Honesty, community dedication and postive campaigning won tonight over sleazy, lying, negative campaigning in Brooklyn's 1st Civil Court Race. Progresses won over conservatives.

I wish this could be simply a good celebration over a race well fought on both sides. But I cannot ignore the fact that Roger Adler ran one of the nastiest and worst campaigns I have ever seen and his choice to cynically smear a truely good gentleman is unforgivable. And many will not forget what he and his backers did when they chose to use Karl Rove's strategy to win. Fortunately, their attempt to win by lying lost. May McCain's similar approach also lose.

My friend, Devin Cohen, is genuinely an honest, nice guy. Every single person I have met who knows him agrees he will be an excellent judge. I have never seen anyone so slow to anger, so willing to listen to both sides of an issue and so fair in his judgements. Yet in the past months he was smeared by one of the sleaziest campaigns I had ever seen. My first impression of Roger Adler was that he was perfectly qualified but arrogant. But as the months passed all I saw was blatant lies. That culminated tonight as Adler himself, a candidate for a judicial seat, blatantly lied about Devin in public, claiming Devin was a tax cheat and failed to pay his taxes. Adler knew full well those were lies. Devin has always paid, in fact overpaid, his taxes and Adler knew that, but lied about it. Adler's election day palm card was, according to Josh Skaller, a past president of Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, the ONLY negative palm card he had ever seen. Most palm cards try to convince you to vote for a candidate. Adler's, like all his lit, said nothing positive about himself, only more lies about Devin. Adler himself never ahd anything good to say about himself.

But it gets worse. One of Adler's campaign workers refused to comply with the electioneering rules and campaigned too close to the polls. He refused to leave so was arrested by the cops. I have NEVER heard of this. Cops never care that much on election day...as long as you keep to the legal boundaries of where to campaign. Adler's paid worker couldn't even do that!

Devin Cohen never went negative. Every piece of literature he sent out advocated for himself, and never criticized Adler. He made his case and mostly he made it face to face with the voters. And he won.

Behind Adler were two sleaze bags: Michael Tobman and Vito Lopez. Their smear campaign was among the nastiest I have ever seen outside of the Republican Party. Their lies were among the worst I have seen outside of the Republican Party. And their smear campaign cost more than twice as much as Devin's honest, positive campaign. And the sleazy three, Adler, Tobman and Lopez, failed. In fact, this is another Brooklyn failure for Lopez. He lost BOTH surrogate court races. And he now lost this one. Vito: you played this one quietly, but I know for a fact you were pulling strings behind the scenes, and now Tobman is working closer with you, isn't he?

Adler, Tobman and Lopez could have run a great campaign and made a positive case for Adler. I would have still thought Devin was the better candidate, but it would have been a harder race to win. Instead Adler, Tobman and Lopez went the Karl Rove route and lied blatantly. And lost.

Many people will remember this race. And I will write in far, far more detail about this in the near future.

For the other races I endorsed in, congratulations to Daniel Squadron (I will talk more about my choices in that race later) and Mike McMahon. And to Shelly Silver, you are still on notice. Incumbents are being challenged now and you are a target.

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