The Daily Gotham received a rather interesting email from a tipster who wishes to remain anonymous. It concerns the speech scheduled for tomorrow by New York's junior Senator at the inaugural gala of the new Yonkers City Council President, Chuck Lesnick.
Lesnick is the dragon-slayer who finally overthrew the corrupt Yonkers republican machine to establish a Democratic majority on the City Council there. The Yonkers machine, in turn, is the political base of what appears to be the latest non-entity striving to be the republican candidate for U.S. Senate, one John Spencer. Please note that we haven't been able to verify the specific claims made by our tipster as regards specific examples of criminality, and present this with that specific caveat.
Yonkers politics is very very interesting. Many forces are gelling around former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer getting the nod from the GOP to try to bloody Senator Clinton.
Hillary is aware of this and is preparing a strategy which will not just hurt this specific opponent but will help to aid the entire national Democratic Party's electoral strategy for '06.
And it involves a party she's going to right in the lion's den - Yonkers.
Yonkers is known as [a] real hardball politics town. It's the 4th biggest city in NY but inept and criminal Republicans have hobbled its growth. And it's crazy corrupt. Ward (District) Leaders get found dead in the trunks of cars. Seriously. Judges too. There were high-level indictments just last year in the Mayor's office - ethics violations in the City Council left and right. The old Republican machine here is vicious and literally criminal.
(This is where John Spencer comes from.)
But. Here's the story: [...] Hillary is going to a big inaugural gala in downtown Yonkers, just across from City Hall for the new City Council President. Chuck Lesnick - he's this outsider Dem who ran a plainly anti-culture of corruption campaign.
He talked also about the need for an honest[,] transparent government of qualified professionals and not political cronies. He railed against legacy six-figure salaried patronage jobs.
His whole style of campaign was interlaced with a grassroots community involvement picture. [...] Dems now control the City Council for the first time in 20 years!
Anyway, I understand that Clinton asked for a detailed Memo outlining all of the anti-corruption issues Lesnick raised during the campaign, all of his press releases and media advisories and Prepared Statements.
That would imply that she is looking to quote him -- saying things she could easily say about any corrupt Republican - or a certain one from Yonkers - named John.
I'm not the biggest Hillary fan but I think it's brilliant. Imagine Hillary, congratulating an underdog Democrat coming up from the community groups and PTA meetings, rising to fight a huge corrupt Republican machine, exposing its criminality, exposing its ineptitude [This] not only
1. serves the [inaugural gala] night, but
2. helps her race against John Spencer, and it also
3. helps every Dem whose campaign will mention their GOP opponent's connections to Abramoff and DeLay / extra-constitutional recess appointments / Brownie doin' a heck of a job and the whole 'Culture of Corruption' meme. [...]And because the things Lesnick said were pretty firebrand [...] her remarks might be very telling of things to come.
The press contact at Friends of Hillary [1], Sam Arora, says our tipster's idea is interesting, but incorrect.
Democrats were rightly not too concerned about Jeanine Pirro's candidacy. The seeming coronation by default of John Spencer, if our internal party chatter is any indication, has turned that lack of concern into outright glee. His hardline reactionary views – check out his web site [2], in which he proclaims himself "New York's true conservative" - are a gift in and of themselves, because those views don't resonate in this state. But since his candidacy makes the Yonkers cesspool a legitimate statewide campaign issue, he may wind up being the lever that brings the entire republican edifice crashing down.
Maybe Hillary should reconsider. This could be juicy.
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