Vito Lopez

Here’s something to keep in mind as the fate of Vito Fossella unfolds:
 read more »

Earlier this month, in the brief few-day period when only one governor was embroiled in a sex scandal, Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez introduced a bill to use eminent domain to take pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s approximately 15-acre manufacturing plant site in East Williamsburg and turn it into affordable housing (he's talked about this previously).

With the plant slated to close later this year, Pfizer had put out a search in January for developers to buy the land and build a mixed-use, mixed-income development out of the site.

Though the company has yet to report any progress along that front, and even that concept—of a mixed-income complex—angered Mr. Lopez, the Assembly housing committee chairman, who previously has expressed revulsion at the notion that the company would proceed down a path that would bring it any significant financial gain.

The bill, introduced March 13 with 20 other legislators signing on, instructs the Division of Housing and Community Renewal to take the property with eminent domain. In the bill’s justification listed on the Assembly’s Web site, Mr. Lopez said he was taking action on Pfizer because it failed to donate its land, as it has done in other instances. "Though Pfizer has shown concern for other communities coping with job loss and housing needs, it appears the global company has little interest in returning the land in question to the State of New York," the justification reads.  read more »

Since the Spitzer administration revealed its plans for a Javits Center expansion/renovation last month, the state has been clear that funding for the governor’s new $300 million downstate affordable-housing initiative, along with funding for two parks, will have to come from the sale of two unused land parcels to the north and the south of the convention center.

Joining the two separate projects, the state seemed to be saying that only with the $900 million or so raised from the Javits land sale could it afford the housing plan. “Want a housing plan? Support the Javits proposal,” the Spitzer administration implied.

The land-sale proposal became an instant lightning rod, drawing fire from most anyone and everyone involved with Javits, particularly over the sale of the northern parcel. Selling it would foreclose the possibility of expansion forever, critics charged. (Mr. Spitzer has said the price will forever be far too great to expand there, so selling the parcels makes sense.)

But it now appears there’s been something of a shift, housing advocates say.  read more »

So, the leading candidate for the position of city clerk is Hector Diaz, but the vote that would have confirmed him last month was delayed. The vote is now set for Wednesday and there’s strong opposition from Brooklyn City Council members, because the last city clerk was from their borough, while Diaz is from the Bronx.

One person I spoke to, who is allied with Christine Quinn, told me that the official with the most at stake over this vote is the Speaker.

“I think this is going to be seen as a vote, not on Hector Diaz, but a vote on Chris Quinn,” said the source. “[Her allies are] hard-pressed to allow the Speaker, with two years left, to be undermined."

More after the jump.   read more »

As Pfizer seeks to sell its 15-acre plant site in Williamsburg to a private developer, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the chairman of the Assembly’s housing committee, is pressing the pharma giant on affordable housing.

Mr. Lopez, also the chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, has been circulating a draft bill to acquire the site through eminent domain, and now his office is organizing a group of community leaders to add pressure on Pfizer.  read more »

Brooklyn Democratic County Leader Vito Lopez is declaring that Brooklyn, as a political powerhouse, has returned.

He attributes the rebirth to a series of small recent victories.

First, Lopez managed to block--or at least delay--the confirmation of city clerk appointee Hector Diaz of the Bronx. He and a coalition also blocked the appointment of another Bronx official up for appointment as a commissioner of the Board of Elections. Lastly, three judges from Brooklyn were appointed to the bench by Eliot Spitzer.

When I spoke to him on the phone, Lopez told me, “The whole theme of what I tried to do in my two years is ‘Brooklyn is Back,’ and we’re really proud that. People, after years of not respecting our political credibility, people are respecting it, and we are the first to be called on these key positions.”

More after the jump.  read more »

One more thing on Hillary and the Brooklyn Democrats:

According to party chairman Vito Lopez, Hillary Clinton was endorsed after that Williamsburg meeting yesterday by a vote of 29 to 2.

The two nay votes came from council member Albert Vann and district leader Olanike Alabi.

“She’s paying her respect, which I think is a very good characteristic.”  read more »

Here's Hillary Clinton entering Cono & Sons, a restaurant in Williamsburg. At the door she greeted Vito Lopez, before going inside to receive the endorsement of the Kings County Democratic Party.

"She's paying her respects, which I think is a very good characteristic," Lopez said about her visit.

It was a split decision yesterday for Brooklyn Democratic County Leader Vito Lopez, who backed one winning judicial candidate (Noach Dear) and one losing judicial candidate (Shawndya Simpson) in yesterday’s primaries.

It was a mixed result in another way, too: Dear was panned by the New York City Bar Association and the New York Times, Lopez’s other judicial candidate won more support from those same institutions.

So, how should we interpret yesterday’s results, in terms of the Brooklyn party organization?

Democratic consultant Scott Levenson, who has won his share of races in that borough, told me last night,

“It’s not just machine politics in Brooklyn. Thinking voters voted for an under-funded candidate with less name recognition [Diana Johnson] because she was more qualified and not the machine candidate. Other insurgent candidates will take notice.”

Another observer of the political scene, who prefers to go by the name Kilgore Trout, emailed me this morning to say,

“I think that this proves that Brooklyn is completely up for grabs by the non institutional players. Neither the Times nor the party hold enough sway to be deciding factors these days.”

Also: after the jump is a roundup of how a handful of brave politicos did in guessing last night’s election results.  read more »

You can’t get everything you want in life--especially if you are a politician. So Assemblyman Vito Lopez yesterday gave up a couple of things he liked about the 421a tax abatement bill that passed the Legislature earlier this year in order to get it past the Governor’s desk. A new version, reported in the papers this morning, will come up for a vote in September.

“Was I very much in love with the original bill?” he asked in an interview Tuesday evening. “I am happy—not ecstatic—on the compromise. What we accomplished was using the 421a as a means to guaranteeing affordability and expanded that to 22 communities. There is one exclusion zone in every borough now.”

The very popular 421a abatement cuts taxes on multifamily buildings for up to 25 years; various exclusion zones, which used to be confined to the wealthy parts of Manhattan, will now encompass much of Brooklyn and bits of Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx, permitting the tax break only if a building includes affordable housing.

“My objective in passing this bill was to provide some form of defense against gentrification of poor and working-class neighborhoods. I believe we have accomplished that,” Mr. Lopez told The Observer. “I did probably 70 or 80 percent of what was in the June bill.”  read more »

A little bit of news on a Brooklyn surrogate’s race that's shaping up as a proxy fight between the county machine against, well, its opponents:

s several called up to tell me, and the Board of Elections confirmed, one of the major candidates in that race, Leo Beitner, who collected about 18,000 signatures, didn’t file them by yesterday’s deadline. So, presumably, he's out.

The thinner field means it’ll be easier for the handful of voters to draw head-to-head comparisons between the major candidates: Shawndya Simpson, who is backed by Vito Lopez and the county organization, and Diane Johnson, the self-identified insurgent candidate.

“This is now a campaign against the county organization’s control of the surrogate’s court,” said Johnson’s campaign aide, Gary Tilzer.

A third candidate also filed, according to the Board of Elections: Theodore Alatsas.

UPDATE: Alatsas is a Republican so he won't be a factor in the Democratic primary.  read more »

Vito Lopez, the head of the State Assembly’s Housing Committee, went into this legislative session breathing fire down the back of a 36-year-old tax incentive for new apartment buildings that he said was gentrifying working-class neighborhoods like his dear old Bushwick.  read more »

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.
 read more »

Millions are at stake, they say, while a Brooklyn Assemblyman says Bloomberg’s changes don’t go far enough.  read more »

Assemblyman Vito Lopez of Brooklyn isn't the only Democratic county leader in the city looking to meet with Senator Barack Obama. Above is a letter that the Bronx Democratic leader, Assemblyman Jose Rivera, sent to Obama inviting him to speak in the Bronx last year.

Obama never showed, but Rivera is still uncommitted in the presidential race, I'm told.

But the invitation indicates an unusual willingness to engage in explicitly political acivities with Hillary Clinton's biggest rival for the Democartic nomination in 2008.

From the letter:  read more »

Breaking ranks with Hillary’s hometown supporters, Vito Lopez will meet with the Senator from Illinois.  read more »

Here are a couple of City Council candidate Wellington Sharpe's mailers, which someone familiar with the campaign told me are going out to about 10,000 households.

Beating up on the Brooklyn Democratic Party was certainly effective when the organization was led by the scandal-plagued Clarence Norman. Exactly how much traction that message gets in the Vito Lopez era is unclear, although it never seems to hurt anyone's appeal to voters when they rail against the machine.

Meanwhile, criticizing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the botched bus program, as things currently stand, is a no-brainer.

UPDATE: Citizens Union just announced a "joint endorsement" of two candidates in Brooklyn's special election: Zenobia McNally and Wellington Sharpe.

-- Azi Paybarah

Vito Lopez's comments yesterday sparked a multi-faceted conversation with one thread wondering who really has the upper hand in Albany now: a governor popular statewide or legislators popular in their districts?

I'm not sure, but one person wrote, anonymously and even-handedly, that both Spitzer and legislators are to blame for the tension right now in Albany. And that doesn't bode well for at least one recent Albany tradition : passing budgets on time.

From Anonymous [at the 4:21 mark]:

"Once again, the NYS Constitution empowers the Legislature to choose the Comptroller under these circumstances. Silver and Bruno never should have agreed to an independent screening panel; that was their mistake. Spitzer's mistake is trying to use this to beat the Legislature into submission. At this rate, the State budget won't be passed until sometime around August or September..."

-- Azi Paybarah

Last night the venerable Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club of Brooklyn held their holiday party at the Hudson River Yacht Club.

The club has long been a behemoth in South Brooklyn politics, with its ability to turn out the vote and connections to elected officials. Judging by the turnout, the club also seems to have recovered from the unwanted attention it received from the 2001 mayor's race.

Among the attendees were Democratic county leader Vito Lopez, Rep. Jerry Nadler, City Comptroller Bill Thompson, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and two candidates for Yvette Clarke's City Council seat: Wellington Sharpe and Harry Schiffman.

And walking in just as the introductions were finished, but before the Electric Slide began, was State Senator Marty Golden, a Republican.

-- Azi Paybarah

Annabel Palma and 18 other City Council members put forth their version of 421-a property tax reform at a press conference on Wednesday morning, as promised. Basically, it's similar to what state Assemblyman (and Brooklyn Democratic chairman) Vito Lopez has pushed for, expanding the so-called exclusion zone to encompass the whole city.

In other words, if you hope to get tax breaks anywhere in the city for residential development, you must devote some portion -- 30 percent, in fact -- to low- or moderate-income housing.

That's a lot harder on developers than is Mayor Bloomberg's version, which would maintain tax breaks for new apartments (up to the first $1 million of value) in most of the boroughs and in Upper Manhattan.

The point this morning was a show of force, of course, and 19 council members should be enough to make the Real Estate Board of New York worry--and to make Speaker Christine Quinn, who will essentially decide the issue, to take notice.

Quinn, who began meeting with the Mayor's staff on 421-a this week, according to a source, hasn't chosen sides, but she was meeting with members of Palma's bloc all morning, even throughout the press conference.

"I think the conversation is going towards a much more aggressive set of reforms," the source said.  read more »

- Matthew Schuerman Update: A 20th council member, Darlene Mealy, a Brooklyn Democrat, signed on this afternoon.

Now that the Democratic State Party Chairman is stepping down, the chatter turns to the Democratic leader with the real juice: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

There seems little doubt that he'll be butting heads with Eliot Spitzer before long, probably on a range of issues.

One hypothetical worth pondering, then, is whether a move to replace Silver is a likely -- or even practical -- option for Spitzer to pursue should things get really bad.

A (very) random sampling of opinion among still-giddy Democratic officials today seemed to indicate that a coup is the farthest thing from their minds.

"I've been in Spitzer's company and Silver's company at private events," Brooklyn Democratic County Leader, Vito Lopez told me just now. "Both expressed support for each other...I believe that they will maintain a good working relationship."

Another Democratic Assemblymember I talked to said that there were no obvious signs yet that Spitzer had any designs on replacing Silver. (Note: There wasn't much warning when governor-elect George Pataki ousted the then-Senate Majority Leader Ralph Marino during the Thanksgiving holiday).

The early test over their relations will likely depend on two issues:

The budget process, which Spitzer promised to make more transparent (specifically member items), while settling and paying for the CFE school funding lawsuit (a few billion dollars), all without raising taxes.

And, of course, governmental reform.

I'm sure the Silver-Spitzer relationship will be just one of the many conversations people have at the important policy conference starting tomorrow in Puerto Rico.

In the meantime -- any predictions?

-- Azi Paybarah

John Sweeney pulls an ad he was shooting.

New York City's traffic problem may finally get solved.

Chris Owens eyes a race for Brooklyn Borough President.

Judicial Reports takes a long, long look at Vito Lopez's finances.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee calls Howard Dean a chicken. I mean a duck.

Evan Bayh campaigns in New Hampshire. Again.

Another page scandal?  read more »

And pictured above is debate participant Hillary Clinton.

-- Azi Paybarah

Last night, I was up at a a panel about blogging panel on 8th street in Park Slope, just a few blocks from Margarita Lopez-Torres, which means one more chance to revisit the story about the that check she was supposed to have received from the Bronx Democratic Party.

So here we go.

The $1,000 contribution from the Bronx Democrats to Lopez-Torres, an insurgent candidate in Brooklyn, is part of the not-so-subtle rivalry between the county leaders in those boroughs: Jose Rivera in the Bronx, Vito Lopez in Brooklyn, and their aides who say there is no rivalry.

Lopez's people swear - and I believe them - that they didn't know anything about the check and that they're not part of any inter-borough rivalry. They point to the fact that the check was never listed as an expense by the Bronx Democrats.

Bronx sources close to Rivera say the truth, which is a little embarrassing, is that the check number and date line up perfectly with other checks written at the time. Which means it wasn't written just to fool some blogger like me but rather, to actually help out a candidate they liked. Bronx sources say a person fundraising for Lopez-Torres contacted Rivera - who they proudly say is cheap - asked for the check.

This, and Brian McLaughlin's contribution scheme shows how difficult it can be to follow the money to the real story sometimes.

-- Azi Paybarah

Happy Friday the 13th!

Vito Lopez holds a Williamsburg Community Truck Stop to protest illegal truck traffic on the corner of Metropolitan and Bushwick Avenues.

Senator Jeffrey Klein and Assemblyman George Latimer call for the passage of legislation that would increase criminal penalties for vandalizing houses of worship at St. Frances De Chantal Church in the Bronx.

Planned Parenthood endorses Andrew Cuomo at their headquarters and then endorses Hillary Clinton at the Glen Oaks Club in Old Westbury.

Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter rings the Closing Bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

The Nassau Council of Chambers of Commerce hosts a Small Business Awards and Legislative Breakfast at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury.

—Nicole Brydson

At the Brooklyn Democratic County dinner earlier this year, Democratic county leader Vito Lopez made two things clear. He's backing Marty Dilan and that he expects the Queens county organization to join him, much the way they teamed up to pick a Speaker for the City Council.

With only 26 senate Democrats, whoever gets 14 of those votes becomes the next minority leader. If all the senators from Brooklyn and Queens got together, that would be 13 votes right there. Theoretically.

Now, the buzz -- nicely documented by Ben and Liz here and here is essentially all about Senator Malcolm Smith being on the verge of declaring victory.

So what happened to the Lopez plan?

"Vito Lopez is 100% behind Marty Dilan," Lopez's spokeswoman, Alison Hirsh just told me. "And Queens and Brooklyn made a commitment to work together one way or the other."

-- Azi Paybarah

A reader passes on word that Malcolm Smith, the Queens state senator who is agressively campaigning to become the next minority leader, scheduled a press conference yesterday with senate members -- but abruptly cancelled it. A sign, perhaps, that Smith doesn't have the votes he thought.

Smith's spokeswoman said no such meeting was planned or scheduled and dismissed the story as a rumor.

Maybe. Maybe not. This race is similar to the speaker's race in the City Council: most if not all the jockeying is behind closed doors. Since only elected officials vote, the public has zero input, but folks in labor, lobbyists and, of course, the county leaders all have their say.

That's where it gets interesting. Brooklyn and Queens teamed up to help pick Christine Quinn as the City Council Speaker. But for senate minority leader, that two-borough formula may not be working together.

At the Brooklyn Democratic County dinner earlier this year, Brookyn County Leader Vito Lopez indicated that his candidate for the job was Martin Dilan. The Executive Secetary of the Queens Organization, Michael Reich, said the two boroughs should work together, which Lopez seemed happy about at the time.

That's all to say allegiances, votes and promises aren't finalized until the votes are cast.

-- Azi Paybarah

Aides to Rudy Giuliani fear he might be swift boated on the issue 9/11 rescue workers health.

Eliot Spitzer and John Faso agree with George Pataki's plan to have some federal and state agencies rent about half the space in the Freedom Tower. But the Port Authority said it would be too traumatic to have its headquarter employees in the building.

Pataki also plans to give a $137,000-a-year job to the daughter of Brooklyn Democratic County Leader Vito Lopez.

Lopez is also expected to help his girlfriend's brother get a judgeship this Friday at a judicial nominating convention.

There are some grumblings that Spitzer isn't helping Democrats move into the majority of the state Senate.

Mayor Bloomberg may do more than grumble if Spitzer insists the city has to share the cost of the court-ordered school funding decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case.

Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont aren't offering detailed plans on Iraq.

Lamont is returning a $100 donation from a socialist group, while Joe Lieberman will get lots of money when Mayor Bloomberg throws him a Nov. 1 fundraiser.

A bus driver will challenge Roger Toussaint for the presidency of the Transport Workers Union.

Challenger Shirley Huntley leads state Senator Ada Smith of Queens by 475 votes with 294 paper ballots to be counted.

And a city lawyer is seeking notes from a meeting of the War Resisters League.

-- Azi Paybarah

In case you missed the latest round between Andrew Cuomo (or, more correctly, his surrogates) and Mark Green...

Here is the letter sent to Green by Brooklyn Democratic leader Vito Lopez and others, politely asking Green to drop out of the AG race because he hired a nanny off the books.

And here's Green's response.

At least they're talking.

-- Azi Paybarah

Question: Why wouldn't the state's biggest labor union, the AFL-CIO, endorse the head of the state's largest Democratic organization in a shoo-in election?

Vito Lopez is running a non-competitive race for re-election to the Assembly against a little-known Republican-Conservative candidate, and his control of the Brooklyn Democratic Organization is only getting stronger.

Yet unlike the vast majority of his Democratic colleagues on the long list of state legislators endorsed by the AFL-CIO, Lopez suffered the unusual indignity of a "no endorsement" from the union in his race.

So why the diss?

A spokesman for the AFL-CIO had no comment. But sources say the opposition stems from NYSUT, the state teacher's union, which is an AFL-CIO affiliate. NYSUT, it seems, doesn't like the bill Lopez sponsored to eliminate the cap on charter schools.

The NYSUT is working on an explanation.  read more »

A district-by-district list of AFL-CIO endorsees is after the jump.

-- Azi Paybarah

The Brooklyn Democratic Party's executive committee voted last night to back Andrew Cuomo.

"It was probably the least contentious endorsement meeting in recent memory for the organization," says an aide to county leader Vito Lopez.

The results:

26 Cuomo 5 Green 1 O'Donnell 1 Maloney

From the office of the Brooklyn Democratic leader:

Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez today successfully underwent a planned aortic valve replacement surgery at a New York Hospital. The Assemblyman is recovering and looks forward to continuing his work both as the State Assemblyman representing the 53rd Assembly District (Brooklyn) and as the Chair of the Kings County Democratic Organization. He and his family thank everyone for their well wishes and concern.

Friday’s hearing on the proposed Industrial Business Zones brought out a lot of Red Hook and Bushwick people objecting to the proposed boundaries in their neighborhoods.

The designations are meant to protect the industrial employers squeezed out by the overheated housing market. But the latest proposal would make it virtually impossible for developers to get variances that would permit new apartments in tasty manufacturing zones along the water and in other parts of booming Brooklyn.

At the end of her testimony on why the North Brooklyn zone should be smaller, Nina Englander, legislative assistant to Assemblyman (and Brooklyn Democratic chief) Vito Lopez, gave the bipartisan panel an unusual justification: “There are literally thousands of registered Democrats in the southern part of this zone.”

Was that supposed to be "thousands of residents"?

- Matthew Schuerman

41 Million Tourists Can’t Be WrongWhen speaking of New York’s status as a world-class city, ther  read more »

41 Million Tourists Can’t Be Wrong    read more »

Here are some of the preliminary agreements over key Council committee assignments -- though one of the two insiders who confirmed them noted that the deals are "not locked in stone."

Quinn ally Robert Jackson will chair the crucial Education Committee, bringing it -- one expects -- much closer to the teachers' union that Eva Moskowitz's committee had been.  read more »

Brooklyn rivals Lew Fidler and Bill de Blasio will get leadership positions, de Blasio's reward for a graceful exit.

Erik Martin Dilan will chair the housing committee, a double win for Brooklyn boss Vito Lopez, as he's giving another chair to one of his members and concentrating his personal power over the city's housing policy.

County Democratic leaders have begun making calls on behalf of Christine Quinn's bid for City Council Speaker, people close to the race tell The Politicker.

"It's pretty much signed, sealed, and delivered," said Leroy Comrie of Queens, who confirmed that his county leader, Tom Manton, is backing Christine Quinn of Manhattan. Meanwhile, Brooklyn leader Vito Lopez has been calling his members to rally around Chris, another Council Member said.

This means a couple of things. For one, Bloomberg's new foil New York is an out lesbian from the Village. (And she's the one City Hall apparently preferred.)

Second, the role of old-style county political organizations remains robust. The bottom line, one close observer told The Politicker, was that "two major players didn't trust de Blasio at all: Manton and Lopez." So, like Gifford Miller, Chris starts off in debt to the machines.

Here's a quick outline of the deals, according to one smart insider: "Queens keeps chairmanships. Katz gets support for Queens BP. [The only deal in relation to Brooklyn so far is] to take care of Vito's 5 votes."

"This is an extension of Millerism," griped Charles Barron, the Brooklyn radical who supported de Blasio (and who added that he still holds out hope for his candidate). "Alliances with the real estate industry and allegiance to Queens. Quinn will not be independent from Queens just like Miller wasn't, and to me that's disgusting."  read more »

Finally, it's worthy of note how rapidly the new, old-school Brooklyn boss, Vito Lopez, has turned himself into a player and revived his borough's moribund organization. For better or for worse.

UPDATE: No sooner did this go up than two insiders with 718 phone numbers called to question the notion that Melinda Katz gets anything out of this. Apparently, she angered some in Queens County by trying to make her own deal with the Bronx. More deal details, meanwhile: Queens keeps its key committee chairs, as does the Bronx; while Brooklyn fills important open seats, notably education. DEPT. OF CREDIT: New York Press's Azi reported the Queens decision yesterday.

The New Brooklyn leader, Vito Lopez, is trying to make his traditionally disunited borough a player in the race for City Council Speaker.

He's calling a meeting of the borough's Council delegation at his Bushwick club later this month, in hopes of convincing the two Brooklyn candidates -- Bill de Blasio and Lew Fidler -- to hash out their differences before the full Council votes.

"We haven't had a speaker from Brooklyn since Tom Cuite," Lopez told The Politicker. "I want to come up with a rule and a manner how we can unite and come out and have the majority."

Brooklyn, he pointed out, is the largest of the boroughs.  read more »

"If we can get 12 or 14 votes, it makes us a principal player. It puts us in a situation where it's almost hard for us to not be a player."

It's not exactly SCOTUS, but the New York City Bar Association is out with its judicial recommendations, and there's another round of bad news for the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

Three of their favored judicial candidates, including Richard Velasquez, a protege of party leader Vito Lopez, got the "not approved" rating.  read more »

Of course, that never seems to stop anyone in Brooklyn.

Know that Brooklyn judicial race that maybe you vaguely feel like you should be following though you're not?

Anyway, the "reform" candidate, Margarita Lopez Torres, has won it by 205 votes, doubling her margin of victory from the first count, Crain's Erik Engquist emails.  read more »

It's something of a blow to the new Brooklyn boss, Vito Lopez, and to the county organization's hopes of controlling a major source of courthouse patronage, its last stronghold.

"There's a party Sunday to pay her campaign debt, which I'd imagine she owes mostly to Marty Connor [her lawyer]," he writes.

Well, the new boss of Brooklyn is Vito Lopez, the big, rumpled Assemblyman from Bushwick who runs the borough's last real machine.

He won a vote of county leaders tonight with 28 votes.

The question many had going into this is why Lopez, a powerful, low-profile player, with a reputation for getting a lot of housing built in his Bushwick district and amassing a lot of personal power in the process, would want to take on a job with little clout and a lot of baggage.

I asked Vito about this last week. Wouldn't it be attaching a target to his back, for the press and the district attorney? I asked.

"Five targets," he grumbled, adding that he doesn't like to back down from fights.

Lopez said he'd like to do for Brooklyn what he did for his district: use political organization to draw government resources. "Presidents used to visit Brooklyn," he said. "I want them to again."

Vito didn't have much to say about judge-making, but if he's to much else done, one suspects, he'll have to surprise his critics with changes to the way Brooklyn picks its judges.  read more »

The Politicker isn't spending enough time at the Board of Elections to know the details of the Brooklyn Democratic Party Organization's attempt to reverse the victory of a reformer for the Surrogate post, amusingly reported today in the Post. If you are, we're curious.

But whoever the next Brooklyn Democratic leader is -- and if it's Vito Lopez, I'll certainly claim you read it here first -- the Surrogate messes are likely to seriously tarnish that person's rise. Because while the challenge to Lopez Torres's election hardly looks good, it pales in comparison to the Assembly's creation of a second Surrogate post, timed in such a way that the party would be able to handpick one of its own for the seat.

Erik Engquist of Crain's, reigning expert on Brooklyn politics, had a funny description of this process in a recent email to Maurice Gumbs (italics added):

"Nobody outside of a few legislative leaders (Pataki, Bruno, and Silver, the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and maybe a few more insiders) knew about this bill until it was wheeled into the Senate anteroom. Connor was there along with Sampson and Carl Andrews. They all expressed surprise, even shock at its appearance. Then Andrews and Sampson proceeded to vote for it when the roll was called afew mintues later.  read more »

"Most senators did not have time to read it (not that they would have anyway). The Assembly had a little more time, but still, there was no chance for any opposition to be mounted. This all happened in an hour or two."

Brooklyn sources tell us that Vito Lopez has locked up the county leader's job in Brooklyn.

A couple of quick pieces of analysis: On one level, this has some meaning for the speaker's race. It's a win for Lew Fidler, a Lopez ally, and a loss for Bill de Blasio.  read more »

On a broader level, the ascendency yet of another part of the borough's machine is a sign of just how weak Brooklyn's reform movement remains inside party circles, their consolation being that the party regularly loses at the polls.

UPDATE: Joe Bova calls in to warn The Politicker not to count chickens. "Far from a done deal," he says.