Is the end near for state Sen. Marty Connor?
For the first time in his 29-year career, serious firepower is being brought to bear in the effort to retire the Brooklyn Heights Democrat.
On Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer came to Brooklyn Heights to endorse Connor’s rival, Daniel Squadron, a former staffer in the senator’s Washington, D.C. office.
“Daniel is one of the smartest, most able people I know,” said Schumer, his protege standing beside him. “He is just the kind of person we need in Albany.”
Earlier in the week, Squadron’s campaign received more good news when Ken Diamondstone, a community board member who gave Connor his first serious primary challenge in more than a decade two years ago, announced that he would not seek the seat again.
Diamondstone had gotten 44 percent of the vote against Connor.
This week, Connor, 63, downplayed Schumer’s endorsement of Squadron, calling his 28-year-old challenger a newcomer who “has been in the community for just two years.”
Squadron, who has also been endorsed by the Working Families Party, is not widely known in the 25th Senate District, which includes Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, the mostly Hasidic portion of Williamsburg, and a piece of Greenpoint.
He worked on Schumer’s staff, a place that nurtured the careers of Councilman David Yassky, Rep. Anthony Weiner, from 2003–5 and co-wrote the senator’s 2007 book, “Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time.”
Squadron defended himself from Connor’s contention that he lacks “real world” experience, saying that he also worked as a consultant to the city Department of Education “on the creation of the empowerment schools program” and was the communications director of an advocacy group that helped pass the Transportation Bond Act in 2005.
He also owned a Manhattan bar called “What Bar” in 2001 that served “the city’s best cheeseburgers,” Squadron said. The bar is now defunct, so the validity of Squadron’s claim could not be verified.
As part of his endorsement on Sunday, Schumer also addressed the “real world” question, though it is unclear if his answer helped.
“There’s no better real world experience than traveling the state, 24-7, as he did when he worked for me,” Schumer said. “He learned the problems of people from Wyoming County to Brooklyn. I’d say that’s the best experience.”
Squadron is five years younger than Connor was when he went to Albany for the first of his 15 terms in 1978. Connor rose through the ranks in Albany, eventually serving as the Senate’s Minority Leader. He eventually lost that post in a coup that installed David Paterson in that position. Paterson is now governor and Connor is fighting for his political life.
On Tuesday (a.k.a. “Tax Day), Squadron’s campaign sent out “a helpful note” to Connor to remind him to pay his taxes this year — a cheeky reference to a $135,521 penalty that the IRS slapped on Connor four years ago. At the time, he attributed the tax woes to a simple error on how to calculate the complicated alternative minimum tax.
But Squadron refused to let the senator off the hook for the 2004 tax error.
“Marty Connor is part of the broken system in Albany,” he said. “Whether it’s voting to kill the commuter tax, to weaken rent laws, or taking huge contributions from lobbyists and corporations, he has shown that he does not have our interests at heart.”
During the Diamondstone race, Connor called his 1999 vote to abolish the commuter tax one of his biggest mistakes.
Unlike Connor, Squadron is not taking any contributions from political action committees or lobbyists. But it hasn’t slowed down his fundraising. Though candidates are not required to open up their war chests to scrutiny until July, Squadron said he had already raised $200,000.
By comparison, Connor had a negative balance in his campaign fund when the last filing period ended in January.
The numbers, the latest endorsements and the Diamondstone dropout led one Democratic insider to conclude that “the end really could be near for Marty.”
“Squadron comes out of the Schumer machine and he’ll work like a dog to do what needs to be done to win,” said the insider, who is backing Connor.
“Marty has the Orthodox Jewish part of the district and the Manhattan part, but there’s been such turnover in the other neighborhoods that no one knows him, even though he’s been in office so long.”
