Republican Bob Capano is salivating over Vinny Gentile’s Bay Ridge Council seat.
Democrat Gentile is term-limited and the election to fill his shoes isn’t until November 2017, but law professor and former congressional staffer Capano is already hard at work hammering Brooklyn Dems — particularly potential Council candidate and Arab American Association director Linda Sarsour — as blind acolytes to Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
“Democrats in Brooklyn are silent,” he said. “It’s like they’re putting their allegiance to the speaker over what’s best for communities.”
Capano won’t commit to a run just yet — he says he has to talk to his family and friends — but that hasn’t stopped him from stumping in the pages of several local papers and to just about anybody who will listen.
Capano — who ran and lost against Gentile in 2009 — claims more than 50 percent of Brooklynites feel that their quality of life is getting worse and that they are less safe under the current administration.
The law-and-order lawyer blasted the Council over recent raises and said the men and women in blue deserve more green first.
“Whatever it was, the Council said no, we think we deserve more, and gave themselves even more, which is totally ludicrous,” said Capano. “But our police officers don’t get a raise.”
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Two right-wing political heavyweights will duke it out in court on April 6 over who should control the county’s Republican committee.
Former Bensonhurst assemblyman Arnaldo Ferraro and Bay Ridge lawyer Ted Ghorra will make their cases before Kings County judge Edgar Walker for why each deserves to lead the borough’s big-tent party.
Ghorra claims former chairman Craig Eaton stole the Sept. 30 election for his anointed successor Ferraro by discounting votes for Ghorra. State Sen. Martin Golden (R–Bay Ridge), who backed Ghorra and has been at odds with Eaton for years, is confident Walker will side with him.
“I believe the judge has ruled to count the [votes],” Golden said. “Good news for Ted Ghorra. But nothing’s good until it’s final, we’re just glad the judge has seen there’s no good reason to have these proxies omitted.”
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Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D–Williamsburg) blasted Brooklyn-native Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vermont) for his record on immigration reform — and claimed he is disconnected from the Latino community. The longtime legislator is urging Latinos to pick former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the upcoming April 19 Democratic primary, claiming Sanders has “consistently been on the wrong side” of immigration reform.
“I have observed him in the House and Senate, and the truth is, he was absent for most of the critical immigration debates,” Velazquez said in an April 4 phone conference. “When he did show up, his record is troubling.”
Velazquez cited Sanders’s six votes against Ted Kennedy’s 2007 immigration reform bill, which would have created a pathway for citizenship to 12 million people living in the U.S. illegally.
Sanders claims he fought the bill to protect American labor unions from a glut of low-wage immigrant workers. Still, he is enjoying support from young Latinos, but Velazquez says his pandering is too late.
“The question Latinos have to ask is ‘Where was Senator Sanders when we needed him the most?” she said. “He may be changing his position, but for us, we have long memories that help us recognize who we can count and who will let us down.”
