The race to take on penniless Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny (D–Seagate) is quickly becoming a Republican pile-up.
Two candidates from rival GOP camps have announced their intention to run for the Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights-Coney Island seat, while two more are waiting in the wings — and the incumbent is desperately short on funds.
Ridge fur clothing retailer Stamatis Lilikakis and Bath Beach lawyer Marcus Nussbaum have announced their intentions to take on Brook-Krasny — while Brook-Krasny’s 2012 opponent Tom McCarthy and Timothy Cochrane, who ran unsuccessfully for Brooklyn Republican Party chairman last year, are also looking at jumping in.
Lilikakis is a political newcomer, but sources said he is committed to spending more than $50,000 of his own money to flip the seat — while Brook-Krasny’s campaign is $135 in the red. Nussbaum, on the other hand, became the area’s GOP district leader last year — an unpaid position representing Assembly districts in the county Republican Party machine — by defeating an incumbent heavily backed by State Sen. Marty Golden (R–Bay Ridge).
Golden attempted to replace Kings County Republican Party chairman Craig Eaton with Cochrane in September of last year. Eaton forged an alliance with longtime rival, former Assemblyman Arnaldo Ferraro — founder of the Fiorello LaGuardia Republican Club, to which Nussbaum belongs — to get enough votes to withstand the challenge. But Arnaldo and Eaton reportedly suffered another falling out shortly after the party’s convention. Eaton is close to McCarthy, and is on record as likely to endorse him if he runs.
Golden’s office said the powerful Bay Ridge pol is still undecided — though sources said he could back either Lilikakis or Cochrane.
The district has been Democratic since 1948, thanks largely to the loyally Democratic black vote in Coney — though several sources pointed out that more people show up at the polls in predominantly white Bay Ridge and Dyker, which have historically leaned conservative.
Brook-Krasny’s office said the empty-pocketed pol is planning a pair of high-powered fund-raisers to refill his depleted coffers.
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A former aide to disgraced Assemblywoman Diane Gordon is climbing into the race for her old seat, which represents East New York, Starrett City, and parts of Canarsie.
Community Board 5 member James Tillmon is seeking to replace Councilwoman Inez Barron, who replaced Gordon in 2009 and stepped down this year to join the Council.
Gordon went to prison in 2008 on eight charges of official misconduct and taking bribes, after an architect secretly taped her offering assistance in a bid for a $2 million parcel of city land in exchange for designing her a new home.
Anti-poverty activist and fellow CB5 member Chris Banks — who challenged Barron unsuccessfully in 2011 and 2013 — announced his campaign earlier this year.
The person most heavily favored to win the Assembly contest, Councilwoman Barron’s husband Charles Barron — ex-Councilman, former Black Panther, and a longtime political pariah — has yet to file to run. But Barron assured us he still intends to seek the seat.
Tillmon declined to comment for this article.
