Yesterday afternoon at City Hall, Congresswomen Yvette Clarke and Nydia Velazquez announced jointly that they are endorsing Bill de Blasio for Brooklyn borough president.

These early endorsements follow announcements of support for de Blasio from UNITE-HERE and The NY Hotel Trades Council. Combined with the campaign's announcement yesterday of having raised "nearly $1 million dollars" ("$177,454 this filing period and $621,891 this cycle"), de Blasio is looking a bit like a foregone thing. (It's unclear at this point exactly who else is running.

The endorsements were announced on the City Hall steps, with about 25 or so supporters standing behind the congresswomen and de Blasio, squinting into the sun and holding "For Brooklyn '09'" signs.  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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Yvette Clarke, like every other member of Congress from New York, supports Hillary Clinton. But Barack Obama won her Brooklyn congressional district, which could complicate her position somewhat if superdelegates end up having to break an effective deadlock at the Democratic National Convention.  read more »

Former City Councilwoman Una Clarke, a Clinton supporter, is organizing a major event tonight in Flatbush, in part as a counter-demonstration of the strong support Barack Obama seems to have in that part of Brooklyn.

Clarke, who said that the details are not finalized for the event, tried explaining to me Obama’s local appeal.  read more »

Barack Obama has relatively strong support from local elected officials in and around the 11th congressional district in Brooklyn, the heart of his support in New York City.

But the district's newly-elected Congresswoman Yvette Clarke supports Hillary Clinton,  read more »

Here’s Una Clarke, a former City Council woman from Brooklyn and permanent fixture in the city’s political landscape, discussing the resolution of Eliot Spitzer's proposal to allow undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses.

“Cowards die many times before their death. Shakespeare says that,” Clarke told me. She went on to say, “If you believe in something, you take it to the end.”

Extra credit question: If Spitzer is Julius Ceasar, who's his Brutus?

]]> http://www.observer.com/2007/spitzer-shakespearean-una-clarke#comments Politics Eliot Spitzer Una Clarke Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:05:51 -0500 Azi Paybarah 60522 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2007/eugene2007-com

I missed this at first, but shortly after the culmination of Mathieu Eugene's tortuous ascent to the City Council, he went up with a web site to promote a re-election campaign that will represent his third run for the same office in the space of a year.

The picture here of Eugene with Rep. Yvette Clarke and her mother, Una, is from Eugene2007.com, which was created on May 3rd. That's just a few days after, as his biography puts it, he "made history when he won two special elections to become the first Haitian-born elected official in the state of New York."  read more »

Mathieu Eugene was just sworn into the City Council, according to a reader who, unlike me, is at City Hall today.

Interestingly, though, Eugene still hasn't signed the Council's official paperwork affirming that he is eligible to hold office. Eugene, you'll remember, had some trouble meeting Council requirements after he first won election to the office.

"They're satisified he met all the requirements to hold office," Eugene spokesman, Scott Levenson, just told me, referring to the City Council.

Speaker Christine Quinn is expected to address the matter at a press conference before today's meeting of the full Council.

And for anybody keeping track, score one for Eugene's main adviser, Una Clarke.

I'm not sure where this is running. But here it is: Una Clarke, Mathieu Eugene and a camera.

(Video after the jump.)  read more »