(THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS EXCLUSIVELY THE OPINION OF THE AUTHOR AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THAT OF THE BROOKLYN YOUNG REPUBLICAN CLUB OR ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION.)

It was the crown jewel of New York City’s Republican Party.  The 13th Congressional District, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, had been held by many notable center-right Republicans, like Guy and Susan Molinari.

In 2008, its last occupant, Vito Fossella, regrettably stepped down after a number of personal issues came to light that would have undoubtedly interfered with his ability to perform his public duties.

And so, the crown jewel was captured by a Democrat, then-City Council Member Michael McMahon, after an embarrassingly botched and superbly lackluster effort by Republicans to retain the seat.

It’s 2010, and the political world in New York from just two years ago is vastly different.  However, the makings of the upcoming September 14th primary election have proven that, regrettably, not much has changed in the bizarro world of Brooklyn and Staten Island Republican politics.

It’s time to give the bums, inside our party as well as in Washington, D.C., a pink slip, and show them that there are Republicans who can do much better.

While I personally have informed people that I had no intention of picking any particular side in this primary election, recent events have compelled me to do so for the good of the Republican Party.

That’s why I am endorsing Mike Grimm for the 13th Congressional District Primary Election on September 14, 2010.  He has clearly distinguished himself as the right person and the best person to represent the Republican platform to voters in the November 2nd General Election.

Mike has a long and renowned career in public service as a decorated war hero of the Persian Gulf Conflict, a former undercover FBI agent fighting organized crime, and, following that, as a lawyer and local entrepreneur.  He has the backing of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator John McCain, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Iraq Veterans for Congress, Combat Veterans for Congress and a variety of grassroots Republican organizations in Staten Island and Brooklyn.

Mike’s positions on the issues ranging from the economy to national security demonstrate a concerted and serious effort to understand what’s wrong and how to fix it.  Plus, his experience serving the public in the Federal government has given him the expertise necessary to figure out how best to strengthen our national security and law enforcement policies.  On the economy, as an entrepreneur, Grimm is a trusted vote for economic policies that will encourage growth for small businesses, job creation and opportunities for young people in this economy without saddling us with higher taxes and more expensive government programs.

Beyond all that, he has been composed, calm, and positive throughout his campaign while remaining strong on the issues.  Meanwhile, he’s been fighting against the same old political tactics from the failed Republican establishment leaders that have, for instance, in my presence, expressed how “nice of a guy” Democratic Congressman Michael McMahon is, even though his first vote in the new Congress would be to keep Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House.

In the interest of transparency, his primary opponent is Michael Allegretti.  Allegretti, whose family founded Bayside Oil in the 1930′s, is a Brooklyn-born-and-raised political operative out of the State Senator Marty Golden Republican camp, having served as a staffer for Golden before working as one of Mayor Bloomberg’s Host Committee organizers for the Republican National Convention in 2004.  After that, he attended the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he specialized in environmental policy.  Then he started working for the Partnership for New York City, a non-profit that focused much of its energies to pass Mayor Bloomberg’s failed congestion pricing tax plan in 2007 and 2008.  He later on went to work for the Climate Group, a environmental lobbyist group, trotting the world in support of a variety of policies designed to fight climate change, like cap and trade.  Allegretti has the backing of the Brooklyn and Staten Island Republican Party establishments.

Allegretti, someone who I have considered a friend (as we have known each other for a couple of years in Republican circles), has chosen to take a very unfortunate and destructive path to win this primary.

In a recent debate on NY1, Allegretti spent more time nitpicking one of Grimm’s military photos over what medals he was properly awarded than articulating how he would work with Republicans in Congress to fight for principled reform in Washington.  When the conversation did turn briefly to policy, they disagree on almost nothing.

He has also released an ad that has shamelessly prostituted his Italian surname in a last-ditch effort to convince the district’s largely Republican Italian-American voters to blindly vote for another “paisan“.  Of course, Grimm, too, is of Italian descent (Castronova is his mother’s maiden name), but his last name does not readily reveal this.  So not only is this ad misleading about his opponent in context, but this disregard for the intellect of Italian American voters, speaking as a paisan myself, is, at best, disrespectful and unbecoming of a serious Republican candidate.

Not only do these tactics call into question his fitness for public office, but it is emblematic of the worst sort of Gerry O’Brien-esque politics of personal destruction that have come to typify the Brooklyn Republican Party under its current administration.  There’s no more room for that in our party.  Period.

Not to mention it will do nothing to help him defeat Democrat Michael McMahon in November.

That’s why voting for Mike Grimm this September 14th will help bring our great New York Republican Party back on track by putting our best foot forward in the 13th District.

Jonathan J. Judge is the President of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club.

Well, no…

One of the most glaring dysfunctions in the operation of the New York State Republican Party that I’ve noticed over the past several years is that we are hardly an organized party.  It’s really sad to see this because in a year where so much could be gained from teamwork, we are still lacking in the fundamentals of a healthy, vibrant and successful organization, whether locally or statewide.  (As a note, this pre-dates current Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox, so it would not be fair to implicate him in this just yet.  However, he does have the power to decide whether the status quo stays or goes.)

Right now, the campaigning wing of the New York State GOP is made up of three major entities: the State Committee (the officially recognized governing body of the Republican Party in New York State), the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee (RACC), and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee (SRCC).

In my experience and that of many other candidates, none of them have anything to do with each other except for the fact that they share the word Republican in their names.

Essentially, the State Committee is the most pro-active in special elections and statewide races.  It otherwise rarely, if ever, provides hands-on operational assistance to make the party more competitive at the county level.

RACC only handles New York State Assembly campaigns.  SRCC only handles New York State Senate campaigns.  Essentially, with rare exception for a very select few of highly targeted races, it is every candidate for himself or herself anyway.

In fact, the reason why we have done so poorly as a party (and it remains to be seen whether we will actually maximize a return on our investments this year as part of the anti-incumbent wave) is that the Empire State GOP has no clothes.

If we were to compare the Republican Party in its current state to a period in history, it would be the Middle Ages.  In the absence of active communications, consistent, unified messaging of our principles, sharing of resources and mutual collaboration and support for fellow party members, the Party of Lincoln in our Great State has devolved into an unwieldy confederation of aging local feudal warlords, feeding their factions with whatever crumbs of patronage and cash are left before the other local Republican faction, or the local Democratic Emperor, wipes them out for good.

The Senate Republicans, for their own personal benefit, have long sold out to the Democrats the hope of regaining anything close to a majority in the State Assembly–or a Republican majority anywhere else but the State Senate.  In a few counties, I have heard that incumbent Senate Republican candidates are not even carrying petitions with any Republican Assembly candidates names on them.  In fact, the incumbent Republican Senators probably can’t even name all of the Assembly Candidates whose names would be sharing the same Republican ballot line in November.

Again, with very rare exception, I haven’t seen Senate Republican candidates and Assembly Republican candidates campaigning together at all.  More importantly, I have hardly–if ever–seen a statewide candidate campaign with and for a Senate or Assembly candidate.

What’s even more disconcerting is the fact that on the State Republican Party’s own website, among a list of statewide candidates, Congressional candidates and State Senate candidates, not a single Republican Assembly candidate is listed. Perhaps they don’t know who they are, as unfortunately is the case for most voters when they get into the booth for the General Election, or they don’t care, or worse yet, both.

The point is that without a clear and coherent statewide message, and the requisite teamwork for attracting as many votes on the Republican line for candidates up and down the ballot line, we are going to miss out on a tremendous opportunity this year to level the playing field of politics in New York and clean up the mess as professional, principled government reformers.

Again, Bill Hammond of the NY Daily News said it best:

But the stunning fact is, with five months to go before Election Day, voters like the GOP even less. Democrats hold solid double-digit leads in every statewide race, and not a single Republican has broken 30%.

Think about that. New York’s Democrats are the ones who brought you former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his hooker habit, a massive pay-to-play scandal in the pension fund under former Controller Alan Hevesi, Gov. Paterson’s floundering, weak-kneed leadership, the month-long shutdown of the state Senate last summer and a seemingly endless parade of legislators in handcuffs.

Beating at least some of these guys should be like shooting fish in a barrel. But the Republicans are losing – and losing badly.

They have no one but themselves to blame. They don’t have a compelling message as a party. They haven’t managed to recruit A-list candidates. And they aren’t raising money.

In short, they’re failing to play the vital role of holding Democrats accountable for their many failures.

Democrats “are not paying a price because there’s no Republican Party,” says Republican consultant Ed Rollins. “If there was an opposition party in this state, if there was competition, they would pay a price.

The best reform we could seek for the party in this state is an imitation of the political dynamics we see nationally, and for the sake of illustration, I’ll use some of the candidates that we have now to demonstrate what I mean.

Rick Lazio, as the designated party candidate for Governor, should be making scheduled appearances with every Republican Assembly and Senate candidate in the state within their own districts, regardless of the anticipated Republican vote potential in that district.  That includes any mailings or literature that gets distributed (at shared costs between the campaigns, of course).  You can, and should, always be more selective with where to campaign right before the election, but not throughout the campaign.  Everyone must count if we are to make any headway.

The Lazio campaign, in consultation with the appropriate local and statewide campaign committees, should be cultivating talking points for all the candidates based on the best Republican solutions for the problems plaguging New York State government.  Most of these candidates are actually running to get elected, so they will do much of the leg work for you if you just try to coordinate and reach out.

Even if there is a Republican primary for a local race, in the absence of a gubernatorial primary, both candidates should profess their support for the message and platform that everyone has a hand in developing.  The central theme of such a primary contest should be, in fact, who is better able to execute that unified platform on behalf of the people of the district.  If there were a gubernatorial primary as well, then each candidate can and should choose who they want to work with if elected to public office, and run with that gubernatorial candidate.  After all, Congressional candidates, while campaigning on local issues of relevance to their particular districts, still frequently mention how they are running to support President ______’s agenda, or Speaker _______’s agenda, or Senate Leader ______’s agenda, especially if they are trying to elect that person to that particular office.  In marginal districts, the President or the de facto leader of the party always goes out to campaign in support of someone who will be supportive of his/her agenda in office.  Lazio should be doing the same thing, and not just for the State Senate.

If we cobbled together a strategy like this, even if we may be too late to make great headway this year, it would lay the foundation for a remarkable transformation by the next state legislature elections in 2012 and gubernatorial election in 2014.

After all, even more impressive for our party is not the prospect of a Governor Rick Lazio or Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, but an Assembly Speaker Brian Kolb.

If we are working together, it won’t just be an idea scribbed on a blog, but a palpable reality within our grasp.

“We pride ourselves on always getting our candidates on the ballot,” boasted a Brooklyn Republican leader in conversation recently.

“Ok, but after all that effort, what about after they get on the ballot?” I asked.

“Oh, c’mon, it’s not like any of these people are going to win anyway!” he exclaimed.

“So what’s the point in getting people on the ballot who you know are just going to lose and when no one really is going to do anything about that?”  That question remained unanswered.

This brief exchange reveals a lot of about the unfortunate mentality of the current Brooklyn Republican Party leadership, and that of many other Republican leaders throughout the state when it comes to petitioning.

In fact, I was told that, at one petitioning cleanup session, after realizing that a last-ditch effort to get a candidate enough signatures to qualify to be on the ballot succeeded, Brooklyn Republican Chairman Craig Eaton exclaimed, “Well, we’ve won the battle to go on to lose the war!”

And so, it perplexes someone like me–who has been out there collecting signatures for Lucretia Regina-Potter, Michael Grimm and Joe DioGuardi–and many others to hear things like this: the highest compliment that Chairman Craig Eaton could pay the late Brooklyn Republican District Leader from the 51st Assembly District, Leonard Silver, at his funeral last year was: “Lenny was always good for hundreds of signatures. I never needed to worry about him getting me signatures to qualify candidates for the ballot.”

Is that all that the life of a good, honorable, loyal, and dedicated Brooklyn Republican activist is worth? A proverbial pat on the back for collecting signatures for candidates they themselves think will lose anyway?

As we begin yet another round of petitioning for State and Federal office, it is the perfect time to evaluate the petitioning process, how deeply flawed it is, and figure out why any party leader would kill themselves to collect signatures for candidates they themselves say will lose.

The petitioning process is one of the most grueling, and least rewarding, experiences in politics, especially for Republicans in Brooklyn.

Most people don’t know what it actually takes to get a candidate on the ballot, and I’m sure if more people did, they would be mortified to the point of insurrection against their elected officials (a threshold we are almost at now for many reasons, I believe). I shall endeavor to write a brief explanation of the process for those unfamiliar with it, but I’m pretty confident if you’re reading this right now, you probably know something about it already.

In order to appear on the ballot as a potential nominee for public office in New York State, you must collect a number of signatures that is equal to 5% of the registered voters in your party in the political unit (Assembly District, City of New York for Mayor, etc.), or a certain set number, whichever is less, in order to qualify for appearing on the Primary Election ballot. Whoever wins the primary automatically gets to appear on the General Election ballot in November. If you run as a independent, you have to collect a number of signatures that equal 5%, or a certain set number, whichever is less, of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

Essentially, outside of local village elections, we’re talking about needing hundreds to thousands of signatures for races as low-level as City Council or State Assembly.

But here’s the kicker: these numbers are assuming that every signature that you collect is the essence of perfection: the person is a registered voter of your party, at the address stated at the Board of Elections, no one uses a first initial, no one uses a different but perfectly acceptable name for the street on which they live, no woman writes only part of her hyphenated last name, you personally witnessed the signature, the person personally identified themselves as the exact same person who is the voter on file at the Board of Elections, and so forth.  Everything must be perfect, and as we know, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Then the war of objections, lawyers, courtrooms, party bosses, and their handpicked patronage hacks, who make decisions at the Board of Elections, all combine to determine whether a candidate, otherwise qualified to run, can survive the government-sponsored capture of ballot access by political bosses (who, by the way, have never really appreciated losing full control over the composition of the ballot in the reforms passed in the late 19th century).

Moreover, as many, many candidates and campaign aides can attest, it is actually easier to stay on the ballot by FORGING the signatures of voters accompanied by perfect replication of all the necessary information (because of the punitive legal fees and court procedures to prove fraud) than it is to actually and honestly collect the signatures from the voters directly!  This is completely corrupt, undemocratic and un-American!

Even with this knowledge, along with thousands of other people throughout New York State, I, too, was the victim of this deeply flawed and arcane ballot access process in my City Council race that provided political appointees in the courts and the Board of Elections tremendous discretion over the standing of perfectly valid signatures on my petitions, simply because it was a priority for the political bosses to reduce the number of candidates on the ballot in favor of the bosses’ preferred candidates.

Now that I’ve told you how much control (albeit not absolute control) the party bosses have over the ballot, now we must answer why Republicans, using their institutional advantages to the fullest extent possible, knowingly place on the ballot candidates in whom they have zero confidence.

How many dollars did it take for Brooklyn Republicans to trade up the Republican label to far-from-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg?  $125,000.

What famous Queens Republican Party operative, who is notorious for his ubiquitous presence at the NYC Board of Elections, and frequent moonlighting as a petitioning organizer, was recently indicted by the Manhattan D.A.’s office for allegedly stealing $1.1 million from the Bloomberg 2009 campaign?  John F. Haggerty, Jr.

Get it yet?  Ballot access is the only marketable service that the Brooklyn Republican Party has left (as well as many counties in the rest of New York).  We have only one Republican elected official left, with now significantly limited influence in the minority of the State Senate.  We are on the outs as a party statewide–even after all that has transpired in Albany with a Democratic monopoly, offering negligible policy influence and holding mere crumbs of political patronage to sustain a Democratic-style machine.

Besides all the deals with Democrats to protect incumbent Republicans in exchange for weak challengers or no challenger at all for vulnerable Democrats, ballot access is all they have left.  If they want to keep an independent Republican like Lucretia Regina-Potter, Michael Grimm or Joe DioGuardi off the ballot to avoid messing up one of their pre-arranged deals with Democrats, they certainly have the capability to try (although my prediction is that they will fail miserably in all of the above instances this year).

If they want some wealthy person with an ambition to run for office to donate big bucks so their friends and family can enjoy the spoils of campaign jobs and cushy political consulting gigs, they have to be able to guarantee access to the ballot.   After that is accomplished, you cannot even begin quantify how quickly the party’s role in the overwhelming majority of campaigns comes to a screeching halt–except for the paying parts, that is.

I will be endeavoring to explore some potential reforms and replacements for this failed and flawed system, some of which I hope catch steam and may even see the light of day in a committee hearing in the State Legislature (I promise I won’t hold my breath).

But, the moral of the story is this: if you see some poor soul knocking at your door, or buzzing your apartment bell in the lobby asking for a signature for a Republican petition, check first to see if it is one of the independent grassroots Republicans running to fix our party and our government, and then do the poor soul a favor and give him or her your signature.  Your signature just might be the one that makes all the difference in whose name gets on the ballot and whether that person can go on to defeat a lousy Albany or Washington incumbent this fall.

Grimm, Regina-Potter, and DioGuardi

In the past two weeks, we have seen in reality that there are two very different Brooklyn Republican Parties.

This past Monday, I went to a special meeting of the Fiorello LaGuardia Republican Club in Bensonhurst.  In a standing room only crowd, I got to hear from Lucretia Regina-Potter, a very good friend of mine and a staunch reformer of the Brooklyn Republican Party, who is running for State Assembly.  Also present was Michael Grimm, 13th Congressional District candidate, and Joe DioGuardi, who is running for U.S. Senate against Gillibrand.  All three are petitioning their way on the ballot as the independent Republican candidates (read: not endorsed by the party).

People coming off the train were so intrigued by the size of the gathering that they decided to stop in to see what was going on. When Mike Grimm arrived, he had to fight his way through the crowd just to get to the front!

Conversely, two fellow Republicans in the 44th Assembly District, Christina and John Bennett, went to attend a meeting of the permanently-defunct-but-resurrected-temporarily-when-convenient Theodore Roosevelt Republican Club in late May.

(It is important to know that the Theodore Roosevelt Club is the brainchild of political consultant, Gerry O’Brien, who picks up a hefty $1,800 paycheck from State Senator Marty Golden each month.  He is also behind some atrocious behavior that has stifled Republican Party growth in the 44th Assembly District for decades, especially as he recently performed $10,000 worth of paid work for incumbent Democratic 44th AD Assemblyman Jim Brennan (but that’s a story for another day).  Never forget: paid consultants only do what they do in order to profit and accrue power to help them practice their craft better.)

However, much to even my surprise, an off-duty police officer, P.O. O’Malley, actually blocked these two people from entering, even though they are duly elected County Committee Members of the area in which the meeting was held!  They were told the meeting was invitation only as she flashed her NYPD badge, despite the club’s own literature that proclaims an open invitation to all.

This behavior is yet another reason for the larger rift and atrophy (decay?) of the Brooklyn Republican Party, and indicative of why the current leaders can’t win an election to save their lives, and why the reformers haven’t been able to, either.

On the one hand, you have a club that meets in an open storefront, surrounded with large panes of glass that allow all the day’s sunshine to come through on its leaders, candidates and participants, one that welcomes strangers off the street to hear the message of the Republican Party’s principles.  Such a club is despised and ever-undermined at every turn by the party.

On the other hand, you have a club that meets once in Lord knows how many years, in a Knights of Columbus hall with no windows for the public to see through, and utilizes an off-duty NYPD officer to deliberately keep people out.  Worse yet, the meeting was merely a opportunity for the exclusive invitees (mostly poll workers from what I know) to witness the self-glorification of the current leaders of the failed Brooklyn Republican establishment: Chairman Craig Eaton, District Leader Marty Cottingham, and State Senator Marty Golden’s Chief of Staff and Kings County Conservative Party Chairman Jerry Kassar (anyone wonder why a Conservative Party Chairman is talking at a Republican Club meeting?).

You may not be very surprised to hear such things occur in a closed-off political club meeting, but the offense comes from the fact that these individuals have allowed Brooklyn Democrats to co-opt the Republican Party for certain perks (something which will also be discussed further in a later post).

Ultimately, and sadly, there is a very clear trend between these two factions of the party that does not bode well for Republicans and reformers unless we start to act.

What we see from the Theodore Roosevelt Republican Club and the Fiorello LaGuardia Republican Club is replicated throughout the borough in Republican circles.  The party leadership à la TR Club is exclusive, by invitation only and no dissent is permitted or the cops will show you the door.

That’s why the party went to great lengths to remove Yvette Velázquez Bennett as 44th AD District Leader–despite her profound loyalty to its leadership–because she dared to demonstrate independent and principled thought (when, for instance, she voted against giving Mayor Michael Bloomberg the Republican Party line in exchange for a $125,000 donation to the party, especially when the Mayor and the party have infrequently agreed on policy).

That’s why the party is going to even greater lengths to annihilate the Republican infrastructure of the 49th Assembly District because it dares to think on principle and act independently–and has the resources to make it happen.  They would much rather enjoy the fruits of their cozy deals with local Democrats, including 49th AD Assemblyman Peter Abbate, to protect Marty Golden’s State Senate seat.

That’s why the party’s leaders have a pathological fear of allowing any intelligent, motivated and conscientious Young Republicans play any kind of leadership role in Republican politics.  Not only do they worry deeply that they are meeting their replacements, but that their own undermining of the party has weakened themselves to the point that the replacement may be happening sooner than they would like.

And sadly, most of the remainder of the Republican Party leadership, even those who do see how bad things have gotten, concurrently hold Board of Election jobs that are significantly controlled by the party bosses.  That means: do as leader says, or lose your job, capisce?

This is not the state in which the great and proud Brooklyn Republican Party should be.  We can do better and we ought to strive to make it so.  Luckily, we have the Fiorello LaGuardia Republican Club, and the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, and many other grassroots Republican activists, for instance, which have prided themselves on an open-door policy.  Every Republican is welcome and actually welcomed (not when it is only convenient to permit).  Whatever we do, we make perfectly public.  The YRs have even begun operating meetings online so not only can more people be a part of the experience, but every single word that is said is recorded for future public consumption and scrutiny.

For those of us 112,000 Republicans out there in Brooklyn, we need you to care locally as much as you do nationally.  We need you to help sign and collect the petitions of the candidates who are not only best equipped to make the case for Republicanism at the polls in November, but also those who are going to do the most to reform and propel the nearly-defunct Brooklyn Republican Party towards brighter and more prosperous days.

The reformers are here to stay.  If you’re game, email me at JJJudge@gmail.com or call me at 718-360-9583 and let’s show Republicans, Democrats and independents what real, honest change in the right direction looks like.