Last night was the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID) endorsement meeting for two city council races: the 33rd and 39th City Council districts. Previously CBID endorsed Norman Siegel for Public Advocate and John Liu for Comptroller.

I did not attend the meeting but got a rundown from my wife who is an officer of CBID. Overall her impression of the candidates was a good one, which matches my own impressions. Steve Levin not only didn't show up (the second major district event he missed) but didn't even bother turning in a questionaire on time. THAT is called dissing the district. I guess he expects his boss, Vito Lopez, to carry him through the race. All the questionaires for the races covered by CBID (including both of these City Council races, Comptroller, Public Advocate and Mayor, with more to come) can be found at the CBID website...including Steve Levin's late homework...I mean questionaire. I will make reference to these questionaires but please go to the website for details because I will not be quoting from them.  read more »

Recently saw a reasonably good rundown of the race for Brooklyn's 33rd City Council District in City Hall News. Now there is a particular reporter for City Hall News who I plan on never quoting because I have learned from my wife that he is a little weasel who believes it is his job to sneak into private meetings and quote people without permission, and that little weasel will never get a link from me (not that he cares, most likely). But the author of this article is not that little weasel so I am willing to post about it.

The interesting thing about the race for this district, currently Yassky's seat, is just how it pits some real nasty characters against reasonably clean candidates.

Now there are two candidates who I am sure expected to be frontrunners...but they aren't. I am of the impression that Jo Anne Simon is currently the frontrunner in almost every way, though in a 6-way race that may change. I will discuss Jo Anne later. First I want to discuss the two who surely expected frontrunner status but who are just as surely lagging.  read more »

David Yassky currently seems the most targeted of the Bloomberg 29 (personally I would like to see Recchia and Quinn get more heat for their ass kissing of Tsar Bloomberg). I already posted a statement from Ken Diamondstone criticizing Yassky and making it pretty clear Diamondstone was still planning on running for the 33rd City Council seat, even if Yassky is still hanging on.

Now Jo Anne Simon, another declared candidate in the 33rd race, has issued a statement:

Should term limits be extended? Are two terms simply insufficient for the executive and the legislature to accomplish what each does best? Is the current financial crisis truly that rarest of situations where the law should be set aside to effectuate a result propounded by one person (the mayor) but likely to benefit several incumbent interests, such as city council members (who had the up or down vote), borough presidents and other, city-wide elected officials?

New Yorkers differ about the answers.  read more »