Mind Bender

We had been wondering why so many politicos from the deep south of Brooklyn had endorsed Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. State Senators Carl Kruger and Martin Golden and City Council Members Lew Fidler and Mike Nelson all wrote letters of support last summer to the M.T.A. We wondered, are these guys all for it because their constituents are going to get some of the jobs targeted to "the community" that the arena complex is supposed to help? Or do they just happen to have a lot of Nets fans living there? Then we hit upon a map for the 59th Assembly district, which is governed by the Thomas Jefferson Club, the Democratic clubhouse whence Bruce Bender sprang. Bender worked for Ed Koch, Peter Vallone and now Forest City Ratner, as the executive vice president for community and government affairs. He does all the outreach to politicos from, among other places, the deep south of Brooklyn. The 59th A.D. includes Canarsie, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach and Flatlands--exactly the neighborhoods that Messers. Kruger, Golden, Fidler and Nelson represent. Bender is, in other words, quite the homeboy -Matthew Schuerman