The Stonewall Democratic Club, one of the city's largest gay political clubs, held an endorsement meeting last night.

According to a club member, here is who the club is endorsing in a few key races:

-Challenger Kevin Powell over incumbent Representative Ed Towns

-Incumbent State Senator Marty Connor over insurgent Dan Squadron

-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver over his two challengers, Paul Newell and Luke Henry

-Incumbent State Senator Kevin Parker over challengers Kendall Stewart and Simcha Felder

-Manhattan Surrogate's Court candidate Nora Anderson

Kendall Stewart, who is running for State Senate in Brooklyn, is plowing ahead with the notion that he knows how to get money for local community groups, despite the trouble two of his staffers got into for allegedly misusing public money intended for local community groups.

"I want to thank you for all the years of support and your fair and unbiased approach to reporting the news," Stewart says in this "press invitation."

Stewart and fellow City Councilman Simcha Felder are running in a Democratic primary against incumbent Kevin Parker.

Kevin Parker, the state senator from Brooklyn facing two well-established primary challengers, just got the endorsement of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1500.

According to a statement from campaign spokesperson Ronnie Sykes, the union's decision wasn't a close one: “The union endorsed Senator Parker without conducting an interview. The decision was made based on the Senator’s strong history of support for working families.”

Running against Parker are term-limited City Council members Kendall Stewart and Simcha Felder, who has been on the wrong end of a preemptively exclusive screening process before.

A .45 caliber bullet pierced the door of City Councilman Kendall Stewart’s district office in Brooklyn, he said.

The picture above is of Stewart’s door that was sent to me by a reader earlier this week. Stewart confirmed the incident in a brief conversation I had with him this afternoon. Stewart said it was a .45 caliber bullet that made the hole in his door, but that he didn’t think he was the target of any attack. He said the shooting occured after 4 p.m. one day last month after two men had an altercation across the street from the office.

Stewart said the police were called and nobody was injured.  read more »

The Democratic club home to Representative Yvette Clarke and her mother, Una Clarke, a former City Council member, will hear presentations tonight from State Senator Kevin Parker and one of the Democrats trying to unseat him, City Councilman Kendall Stewart.

Una Clarke said the presentations will be made to the executive committee of the club and are not open to the press. She also said the third Democrat in the race, City Councilman Simcha Felder, has not asked to speak to the club. Felder announced his candidacy for the seat only a few weeks ago, and Clarke says, "There is still a lot of unknown about him in the community.”

When asked which candidate she was leaning towards, Clarke replied, “I am not leaning -- I am standing straight until I get a level playing field and figure out what exactly is happening.”

Clarke said she thinks this primary shares some similarities with the 2006 Democratic primary in Brooklyn's 11th Congressional district-- the contest won by her daughter -- when there was considerable speculation that the district’s African-American voters would be divided among the three black candidates, giving the only white candidate a victory. Clarke thinks Felder poses a threat if he “gets a solid vote in his community, and the other votes are split in many ways.”

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Here’s a flier going around the neighborhood (that is, Flatbush-Ditmas Park) promoting a concert fund-raiser for Councilman Kendall Stewart, who is running for State Senate.

Note the first campaign slogan listed under "Stewart 2008" is “Bringing Home the Resources.”

Which is sort of a bold theme, in light of the fact that two of his legislative aides were arrested for pocketing money intended for a nonprofit in the neighborhood. Stewart was not implicated in the matter.

Since news of the City Council slush fund scandal broke, member items have been under scrutiny. As Diane Cardwell wrote last month, members' discretionary spending is "becoming a campaign issue."

UPDATE: A reader notes there's a typo in the flier, which says that Stewart will bring home the "recourses."

UPDATE II: Another typo. The flier misspells Kendall's last name, refering to him as "Stewert".

The State Senate contest that Simcha Felder just decided to jump into bears some resemblance, at least on the surface, to the 2006 primary in Brooklyn's 11th congressional district in which Councilman David Yassky, who is Jewish, jumped into a field that included multiple black candidates.  read more »

Councilman Simcha Felder just told a few reporters at City Hall that he has the support of both Michael Bloomberg and Assemblyman Dov Hikind in his new bid to unseat State Senator Kevin Parker.  read more »

Councilman Simcha Felder is not getting into the city comptroller race, but he will run for the Brooklyn State Senate seat currently held by fellow Democrat Kevin Parker, according to a source.  read more »

At a Crain's business breakfast in Midtown this morning, Christine Quinn said she doesn't think her career as City Council speaker will be "defined" by the "problem" the council has in the slush fund scandal.

Quinn said she, and others, will be judged by the solutions they propose to problems as they arise.

It's among the most concise attempts to frame the recent money problems in the Council, and to regain the mantle of reform her prospective candidacy was premised on.