in their race for State Senate, and that they will appear at the Brooklyn Appellate Courthouse tomorrow. Diamondstone contends that Connor is attempting to further tie up his campaign resources with the challenge, which could run through August 23, and believes that Connor doesn't want to talk about the issues facing the district, calling him "mostly absent." And he said that the whole effort to elimiate him from the race was actually about... Clarence Norman. Read on for more comments from Diamondstone after the jump. And let us know what you think. Diamondstone charges that Connor has "focus[ed] on the minutia, legal techicalities to get me off the ballot because when we're discussing issues it's very uncomfortable for him when we talk about his working with Clarence Norman during many, many years to help rig the judicial system in Brooklyn. He presided over eight of Clarence Norman's basically sham judicial conventions that led to the Brennan Center decision to throw out the way we select our judges. He was working hand in glove with Clarence Norman in all of this. He doesn't want to hear about that. He doesn't want us to talk about his key role in ending the commuter tax and costing the city three billion dollars and I'm going to talk about that and he will say 'Oh, that was one of only 50,000.' Well, but it was the most devastating vote and it was the one that he led on." As for the additional appearances in court: "I see our campaign going forward no matter what he does, we are convinced that we will prevail again, and that there's virtually no chance of our success being derailed. We will go forward whether he tries to drain our resources continually. We will go forward, we will find new sources, we will proceed as we expected. We will inform the public in the next month of all the things that we haven't been able to talk about and we will make sure that they know what the differences are between us: that he has been basically not the leader that we need in this most incredible and diverse and complex district and that we need someone in Albany who we can trust not to betray us as he's done on so many fiscal and important issues to the citizens of New York." —Nicole Brydson