Clarence Norman

A reader who attended last night’s judicial convention sent over this photograph, which shows that among the people helping run the event was Jeff Feldman (at left).

Feldman is the former executive director of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, who agreed to testify against former county leader Clarence Norman who went to trial for selling judgeships. The Brooklyn district attorney dropped all charges against Feldman in exchange for his testimony. Norman was later convicted.

Finally.

One of the highest ranking African-American in Eliot Spitzer’s administration has a title, nine months after joining the administration.

Carl Andrews is, officially, the “Director of NYC Intergovernmental Office” according to this directory. The space next to Andrews' name had been blank for nearly the entire time since he joined the administration back in January, leading to suspicions that the administration was deliberately creating a low profile for him because of his close work with the corrupt Brooklyn Democratic machine under Clarence Norman.

Brooklyn Democratic County Leader Vito Lopez is hosting his annual county dinner for Brooklyn Democrats on Thursday, June 28 at The Fabulous Steiner Studios, according to an invitation a reader sent along.

The theme this year, like last year, is "Brooklyn is Back," a not-so-veiled reference to the organization's scandal-plagued era of Lopez's predecessor, Clarence Norman.

Last year's event was Lopez's first as county leader, and it drew a number of notable guests including senator Ada Smith, Gifford Miller, and a very happy Assemblyman William Boyland.

Honorees this year include Doug Steiner, president of Steiner Studios, Dennis Quirk, president of the NYS Court Officers Association, Roy Hastick, president of the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce, Ronald Tawil, co-chairman of the Sephardic Community Federation, Domenick Napoletano, president of Columbian Lawyers Association, Daniel Igor Branovan, Medical Director of the New York Eye and Ear infirmary and David Hernandez, President of the Puerto Rican Bar Association.
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What'll be a bigger headache for Eliot Spitzer this weekend?

The television ads denouncing his plan to cut health care spending or the fallout from the conviction of Clarence Norman, whose right hand man, Carl Andrews, works for Spitzer but has no title.

-- Azi Paybarah

Clarence Norman was convicted of larceny and coercion but cleared of five other charges.

Bill Thompson and Anthony Weiner unofficially kick off the 2009 season this April when they discuss middle class economics at a DMI forum.

Mitt Romney wants New York's money out of Iran.

Yearly Kos will have an NYC fund-raiser on March 10.

John Kerry and his wife are writing a book due out in March.

The guy who ran Kerry's fund-raising in New York is on board with Barack Obama.

Rudy Giuliani's most ambitious fund-raiser so far is planned for March 4 in Midtown. (Baseball theme!)

Giuliani Blog points to a positive a poll.

Reform NY likes the fact Andrew Cuomo hired Blair Horner.

And pictured above is a random crowd-shot from last week's NYC 4 Obama event.

-- Azi Paybarah

State lawmakers are leaning towards picking one of their own for the comptroller position.

Eliot Spitzer will present his $120 billion budget today.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno doesn't want Spitzer to cut health care spending.

Good government groups want Spitzer to tweak the ethics package he proposed.

Margarita Lopez Torres, a judge, testified against Clarence Norman, who is accused of selling judgeships in Brooklyn.

The Nassau County comptroller's audit of the Republican candidate in Nassau's special election is becoming a major campaign issue.

New York City's rickety, mechanical voting machines may still be in use for another two years.

Hillary Clinton's poll numbers in New Hampshire and Ohio look good.

And The New Republic has a piece urging Democrats to ignore Al Sharpton.

-- Azi Paybarah

As Clarence Norman's fourth trial gets underway -- this one for allegedly selling judgeships in Brooklyn -- I came across an recent back-issue of Hitz magazine that features a page-long interview with the former Brooklyn lawmaker.

The kind-of-poignant end quote: "God forgives but life does not."

Here's more from the interview:  read more »

Brooklyn District Attorney Charlie Hynes is girding for a nasty reelection fight after going after machine powerbroker Clarence Norman. Last night, he spoke at the Borough park residence of Ben Barber, a businessman and community liaison for Bill Thompson, and told an audience of roughly 125 people that he felt he needed to raise $1 million by June.

"He tells people that he is running again, he tells people about his programs and that crime has come down an that he hoped to raise one million or more, which he has done in the past," said Mortimer Matz, a spokesman for Hynes' 2009 reelection campaign, who couldn't confirm last night's meeting but called it possible. "He has brought many cases that involve corruption in Kings County and obviously one is the chairman. Obviously when you do that there is a political structure that isn't going to do to well for you."

Those hard feelings, Matz said, are the reason Hynes is out there so early.

"He has got to be out there earlier, work harder and try to get the public to understand what he's done," said Matz.

--Jason Horowitz UPDATE: Laura Rivera in the Comptroller's office calls in to say that Barber has no association with Thompson.

Ben Barber - community leader in borough park, Bill Thompson's rep to the Jewish community overall. Father minister for the bovo congregation. In Cahrlie Hines house, he wants to rease 1 million until June

He knows that there is going to be an all out effort against him. Clarence Norman

70-100 all Jews, mostly orthodox

In Borough park, he has raised money for Carl Andrews and Bill Thompson.

Money

Ben thinks Chuck Schumer's endorsement of Andrew Cuomo is not overwhelming. Also, Jeff Feldman may testify against Clarence Norman.

Joe Lieberman leads Ned Lamont in the latest polls.

Joe Bruno has a change of heart.

There is one Republican hoping to win her in Wisconsin because she slept with football players.

Dennis Hastert gets duped into meeting a "pr-hungry evangelist."  read more »

And pictured to the right is the building into which Cory Lidle's plane crashed. [slightly revised]

-- Azi Paybarah

Among the people endorsed yesterday by the Grand Council of Guardians, an umbrella group of black law enforcement unions, was Eric Adams: state senate candidate in Brooklyn, former head of the organization, retired police officer, and defender of Clarence Norman.

At the event, I asked Adams if his remarks about Clarence Norman squared with the goals of law enforcement groups like the ones that just endorsed him. He clarified his remarks about Norman, (which I reported here), sang the praise of Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes, and said the legislature should have handled Norman's infractions.

For your listening pleasure, here is Eric Adams.

-- Azi Paybarah

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.  read more »

Once again, in the latest issue of the Village Voice, Wayne Barrett pursues his case against Carl Andrews.

Here's one of the meaty grafs:

Andrews delivered $55,000 in precious senate grants in 2004 and 2005 to the Local Development Corporation of Crown Heights, which has retained Clarence Norman as a consultant. Started by Norman's father in the 1980s, the LDC had also collected $371,500 since 2003 in assembly funding from Norman, who, as a leading member of the Democratic assembly majority at the time, had much more pork power than Andrews. The GOP senate majority greatly limits the so-called "member items" that Democrats control, so Andrews tried, in a Voice interview, to lowball what he'd given, insisting "it was just $5,000 or $10,000."

You can read the rest here.

—Nicole Brydson

By the usual measures -- institutional support (Eliot!), demographics, familiarity, and money, Carl Andrews ought to be the frontrunning in the race to succeed Major Owens.

But Andrews is also, writes Brooklyn reformer and gadfly Maurice Gumbs, the "best and closest friend" of convictd Brooklyn boss Clarence Norman.

How much Brooklynites care could determine the outcome of the race.

The Post reports Stephen Minarik has told KT McFarland to fire Ed Rollins from her campaign, and Ada Smith could face censure.

The Times reports that Hillary Clinton's strategy for winning in 2008 might be winning in 2006.

The Albany Times Union reports that less than one in five donors to John Spencer's campaign is from New York.

And the Sun reports that Charles Hynes plans to try Clarence Norman a fourth time.

—Nicole Brydson

Daily News takes a look at State Senator Carl Andrews, who asks "How bad could I be," in light of his connections to Clarence Norman and Eliot Spitzer.

In their headline, The New York Sun notes Weld Fought Giuliani in Brooklyn Museum Battle. How bad can that be?

To round out the uncertainty, Newsday reports Christine Quinn will decide by March 17 whether she'll walk in the St. Patrick's Day parade.

--Azi Paybarah

After recovering from that Oscar shocker (Crash beat Brokeback!?), The Politicker has gone through the papers this morning as part of a new, regular feature and found other noteworthy stories.

State lawmakers take bigger campaign contributions than the president can and spend most of it on "other" expenses, The Times reports.

The Post has a busy busy day. First, Fred Dicker got the secret, a not-so-conservative memo from KT McFarland.

Then, they have an exclusive on why big contributions aren't needed at the City's Dept. of Environmental Protection, whose phones were tapped in the second probe of city-awarded contracts.

At another probe, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver may testify against Clarence Norman, notes Daily News.

The Sun rips into the new Senate candidate with a brutal headline: Reagan Aides Try to Remember KT McFarland. But not to be outdone, The Post finds a way to throw Geraldine Ferraro into a story about two murders, the mafia and porn. --Azi Paybarah

The New York Press's intrepid, if slightly off-kilter, Azi Paybarah got a camera into Clarence Norman's pre-sentencing, er, "going away" party.

Norman told supporters: "With all the support in this room, I wish I had twelve of you on my jury."  read more »

Guests included Council Members Al Vann, Yvette Clarke, and Tish James.

When the press secretary for City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn was denying last week that her congressional campaign had hired a former aide to the convicted ex-boss of Brooklyn, Clarence Norman, he neglected to mention that Clarke was about to hire the aide to her City Council staff.

And in today's press release Clarke does manage to avoid any mention of Norman:  read more »

"Having worked for the residents of the 43rd Assembly District for nearly two decades, [the aide, Nancy Ramos] is uniquely aware of the needs offamilies in Central Brooklyn."

Who represented that Assembly District again?

Ties to convicted Brooklyn boss Clarence Norman don't seem to be worrying the candidates to replace Major Owens in the 11th Congressional district in Brooklyn.

A leading candidate, Carl Andrews, is a longtime Norman ally, and The Politicker hears that another candidate, Yvette Clarke, just hired Clarence's former chief of staff Nancy Ramos to work on her congressional campaign.  read more »

Ramos was a witness for the prosecution at Norman's trial.

CORRECTION: I jumped the gun on this one, and should have waited on confirmation. Clarke spokesman Rance Huff emails, in response to a question about Ramos: "The campaign is still interviewing candidates and I confirm that Nancy Ramos has not been interviewed for that position or any position with the campaign." The Politicker regrets the error.

After the endless press, driven by the District Attorney's office, that convicted Brooklyn boss Clarence Norman was on the verge of cutting a deal that would send judges to jail, it turns out...not. Now the question is whether there was ever a deal in the works at all.

Norman's lawyer, Edward Rapaport, just sent out this statement:  read more »

This morning I informed the Brooklyn District Attorney's office that Clarence Norman will not be going in to meet with the office today. While the District Attorney apparently prefers to continue to leak sensational and unverified rumors to the press, the fact is that Clarence Norman has never received any moneys for any reason from judicial candidates or sitting judges and therefore has no information to share with the office. We continue to proceed in preparing an appeal of Mr. Norman's conviction, and preparing for Mr. Norman's next trial.

A wave of moral shock, it appears, did not wash over the Brooklyn Democratic Party in the wake of Clarence Norman's conviction.

At least that seems the right way to read this line from a notice acting party chair Freddie Hamilton sent out announcing the meeting to select Clarence's replacement:

"While we are all distressed by the tragedy which has befallen our colleague and friend, we need to retain our resolve to insure the future strength and vitality of our Party."

You have to love the passive voice.  read more »

Oh, also: "A light supper will be served."

A legally-minded reader noted this entry in today's AP court calendar: State Supreme Court, Brooklyn:9:30 a.m. estimate: Defense's case for Clarence Norman Jr., charged with murder; Judge Marcus; Ceremonial, 2nd floor, 320 Jay Street.  read more »

While the political playing field is lined with union bosses, lobbying groups and eminent ex-statesm  read more »

While the political playing field is lined with union bosses, lobbying groups and eminent ex-statesm  read more »

The embattled Brooklyn boss, Clarence Norman, and the Brooklyn District Attorney who indicted him, Joe Hynes, will apparently be standing together at a press conference outside the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council to denounce local tire-slashings.  read more »

Apparently, a bill passed by the legislature late Friday to create an extra surrogate judgeship in Brooklyn -- the one that will allow Clarence Norman and local district leaders to fill said position -- has a nickname among the bottom-line orientated lobbyists and staffers in Albany: It's the Joe Lentol Retirement Bill.  read more »

Does anyone really believe that the Indian Point nuclear-power plant deserves to continue operating?  read more »

It should be no surprise that George W. Bush is turning out to be one of the worst U.S.  read more »

A powerful endorsement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's efforts to reform the beleaguered New York City  read more »

When the State Court of Appeals ruled recently that Albany's school-funding formula is unfair to New  read more »

The next time some preening politician jumps in front of television cameras to announce the latest d  read more »