Williamsburg’s feisty District Leader candidates aren’t just launching attacks at each other — now they’re going after surrogates!
On Monday, Democratic state committeeman candidate Warren Cohn criticized his opponent Lincoln Restler for accepting the endorsement of Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Fort Greene) — specifically because she was involved in a widely criticized personal injury lawsuit earlier this year.
“Why would you want the endorsement of an elected official who filed suit for ‘physical and mental damages’ after walking into a parked car?” said Cohn, 22, on his Facebook page.
James did indeed file a lawsuit against an itinerant laborer after walking into his parked truck, but she dropped the suit three weeks later claiming it had become too much of a distraction from her work.
Then again, Cohn’s Facebook comment was clearly becoming a distraction, too; he deleted the post hours after James apparently complained.
The tempest on a Web site is the latest salvo in a fight that is dividing Brooklyn’s Democratic leadership from reform-minded insurgents.
Cohn’s father, Steve Cohn, is the longtime Democratic state committeeman retiring after serving his party for more years than Restler has been alive. Restler has criticized the elder Cohn for being too close to party boss Vito Lopez and for once profiting from a corrupt judicial system that has since been reformed.
For his part, Restler welcomed James’s support heartedly while criticizing Cohn for “not appreciating an independent reformer like Tish James.”
At a Cohn fundraiser at Union Pool in Williamsburg on Monday night, Towns said he was supporting Cohn because “Warren has demonstrated that he can work with everyone.”
“We don’t need someone who can divide us,” added Towns. “We need someone who can bring us together.”
Someone who goes after an opponent’s endorsers, of course.