I met Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter today, and she is the real thing.

She is challenging Pedro Espada in the Democratic primary. Far from being the kind of eager-but-inexperienced progressive, she has a long record of success and achievement battling for the kind of people who live in the district. A couple of examples: She led the charge to throw out the corrupt Board of Directors of her coop and is now the President of that Board. She also fought the MTA, who wanted to place an express bus stop down a steep hill from a heavily used street corner -- and won.

More recently, she took on developer Related Companies (and Mayor Bloomberg!), who wanted to turn the Kingsbridge Armory into a retail mall providing only low-wage, no-benefit jobs. She has better plans, including providing space for desperately needed community services.

She has also exposed the practice in NYC's public schools of creating "phantom classrooms" in order to conceal overcrowding, and fought for proper (and legally required) services for special-needs children.

In short, this is someone not to be trifled with!

She has hired Lisa Hernandez Gioia as her fundraiser (and there is nobody better in NYC), and BerlinRosen as her campaign consultant (they have close ties with WFP). Her background, work, and community organizing experience is amazing, her campaign is serious (her campaign manager is a young fellow with an encyclopedic knowledge of facts, issues, history -- you name it), and her dedication to winning is top flight.

The Parks Dept. estimates that 2,500 people showed up for the marriage equality rally in Astoria on Sunday! There is a growing movement to get this done without any more delays (we're trailing Maine and Iowa).

There are only a few weeks left in the legislative session. Several senators in NYC are not (yet) on board -- we need their constituents to call their offices in Albany to urge them to support the marriage equality bill.

Democratic Senators are:
Huntley (581-455-3531)
Kruger (Carl, that is) (581-455-2460)
Onorato (581-455-3486)
(Note: Ruben Diaz is considered a lost cause on this issue.)

and Repubican Senators are:
Golden (581-455-2730)
Lanza (581-455-3215)
Padavan (581-455-3381)

They could all stand to hear from their constituents. Make the call now. Spread the word.

Reading some comments on other blogs, a crazy thought occurred to me. Is it just possible that behind the "three amigos" nutsoidness is a secret attempt by someone who shares a borough with two of them to take over the caucus?

Jeff Klein rose rapidly to become Deputy Minority Leader (before even finishing his first term), and many people believe he has his eyes on the top spot. So far, he has stayed out of the news on this, except to mention once or twice that he has no intention of staging a coup. But...

I don't have any inside information, and have only briefly met Senator Klein once. But the way this is being handled, it looks like there's a secret hand behind it, and the one person who stands to gain the most from all the insanity is Senator Klein. If he emerges as the new Senate Majority Leader/President Pro Tempore, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

The Democratic Party is on the verge of claiming complete control of the New York State government. There is a Democratic governor, and Democrats make up about two-thirds of the state Assembly. The last remaining Republican holdout is the state Senate, and Democrats are only two seats away from a majority there. In addition, the watchword for this election is "change," and Democrats are on the "change bandwagon."

The major stumbling block to turning the state Senate blue is that Republicans have several million dollars available. The Senate Republican Campaign Committee (SRCC) has $1.7 million in cash, compared with just under $1.3 million for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC). As of a week ago, the Democratic state party committee had a tiny advantage over the Republican state party committee, $418K to $360K. In addition, over the last two months the SRCC had transferred far more to individual candidates than the DSCC had transferred to its candidates.

In other words, Democrats need a major transfusion of money, and there's no time to raise it.

There is a source of money that might be tapped. After a three-way primary in which he got 68% of the vote, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver still has $2.5 million in his own campaign account. State law only allows him to transfer small amounts to other candidates' campaign accounts, but it also allows him (or any candidate) to transfer as much as he wants to the DSCC, which could then transfer all they want to individual Senate candidates' campaign committees.

In other words, he could send $1.5 million to the DSCC, which would give Democrats a huge leg up in the battle to win the state Senate, and still keep a million dollars.

But wait - there's more!  read more »

In Brooklyn I am used to the period of petition posturing, where each candidate compares the size of their petitions and challenges the validity of the other's petitions while screaming foul over any challenge to their petitions. It is all part of the game. This election is the first time I have observed the process taking place elsewhere (though I knew it happend) partly because some of the posturing has taken place here on DG. There has been considerable discussion over the 1400 signatures collected by Jimmy Dahroug vs. the 3000 signatures collected by Brian Foley in a race that requires 1000 signatures. The assumption has been that 3000 signatures was unchallengable while 1400 was going to be challenged and Dahroug would get kicked off the ballot because he hadn't collected enough signatures to cover his petitioning ass.

I made two points in this whole discussion. First: neither number is all that impressive to me since I know people who, using petitioning as a chance to meet the voters and get their name out, collect 5000 door-to-door, unchallengable signatures in a race that only requires 1000. Neither Jimmy nor Brian have much to brag about by Brooklyn standards.  read more »