Voters Put New Voting Machines to Test in Primary Election

Assemblyman Mike Miller casts his ballot at P.S. 91 in Glendale

By Eric Yun

Voters had to deal with new machines, but it didn’t stop them from heading out and voting on primary day.

Many voters experienced problems with the new machines, and Mayor Bloomberg publicly criticized the city Board of Elections for the mishaps. The BOE said they would look into the problems and attempt to fix the problems before November’s general elections. In addition, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said hearings on the issues will be held in the coming weeks.

State Senator Joe Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) who is the chair of the elections committee released a statement addressing the issues. “I intend to discuss with the Board of Elections the issues and concerns expressed to me by voters and poll workers regarding the new voting machines used on Primary Day,” he said. “Now we must find practical solutions so that our voters have an efficient and reliable General Election in November."

In our local races, Assemblyman Mike Miller (D-Woodhaven) faced a primary battle against Community Education Council 24 President Nick Comaianni in District 38, which includes portions of Woodhaven, Glendale, Ozone Park Ridgewood, Maspeth and Middle Village. Miller received 76 percent of the vote on his way to victory. Miller will now face Republican Donna Marie Caltabiano in November’s general election.

In central Queens, lawyer Joe Fox challenged incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi in District 28, which encompasses Forest Hills, Rego Park, Middle Village and Glendale. Hevesi received 60 percent of the vote in his victory. Republican Alex Powietrzynski will now challenge Hevesi in November’s general election.

“I am humbled by the outcome of last night’s primary elections, and I thank the voters of my district for once again honoring me with their support,” said Hevesi. “ In advance of November’s General Election, I will, as always, be talking to the residents of the 28th Assembly District about how we can work together to address the issues that impact the lives of our families and our community.”

For the Senate’s 10th District, Democrat Lynn Nunes challenged Senator Shirley Huntley (D-Jamaica). Nunes’ campaign picked up strong endorsements from the New York Daily News and Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), but it wasn’t enough to defeat the incumbent Huntley, who received 73 percent of the votes.

"I am grateful for all my supporters who came out and voted to re-elect me to continue the work I began in the Senate,” Huntley said. “We have proven that there is strength in numbers, and our strength was solidified by a grassroots campaign rooted in integrity, backed by concrete work experience and driven by results.”

In Senate District 16, which covers Flushing, Bay Terrace, Forest Hills and Rego Park, in- cumbent Senator Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Flush- ing) defeated two primary challengers—Isaac Sasson, who received 34 percent of the votes and John Messer, received 20 percent of the vote. Neither tallie were enough to unseat Stavisky, who received 45 percent of the vote.

In the state’s major primaries, Republican Carl Paladino defeated Rick Lazio to become the Republican candidate for governor. Paladino will now face former Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in November’s general election.

Democrats lined up to run for Cuomo’s former position. A five-way battle ensued with State Senator Eric Schneiderman and Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice taking the lead. Sean Coffey, Richard Brodsky and Eric Dinallo also vied for the spot.

Schneiderman received 34 percent of the vote to narrowly defeated Rice’s 31 percent. Schneiderman will face Republican Daniel Donovan of Staten Island in November’s general election.

Nationally, Democrat U.S Senator Kirsten Gillibrand defeated Gail Goode and will face Joseph DioGuardi who defeated David Malpass and Bruce Blakeman. In the other U.S Senate race, Republican Jay Townsend defeated Gary Berntsen to face incumbent Democrat Senator Charles Schumer.

Democratic Primaries for Local Assembly and Senate Seats

Fox Challenging Hevesi; Nunes Challenging Huntley

By Eric Yun

Two interesting Democratic Party primaries on September 14 involve the 28th Assembly District and the 10th Senate District. In the 28th Assembly District, lawyer Joe Fox is challenging incumbent Andrew Hevesi, and in the 10th Senate District, Lynn Nunes is challenging incumbent Shirley Huntley.

Fox is counting on the “general voter dissatisfaction with the state of government,” and the current “dysfunction and embarrassments” in the political system. He believes Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) is part of the problem and has shown to be the “least inactive and the least influential legislature” in Albany.

He would work to enact real ethical reform into Albany and help solve the quality of life issues the plague his neighborhood. “I will actually solicit and encourage meetings with constituent groups,” Fox said,and help the communities that are being “underserved by the incumbent.”

Hevesi meanwhile believes he has done a good job helping the community. He has introduced legislation to try to fight the “garbage train” issue and has helped schools, parks and libraries, according to spokesman Doug Forand.

Hevesi also realizes that there is a strong anti-incumbent feeling in New York. However, Citizens Union, a non-partisan organization that publishes Gotham Gazette, named Hevesi as one of only three “preferred” incumbent Assembly Members facing a primary battle.

In the 10th Senate District, newcomer Lynn Nunes is mounting a strong challenge to Huntley (D-Jamaica), Nunes is no stranger to “long-shot” campaigns after coming within just four votes of unseating the late Thomas White for the City Council’s 28th District last year.

Many of Nunes’s biggest backers support his stance on gay marriage. Huntley was one of several Democrats who voted against the same-sex marriage bill last December. Huntley’s “no” vote and Nunes’s support of same sex marriage has earned him endorsements from gay rights groups across the city and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D- Manhattan).

Huntley countered that she voted against same-sex marriage because her constituents said they did not support it, according to the Gotham Gazette.

Addabbo Explains Rationale Behind Gay Marriage Vote

Freshman Senator Broke from Party in Rejecting Bill

By Conor Greene

In the wake of the state Senate’s rejection of the marriage equality bill, several of the borough’s representatives have come under fire for voting against the law, which would have provided gay and lesbian residents the right to marry.

While several of the Queens’ Democratic delegation on the state Senate surprised observers with their no votes, one in particular – freshman Senator Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) has come under especially heavy criticism. Addabbo was elected to the Senate last year to replace longtime Republican Serf Maltese, leaving some of the groups and people who worked to elect the Democrat feeling let down when he didn’t support the law.

At the same time, much of Addabbo’s district, which stretches from Woodside south to Howard Beach, is made up of socially conservative voters in neighborhoods such as Glendale and Middle Village who oppose gay marriage. As a result, Addabbo was left in a tough spot as he is now being viewed as a major reason the bill was defeated 32 to 24.

Throughout the weeks of debate leading up to the vote, Addabbo refused to reveal how he personally stands on the issue. Instead, he says that more than 400 constituents contacted his office in the weeks leading up to the vote, on top of the many more he spoke to each day. Addabbo says about three quarters of the constituents he heard from on the issue were against allowing gay marriage. “This decision of mine was totally constituent driven,” continued Addabbo.

“When I took the oath of office, it was to represent the opinions of the people, and it was very clear that… the residents who I represent in Albany are against marriage equality.” He says not divulging his personal stance allowed him to receive an accurate and clear picture of his constituents’ views, instead of just having residents on one side of the debate contact him.

During the interview, Addabbo repeatedly stressed that the role of an elected official is to get the community’s consensus on an issue. “I keep saying that my personal feeling is my personal feeling, and it’s only one opinion, so I take my opinion out of it and go with the views of many,” he said. “When you have issues along the lines of civil rights, religion or other personal beliefs people have, certainly their voices should be heard… When it came time for a vote, my people had been clear.”

While Addabbo called this “one of the hardest” votes he has been part of during his career in politics, he noted that, unlike budget and tax decisions, it only impacts a small portion of the community. “I knew at some point we would have to take up this issue, and there still will be hard issues in the future and I’ll try to get the consensus of my people again in the future,” he said.

Now that a vote has finally been cast on this emotional subject, Addabbo stressed the importance of moving ahead with other state business. “I think the idea here is, we did this issue - which was ery important to many - but we have very serious issues that lie ahead that affect everyone” including budget, education, transportation and public services, he said. “We definitely need to move forward with issues that affect the daily lives of constituents.”

Looking ahead at his own political future, and the possibility that he alienated portions of the Democratic and liberal base that helped get him elected, Addabbo maintained that he never made promises to groups regarding gay marriage.

“One thing I’ve been consistent with was that I kept an open mind and never committed myself to a yes or no,” he said. “I am grateful to all those who supported me, including members of the gay community, but they did that as everyone did, not knowing if I was a committed yes.”

Addabbo said he couldn’t base his decision on the possibility of facing a Democratic primary next year, even though his vote has made that much more likely. “My philosophy is to do my work to the best of my ability, and I put that body of work, both legislation and constituent service-wise, on the lien every other year, and it’s up to the people to judge me I hope not on one issue, but on a whole bunch of issues I put work into.”

He said he “can’t be hung up” on the prospect of facing a party primary challenge on the basis of one vote. “If there is a primary, I’ll put my record up against my opponent, and if there is a general, I’ll put my record up against that opponent.”

Addabbo did seek to debunk one theory that has been presented since the vote: that his vote, which came early in the roll call due to his last name, set off a chain reaction that led other Democrats to also reject the bill. “We knew going into the chamber that there were not enough votes, so the myth that I caused a chain reaction didn’t happen,” he said. “If you do the math, eight other Democrats were solid with their no votes. This issue really wasn’t as cultivated as much as it should have been, and we didn’t have enough votes going in.”

The other Queens Democrats voting against the bill were George Onorato (Astoria), Hiram Monseratte (East Elmhurst) and Shirley Huntley ( Jamaica), while borough Democrats Toby Ann Stavisky (Flushing) and Malcolm Smith (St. Albans) supported the measure. Frank Padavan (Bellerose) joined every one of his Republican colleagues in voting against the bill and not participating in the discussion leading up to the roll call.

Politics Unusual: Save and Spend, Serf; Candidates Speak at Un-Debate

By Anthe N. Syde

Well there’s still plenty of mail washing up “In the Serf”. Oddly enough all the pieces keep trying to pound the idea of how much money Serf Maltese is saving us in tax dollars.

Truth be told, we’re getting a little bored with these glossy reiterations, so we decided to send a little bit of information down the pipeline about another subject we thought you might find interesting...How Much Money Is Serf Costing Us? Aha! Thought that might catch your eye.

You know the Internet is an amazing place, and for as much nonsense as there is floating around in cyberspace, for the more discerning consumer, there is plenty of real information that is available to those who choose to spend their time looking for tasty little tidbits... SeeThroughNY.net is a delightful little web portal that allows visitors to search government payrolls, contracts, expenditures, and link to additional information and supporting material on other websites.

In other words you can visit this site to find out who, what, where and when your elected officials are spending your hard earned taxpayer dollars on.

For those of you who would rather rely on us for digging up all the news the candidates wish we didn’t find out about and wouldn’t print, here goes the low down on the “stayed too long senator”, Serf Maltese.

As a point of information, Queens has seven Senators. Five are Democrats and two are Republicans. During the time period covered by the data we found, the five Democrats were Shirley Huntley, George Onorato, John Sabini, Malcolm Smith, and Toby Stavisky. The two Republicans were Serf Maltese and Frank Padavan.

The data shows the tab to staff the offices of the two Republican senators as a hefty
$1,809,710 from October 06 - September 07. By the way, that's without the senator's salaries included. Maltese's office cost us a whopping $933,661.64. Comparatively, the total cost to run the offices of the five Queens Democrats also without their salaries included, was $1,532,075.06. Maltese and Padavan cost us over a quarter-of- a-million more than the five Democrats put together.

Delving into a little perspective, running those two Queens Republican Senate offices also cost more than it did to run five of the Queens Assembly offices, all occupied by Democrats, that cover parts of the Maltese Senate District. Added together, minus
their salaries, it cost us $1,425,523 to run the offices of Assemblymembers Pheffer, Hevesi, Markey, Nolan, and Seminerio. (Of course we didn’t figure the extra $500,000 Tony Seminerio allegedly picked up all on his own).

We were having so much fun that we just couldn’t stop without telling you that Maltese had 36 staff members during the time period covered by this data. Padavan had 27. That's a total of 63 employees who cost us in total, $1,625.555.93. Between them, the five Dem Senators had 11 more employees, but the tab was about half-a-million less. And those five Assemblymembers you might ask... well they cost us a total of $1,228,387 for the 58 employees they had between them.

The point of this you might be wondering...well let’s just say we think that when Sen. Maltese makes it such a big issue to point out how much money he’s supposedly saving us in tax dollars, it may be sort of relevant if he tells us where all those savings are going. From the looks of the figures above it’s easy for us to put our finger on exactly where all the savings went...to his offices.

Really now – when it comes to our money, who should we be calling reckless?

As for the Great Debate for the Senate, it looks like the Howard Beach Civic Forum set up a night of T-Ball for the prospective candidates, where everyone goes home a winner. The crowd was clearly there to state that Joe Addabbo is the “hometown boy of Howard Beach”, however we were a little disappointed to see that once again, Joe took the high road instead of using the issues to show what a “dawg” his opponent truly is.

From where we sit, a debate is supposed to serve up the positions of candidates by having them present their views and also to argue points with their opponents. We were disappointed to see that the pseudo debate hosted by the Civic Fourm did not offer any opportunity for the candidates to oppose each other verbally. We would have liked the chance to see both of these guys face off.

That having been said, perhaps groups sponsoring so-called debates in the future will allow the type of candidate interaction that really affords the audience a chance to see candidates faced with speaking “on-the-spot”.

We’d like to take this opportunity to tell the councilman, who “would be senator”, that it’s ok to point out your opponent’s short comings especially when they are rooted in undeniable fact. Come on Joe, it’s not fair that we have to be the ones to tell the people what a no-show, empty suit you’re running against.

For example, one of his responses at the debate had Serf bragging about his office having the most staff members of any office. We showed you the evidence of how much that staff costs us a few paragraphs ago, but what we didn’t show you was how much more that staff works for our community for all that extra money.

Guess what. We didn’t tell you about it because it doesn’t exist. In fact if we were looking for data to support what Serf’s staff actually does for all that money, we’d be, in the very least, extremely hard pressed.

We hope that no one in the debate audience fell for the story of how Serf’s office settled the dead bunker problem in Shellbank Basin because his version of what happened was, according to those in the know, a real “Fish Tale.”

The bottom line here is that we’re truly very disappointed in a 19-year veteran of the State Senate having resorted to so using so many underhanded tactics and of course the manipulated distortion of the truth to get a leg up in this election. From where we sit, anyone with this long in office should have enough of their own accomplishments to talk about, without having to dish the dirt on their opponent as the sole platform for campaigning.

Maybe the thread of the presidential campaign really rings true here in the 15th Senate District. Change is coming. Thank heavens.