Sundays in the summer politically means churches, especially for a Nice Jewish Boy. As anyone who lives in or visits minority communities knows, churches are a cultural cornerstone of these neighborhoods. If you want to reach the hearts and minds of voters, you go where they pray.
Read more »June is largely about petition signatures and matching funds...but a candidate's gotta keep plugging into policy too. Or why run?
A great socket turns out to be Andrew Rasiej's and Micah Sifrey's Personal Democracy Forum, a two day conference on the intersection of information technology and politics/government.
Read more »What happens when you combine a) an awful economy for political fund-raising (and everything else), b) a late entry into a campaign, c) a law matching small gifts from City residents by 6-1 and d) my life-long war against big money in politics? The answer is what I've dubbed our SKINNY CAT PARTIES.
Read more »The only way to get on the ballot for municipal office is to get the required number of signatures from your party’s voters, which is 7500 for Public Advocate between June 9 and July 11. (Although you need a multiple of that since some folks sign wrongly thinking that they’re Democrats or do so in a flawed way.)
I've been seeing DC 37's subway ads about wasteful City spending on private contractors and consultants recently and wanted to find out more about it. So I looked at the municipal union’s White Paper, "Massive Waste at a Time of Need," which is available on their website.
I marched yesterday on a sunny Sunday with thousands of others in the Israeli Day Parade celebrating the 61st anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.
The crowds appeared to be larger and happier than in recent memory, perhaps reflecting that there is a new government in Israel, another in America, Israel is not at war...and there's hope for the future. For the fact is that Israel represents both the greatest tragedy and greatest miracle of the past century -- the Holocaust and, against all odds, the creation and survival of a vibrant Jewish homeland.
Busy day all around - from Denny Farrell’s endorsement to an historic Supreme Court appointment to Gay Marriage to Animal Rights and LeBron.
Read more »As an earlier blog entry discussed, campaigns turn negative when candidates realize that they're trailing. The standard M.O. is to coax journalists with apparently tantalizing items since, as one leading gossip columnist once told me, "the page will be filled."
Got a taste of this last Friday when within 90 minutes my office either read the following items or got the following calls:
Deni and I attend a dinner at the Guy Brewer Club at Antun's in Queens. As we move around shaking hands with the very friendly and entirely African-American audience, one woman says to me, "I know why you're running again for your old office." Ok, why? "Because you're green and believe in recycling!"
Bada boom!
Turns out she is Marcia Comrie, who has a doctorate in English and is the wife of councilmember LeRoy Comrie.
Last week my wife Deni, a former protege of the late folksinger Phil Ochs and 60s activist turned mother-professional, begged me to try to get tickets to Pete Seeger's 90th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden.
I sent a fax to the organizers asking to pay for tickets and noting that Deni had been friends with the late Harold Leventhal, the manager of Woody Guthrie and Pete. And that Pete had encouraged me early in my political career, sending a long hand-written endorsement in 1986, complete with his handwritten image of a banjo that was his "signature."
Scored 'em. We went.
