Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori

Showing posts with label Brooklyn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brooklyn. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Today's NY-9 Special Election a Partisan Conundrum


NEW YORK
  • Special Election! So What’s So Special? (By CLYDE HABERMAN, NY Times/City Room) The ballot choices on Tuesday come courtesy of the leaders of the major parties, who could not bear the idea of letting people in that Brooklyn-Queens district choose their candidates in open primaries.
  • Anti-Gay Marriage Forces Converge On NY-9 (By Adam Lisberg, City Hall News) The TV ads and the big endorsements are trying to make today’s special election in the Ninth Congressional District a referendum on President Barack Obama, Republican budget cuts and Israel – but a low-profile campaign among Orthodox Jews aims to make it about same-sex marriage.
  • Dems fear loss in N.Y. House race (By: Alex Isenstadt, Politico) In a room adorned with pictures of Queens County Democratic power players, including Rep. Joe Crowley, the party chairman, and the late Rep. Thomas Manton, a row of desks is stacked with get-out-the-vote materials, organized in manila envelopes by neighborhood — part of what Weprin officials describe as a sophisticated Election Day operation. The campaign says it has 1,000 workers and by Tuesday will have contacted more than 200,000 voters — some more than once. With the assistance of the organized labor-backed Working Families Party, Democrats plan to target around 60,000 labor households. 
  • Pols: Vito’s a geezer freezes (By Aaron Short, The Brooklyn Paper) Good government groups call the practice “objectionable.” “Seniors should not be walled off from the world for political reasons or any other,” said Common Cause’s Susan Lerner. “Seniors want company, they want to feel a part of current events.”

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Special Election in Brooklyn Makes for Family Feud; Independent Redistricting Needed for New York


NEW YORK
  • Brooklyn Special Election Could Upset Politics as Usual (By LIZ ROBBINS, NY Times) With more subplots than a telenovela — family feuds and shifting alliances, a car crash and a gunpoint robbery — the Assembly race, whose three candidates are all Democrats, is less about the candidates than who is behind them.
  • Redistricting (LETTER Queens Tribune) But Queens and the rest of New York have spoken loud and clear on the drawing of district lines. The public wants an independent commission - not the partisan, legislature-controlled LATFOR - to draw state legislative and congressional district boundaries according to fair and objective criteria while allowing for robust public input into the process.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Brooklyn Special Election Brings Out the Pols


NEW YORK
Three Candidates Vie in a Special Special Election (by David King, Gotham Gazette) Towns has her family name. She is the adopted daughter of U.S. Rep. Edolphus Towns, and Brooklyn voters are accustomed to voting for that name. But they won't be able to do it on the Democratic line this year as Rafael Espinal, staffer to City Councilmember Erik Dilan, son of state Sen. Martin Dilan, has the Democratic, Republican and Conservative lines, and is also backed by Brooklyn Democratic leader and power broker Assemblymember Vito Lopez. Because there is no primary for special elections, Towns had to create her own line and so will appear on her own Community First line. Meanwhile community organizer Jesus Gonzalez is running on the Working Families Party line and reportedly has the backing of Rep. Nydia Velasquez, a long-time rival of Vito Lopez.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

NYC Independent Youth Speak on Behalf of Nonpartisan Elections at Brooklyn Charter Revision Hearing 4.20.10



NYC Independent youth speak out on behalf of nonpartisan elections at NYC Charter Revision Commission public hearing at St. Francis Community College, downtown Brooklyn, April 20, 2010. Speakers included Bryan Puertas, Liza Garcia, Francelli Chapman, and Tracy Thomas. Extended dialogue with Commissioners Chairman Matthew Goldstein, Hope Cohen, and Kathryn Patterson. St. Francis College, Brooklyn, April 20, 2010

Dr Rafael Mendez Speaks for Youth in Support of Nonpartisan Elections at Brooklyn Charter Revision Hearing 4/20/10