Joe Hynes

Another wrinkle in the already interesting City Council race in Brooklyn's 40th District:

It turns out that Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes has donated money to Mathieu Eugene, the candidate who won the February special election to fill the seat but never took office. (Eugene failed to prove that he lived in the district at the time of the election.)

The contribution, made on Feb. 3, was for $250.

The practice of a DA getting involved in a local race is not illegal -- a spokesman for the city's Conflict of Interest Board said there is no regulation barring them from making political contributions -- but it is frowned upon by good government advocates.

"Very strange," is how the Citizens Union executive director Dick Dadey described the contribution.

"I don't think it's illegal but it certainly raises concerns," he told me.

"What," he asked hypothetically, "if something were to arise, with political corruption, with Mathieu Eugene?"

Hynes, through a spokesman, defended the contribution he made, and rebuffed the notion of any impropriety.

Here's his quote, as read to me by a spokesperson:

"I rarely contribute to political campaigns but I like and respect Dr. Eugene. I have appeared on his Haitian television show several times. He has given us space for one of our neighborhood offices. There is neither the perception of impropriety nor conflict of interest in my choosing to contribute to his campaign."

According to a search of the city's campaign finance board database, which goes back to 1989, this is the first personal contribution Hynes has made to a city candidate.

-- Azi Paybarah

At 2 p.m. this afternoon, Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes will be handing out DVD copies of video surveillance allegedly showing former Judge Gerald Garson accepting a $1,000 bribe, and cigars, from an attorney.

A spokesman for the DA said that the footage will be played in court before more than a dozen copies are given out to interested media.

The last time the DA released footage -- of Assemblywoman Diane Gordon asking someone to build her a dream home in exchange for help securing city contracts - it hit YouTube instantly.

-- Azi Paybarah

From the Department of Interesting Connections...

The person Andrew Cuomo tapped to help investigate Medicaid fraud is Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes, who spearheaded a similar effort in Brooklyn.

Hynes, you may recall, is also the DA who revived a five-year-old probe of Cuomo's top challenger in the Democratic primary, Mark Green, looking into some allegedly illegal payments Green's campaign made during the 2001 mayoral race. The investigation led to plenty of uncomfortable questions during a crucial time in the attorney general contest, but did not result in a single indictment.

Bonus coincidence: Cuomo and Hynes went to the same high school.

-- Azi Paybarah

So apparently Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes is not, in fact, going to be accepting a integrity award from Dov Hikind, whatever the invitation may have said.

Says Hynes spokesman Jerry Schmetterer:

"First of all Dov Hikind hasn’t reached out. And the DA would not accept anything like that from Dov Hikind."

Why not?

"They have a stormy past."

Memories, it seems, are short in Brooklyn.

Just last year, Assemblyman Dov Hikind campaigned, hard, against the incumbent district attorney, Joe Hynes, and for the organization candidate, John Sampson.

But on April 2, Dov will be presenting awards at the Boro Park Jewish Community Council’s legislative breakfast, including the "distinguished guardian award for integrity in government" to... one Charles J. Hynes. A reader who followed those Brooklyn races recalls that that wasn’t exactly what Hikind was saying about Hynes at the time.

The Ferrer campaign's split with Leonard Joseph, a political aide allied with Bill Lynch who also worked for John Kerry, has some insiders grumbling that Joseph -- who left after taking the blame for a screw-up involving a claimed endorsement from Joe Hynes -- got a raw deal.

So Joseph's friends were pleased to see that when John Kerry came to town last night to headline a couple of Ferrer fundraisers, the first person the Senator asked to see was ... Joseph. Who, obviously, wasn't there.  read more »

Kerry aides called him, and Kerry was seen leaving the second fundraiser deep in conversation with his, and Freddy's, former aide.

Of all the strange little tricks played on election day this year, the most widespread -- and ineffective -- seem to have been the game-playing with endorsements on palm cards and leaflets handed out around Brooklyn polling stations. (Al Sharpton and David Dinkins, somehow, endorsed every one of the Brooklyn organization's candidates.)

Anyway, a reader faxes over another sample: Council Member Lew Fidler's palm card. Fidler played a key role in Joe Hynes's reelection campaign and backed Freddy for Mayor. But his palm features the organization candidates, Miller and Sampson.  read more »

Why? Who knows.

Don't miss this story from the Daily News's Brooklyn section, in which Councilman David Yassky -- a Yale-law, Brooklyn Heights reformer who used to work for Senator Schumer -- comes out for John Sampson in the race for District Attorney.

While you could argue that he's endorsing Sampson because the only African-American running for District Attorney is the one with the best shot of beating Joe Hynes, it's hard not to see a straightforward piece of racial politics here as well. Yassky is running for congresss in a traditionally black district -- it was drawn to further minority representation, and once represented by Shirley Chisholm. Some of his rivals will likely be scrutinizing every move he makes for an opening to attack him as an interloper, and Yassky will be maneuvering to avoid that charge.  read more »

Endorsing Clarence Norman's candidate of choice has to help.

We've always admired Giff's political dexterity. And we don't claim fully to have untangled what's going on in Brooklyn at the moment, where the candidates are scrapping it out for the affection of members of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats, one of the Brownstone reform clubs.

But we're hearing grumbling from across the bridge that Gifford has managed to align himself both with Brooklyn District Attorney candidate Mark Peters, the challenger, and with the incumbent, Joe Hynes.  read more »

We hope you'll sort this out for us down below.

"In the language of politics," a political lifer told The Observer , "there are two kinds of verb: k  read more »