Bail Reform Dead: Developer’s Attack Flyers, Party Bosses, Adams Plan to Empower Judges to Reduce Crime, Blocked by a Few Voters

By Gary Tilzer

The four progressive incumbent candidates beat back heavily funded challengers from the mayor, developers, special interests funding, and political party bosses, receiving just 40,577 votes, in a very low turnout election (less than 9%).  In a city of nine million people, Jabari Brisport won with 11,894 votes, Robert Jackson won with 9,868 votes, Gustavo Rivera won with 5,700 votes, and Kristen S. Gonzalez won with 13,115 votes, empowering those blocking changes to the bail law well into the future. If anyone says NY Democracy is not broken, just tell them that 40,115 voters are making nine million unsafe, making New Yorkers’ crime stats, and killing the city’s economy as crime keeps offices and subways empty.

The polls have been showing for months that seventy-five percent of New Yorkers want to change the bail law to reduce crime. Yet the progressive lawmakers and those Albany elected moderates they threatened with primaries, refuse to change the bail law to allow NYS Judges to lock up repeat career criminals and send the mentally ill to hospitals. It is time to examine how those that pumped money and political power to defeat progressive candidates who support the current bail law, failed with outdated strategy, and poorly run campaigns. The political class’s inability to beat left-wing State Senators in the August primary has empowered Albany progressives to keep the current bail law. Those insiders who went after progressive candidates should remember the old adage:  if you try to kill the king, make sure you kill him. Trying and failing to defeat progressive candidates strengthens their commitment to their ideological policies, which means the bail law will stay the same and the city’s crime wave will continue. At the victory party for victorious Democratic Socialist of America State Senate candidate Kirsten Gonzalez, 58.14% to 31.51% victory over heavily developer-funded PAC-supported former City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said, “we proved that socialism wins.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and incumbents’ non-progressive lawmakers understand that if they push for changes in the bail law they will be challenged in their district or for their leadership positions, by progressives. It looks like to one observer that lawmakers rather not be hassled with a progressive challenge, they would probably win after a strong challenge, then make sure New Yorkers are safe and end the damage crime is doing to the NYC economy.               

In the June edition of this year’s court-ordered split primaries caused by Albany’s unconstitutional redistricting, most incumbent Assembly members were re-elected.  Nine out of seven Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) backed progressive challengers lost to incumbent Assembly members. Political consultants, insiders, and the moderate media trying to defeat the progressives used the Assembly incumbent June’s victories to spin that their attack flyers style campaigns worked. Jeff Leb, who runs two super PACs funded by developers, said after the incumbent Assembly member’s victories in the June primaries: “When we expose anti-police candidates by informing voters of their extremist positions, progressives consistently lose.” The success of incumbent progressive State Senators in the August primaries proves it was not the attack flyers that won campaigns in both primaries, it was incumbency in low turnout primaries (June primary turnout 13% August primary turnout 9% turnout) that won elections. The low voter turnout is the canary in the coal mine, warning that New Yorkers’ city and state democracies are broken, yet not one newspaper, media organization, or elected official has written or spoken up about the causes and effects of low voting.

Jeff Leb has two Political Action Committees (PACs) funded by developers like Larry Silverstein, Will Zeckendorf, and Gary Barnett, say the city is better off with PAC-funded attack campaigns. How is the city better off when after the 2022 primaries, progressives, who received just 40,115 voters, who defeated the attack flyers and well-funded PACs and political bosses against them, continue to endanger the safety of every New Yorker, pushing the city’s economy into a recession, caused by workers afraid of crime refusing to return to their office building in Manhattan and former subway riders afraid to go back on the trains?

NYC’s Developer’s Money and Hired Guns Empower Progressives to  Continue Blocking Changes to the Bail Law

Kristen Gonzalez Twitter @Gonzalez4NY This isn’t from @NomikiKonst—she dropped out to endorse us. It’s actually from “Common Sense,” a right-wing super PAC funded by billionaires & real estate.

Those political insiders, who want to use their money to defeat progressive lawmakers blocking bail reform have made matters worse by failing in their mission. The Jewish Voice pointed out in 2021, after major gains in Brooklyn by AOC and interlocking progressive PACs and non-profit groups, that the methods of those trying to defeat them don’t work. The Jewish Voice investigation of the 2021 results pointed out that the political insiders going after progressive candidates with outdated weak messaging, attack flyers, and relying on consultants who lack the ability and vision to influence NYC’s changing electorate to even show up at the polls. Instead of changing their messaging in 2022, they ran the same attack-flier failed campaign strategy they used in 2021 and lost again in the 2022 August primary.

Jewish Voice, 2021: AOC’s endorsement in Brooklyn turned out to be more than an endorsement.  It can now officially be labeled a movement that not only propelled Brad Lander in his race for City Comptroller and helped progressive candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso win.  It also helped at least eight progressive Brooklyn city council candidates win office. This growing progressive machine also helped progressive mayoral candidate Maya Wiley rise to second place in the first round of the mayor’s race.  Of course, it was not only AOC that affected these Brooklyn races.  It was a combination of a directorate of interlocking progressives, liberal groups, and PACs, including AOC’s Courage to Change, that work remarkably well together.  They help in acquiring extra money and resources for the chosen progressive candidates, beyond public funding.

The late journalist Jimmy Breslin would have called the permanent government efforts to defeat the progressives and change the bail law “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” The city’s Party Bosses, establishment Democrats, and business allies dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) progressives who all won:

Miguelina Camilo 47% defeated by progressive State Senators Gustavo Rivera 52%

Angel Vasquez 32% defeated by progressive State Senator Robert Jackson 55%

Conrad Tillard  15%   defeated by progressive State Senator Jabari Brisport 70%

Elizabeth Crowley 31% defeated by progressive State Senator Kristen Gonzalez 58%

Even incumbent State Senator Kevin Parker might have lost if the votes against him were not split between a DSA candidate David Alexis and another candidate Kaegan Marie Mays-Williams supported by gay rights groups. Parker 45.8%, Alexis 37.6%, Mays-Williams 16.2%. 

Permanent Government Captain Catsimatidis Stuck in His Echo Chamber Full of Misinformation, Needs to See How Voters View the Candidates he Supports.

Catsimatidis to break out of his bubble should interview his radio host Rudy Giuliani who in 1986, while planning his run for mayor, got a lot of press when he disguised himself as a Hell’s Angel to purchase undercover two vials of crack cocaine along with the then U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who was dressed as a trucker. Both Republicans pulled off the stunt to build their images in the voter’s minds that they were doing something to win the war on drugs.

After incumbent Assembly member Dilan (52%), Dickens, Benedetto (56%) Lucas (75%) won against progressive challengers supported and funded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) in the June primaries, David Paterson, the former governor, said in an interview on WABC radio’s “The Cats Roundtable-- “AOC is just a ‘phantom of the media’ without real influence.” John Catsimatidis’s daily radio show is an insider’s cabal of who is who in moderate politics and what remains of NY’s weak Republican Party. The show and station also serve as a railing center and echo chamber for fighting the bail law and those looking for a more moderate government in NY. The problem of not only the Cats show but the entire political class opposing the progressives is that there is too much wishful thinking and political consultants who no longer understand what is going on, looking for cash, offering self-serving spins to the host and their clients. There is no examination of strategy methods and vision on how to reach the voters to defeat progressives, beyond the insider’s political establishment bubble. Both Paterson and the NY Post seem to think going after AOC is the way to defeat the progressives. The Working Families, Democratic Socialists of America, Brad Lander, Jumaane Williams, and others have their own progressive machines that operate on their own and interlock with each other. Five days after the August 23^rd primary, the NY Post added to AOC misinformation when they wrote: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive comrades lost big in the congressional primaries. The day after the primary The NY Post wrote: Socialist left swamps, Democratic centrist challengers, in NY state Senate primaries.

Governor Paterson, a frequent guest, was interviewed by host John Catsimatidis after the June primary results in which the majority of left-wing State Assembly progressive challengers were unsuccessful in their efforts to expand their presence in Albany by ousting incumbent moderate Democrats. Asked if the June primary losses represented “the rise and fall of AOC,” the Democratic former governor replied, “I don’t know if there ever was a rise, John. There’s no evidence that AOC has any coattails.” Paterson added. The former Governor who now works as a lobbyist for developers in Northern Brooklyn, must have forgotten that the AOC machine almost elected  DSA leader Tiffany Cabán as the Queens District Attorney 2020. AOC elected Cabán as a Councilwoman and helped win all of the eight progressive northern Brooklyn Council members, the Kings County Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and the NYC Controller Brad Lander.  From the Jewish Voice, 2021 AOC & the Progressives’ Interlocking Directorates are the New Bosses of Brooklyn & the 2022 City Council Catsimatidis is a serious man with an important mission to the survival of NYC is trapped in a children’s game of telephone, where misinformation, daydream thinking and relying on connected consultants limit the ability of his team to win elections.

Catsimatidis constantly says, if Republican Lee Zeldin does not win his race for governor, NYC is done.  Catsimatidis has no one in his vast echo chamber asking where are the pictures of Zeldin riding the subways? Spending a night in a NYCHA project? Visiting the crime scene in a Chinatown flooded with shelters, where Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed to death by a homeless man? Republicans think meeting with community leaders delivers votes, not his candidate’s public image. Catsimatidis to break out of his bubble should interview his radio host Rudy Giuliani who in 1986, while planning his run for mayor, got a lot of press when he disguised himself as a Hell’s Angel to purchase undercover two vials of crack cocaine along with the then U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who was dressed as a trucker. Both Republicans pulled off the stunt to build their images in the voter’s minds that they were doing something to win the war on drugs. The failure of the attack flyers against the progressives supporting the bail law, is evidence that the public is looking for more than position papers and campaign pledges.

The voters of today are very visual.  They vote based on images of candidates, hopefully not with blood-red backgrounds with two marines. Tammany Halls’ Boss Tweed said “I don’t care what the newspaper writes about me, my people can’t read. But Thomas Nast’s cartoon pictures that attack me hurt my political machine.” Very few New Yorkers read newspapers nowadays. Voters receive incomplete glimpses of the news and campaigns from TV, Twitter, and Facebook very visual media.  Catsimatidis is a serious man with an important mission to the survival of NYC is trapped in a children’s game of telephone, where misinformation, daydreaming, and reliance on connected clueless consultants, performing for money, limit the ability of his team to win elections.

Brooklyn Gadfly Geoffrey Davis Explains Why All the King Developer’s Attack Flyers Could Not Pull Out Brooklyn’s Black Vote 

When the late Tim Russert was working for the re-election of a president, before he became a journalist, he would travel all over the country and visit campaign headquarters.  Russert would patiently listen to the local leaders who ran up to him in front of the campaign office.  After the local leaders finished informing him what was going on in their state, Russert would move to the back of the office to find out what was really going on from the people who were on the streets. The greatest journalists in our lifetime knew how to find out what mattered to the voters, yet today’s reporters listen to the self-serving spins of lobbyists like Paterson, Sheinkopf, Red Horse, and Berlin Rosen. 

When Former Crown Heights District Leader Geoffrey Davis, one of the last political operatives left, who knows what is happening on the streets of Central Brooklyn was asked to comment on how the mayor’s candidate Conrad Tillard lost by over 50%, the answer was unexpected.  Davis, a neighborhood gadfly who started the “Love Yourself--Stop the Violence” Movement in the 1990s, said the attack on the Biggie Smalls Mural has to be used as a wake-up message to Brooklyn’s disconnected black voters who stayed home during the August 23^rd primary, that we are losing control of our communities.                                     

The destruction of the Biggie Smalls mural by graffiti on the border of gentrifying Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Prospect Heights is the perfect symbol of what is needed to motivate black Brooklyn voters to show up at the polls, Davis said. The graffiti attack on the street painting of Biggie, the man who empowered the East Coast Hip-Hop movement, is the perfect image of what happened to Brooklyn’s black community since the era when black leaders like my late brother Councilman James Davis, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Assemblyman Al Vann, and Congressman Major Owens empowered the black community. Today, blacks in Central Brooklyn feel powerless, as they watch their long-time neighbors pushed out by gentrification. Replaced by young out-of-towners, who elect ideological activists, who passed the no-bail law that created a crime wave that further targets what is left of the minority communities and its people, mostly young people. “Blacks are not voting in local elections because we feel that we have become disconnected from local and state government, occupied by power-hungry ideological socialists who have not only pushed us out by raising the rents, ignoring our safety, and who see us as leftovers from the past,” Davis said. 

The money from developers and other special interest PACs for attack flyers did not motivate the voters to show up and vote. Davis believes flyers from unfamiliar sources do not work in convincing voters to vote against progressives blocking the bail law, no matter how many times my neighbor’s mailboxes were filled with attack campaign flyers. The message was all wrong for Tillard to lose by over 50% to DSA Socialist State Sen. Jabari Brisport. 

When Davis was organizing the “Stop the Violence” marches in the 1990s, he began having the parents of crime victims lead the march. When Davis had the parents of Tiarah Poyau, who was shot and killed by a gun, he noticed that interest, knowledge, and effectiveness of the march increased. Davis believes that instead of wasting money on attack flyers and paying consultants, developers need to use their money to organize parents, widows, and friends of crime victims to carry the change of the bail law message to Albany and the streets where progressives are in charge. Only victims of crime can motivate the voters to show up at the polls, said the long-time political operative, Davis. 

The saturations media coverage of Bodega clerk Jose Alba who was at first outrageously and unfairly charged with murder for defending his life by DA Bragg.  The unusually heavy coverage created enough public pressure to force the ideological Manhattan DA to drop the charges against Alba. Those fighting the bail laws do not need to defeat progressives with attack mailing, they need to encourage parents and other family members of crime victims to lobby Albany lawmakers to change the bail law, not just before an election, but every day. 

The Media Offers More Follow-Up Coverage of A Sick Horse Than the Effects of Crime on Victims’ Families

The media jumps to the next shooting instead of telling us what happens to the families who lost a loved one to crime. NYC reporters do more follow-up coverage on a sick horse that collapsed in midtown than what happened to crime victims’ families after they buried their daughter, son, or spouse. The press, by not continuing to cover the horror the victim’s families suffer, has desensitized the public and voters on the effects of these crimes and given a free pass to lawmakers who pass laws causing the increase in crime. 

It might save NY1’s Errol Louis from Jumping the CNN journalism shark to interview crime victims instead of communicating his political spin on the day’s events. The parents and friends of Michelle Go, who was pushed to her death in January on the R-train platform by a homeless man with a criminal background and a history of mental illness, would be a good place to start an NY1 crime victim follow-up interview. Additionally, NY1 Louis can interview the mother of Kristal Bayron-Nieves who was murdered while working at Wendy’s to help pay her family’s bills.  Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins’ excuse for not changing the bail law is they don’t have enough data that it is causing the crime wave. No data will be needed if journalist Louis put together a debate on NY1 between Heastie, Cousins, and the victims’ families about the bail law. I am sure that political director Hardt will cancel one of the reporter Gross reports on the bad conditions at Rikers to make room for such a debate.

Criminal Court Judges Must Be Given More Independence and Reflect the Communities Values

The NYU Brennan Center for Justice has done numerous studies that political parties and court insiders choose most of NY’s Judges and their Administrative Supervisors. Most judicial elections are non-competitive and when there is more than one judicial candidate on the ballot, voters know little about the judicial candidates running. Judges should not be chosen by political machines or court insiders; judges should also not be picked by the mayoral or governors’ selection committees, full of special interests connected to politics. Judge Paul McDonnell, appointed by liberal Mayor de Blasio to the Criminal Court bench, cut a career criminal Nathaniel Turner loose.  Despite being on lifetime parole after punching one cop and trying to bite another, Turner waltzed out of his court without bail.

Our City needs elected judges, who reflect the values of New Yorkers and local neighborhoods, and who are not afraid to speak out about the injustices they see in the system. We need Judges who interpret the law themselves, as opposed to being made to rely on the cheat sheets provided to them by politically appointed court administrators.  Currently, both Albany and the politically controlled court administrators micromanage judges, treating them as bureaucrats as opposed to the elected officials representing a separate and independent third branch of our government, which is supposed to check the power and the abuses of the executive and the legislative branches of government.  Unlike every other state and the federal court system, where judges can consider the risk posed by putting defendants back on the streets, New York Albany lawmakers only allow bail to be used as a way to ensure they return to court. 

The NY Post just broke a story that the unelected Office of Court Administration (OCA) gives judges “cheat sheets” on how to rule on criminal arraignment bail hearings. The OCA also gave judges a memo — obtained by The Post — that boils down the law into seven pages of charts, listing the various offenses still eligible for cash bail, which was eliminated for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies.  Due to various loopholes and other complexities, the charts are supplemented with 25 footnotes that say when defendants should be released despite being charged with “qualifying offenses.”  Even the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the OCA for its practice of issuing directives to judges on how to interpret the law.  The ACLU case alleges that OCA is impermissibly directing Judges on how to rule on cases.      

A judge who spoke to The NY Post on condition of anonymity said that “by and large” the bail-reform law was “insane. Our hands are tied,” the judge said. And judicial discretion will ensure there’s a true evaluation that the person is a risk of flight and perhaps an assessment of the risk they pose to the community. “The state Legislature needs to get their act together and call a special session” just to address bail reform, the judge added.” Why doesn’t the Post Editorial Board ask why not a single NYS Judge will speak out on the record about how they are forced to let violent criminals out of jail? Why hasn’t one judge resigned on the issue of bail reform? Judges have a duty to protect the community they were elected in.

To make judicial elections easier to understand for the voters and reflect the values of the community, Criminal Court Judges should be elected by Assembly Districts. While Assembly Districts contain around 128,000 people, judicial districts, from which judges are currently elected, contain between one million and three million people. Judicial elections need public funding, and the state should mail every voter a bio of every judicial candidate, just as the city does for every City Council candidate.  NY needs the elected, judicial branch of government, to be truly independent, and to speak out against bad laws made by the other two branches of government.  NY needs a judicial branch that is not controlled by political party machines or special interests, including politically connected attorneys, who currently sit on the appointment selection committees of judges whom these politically connected attorneys appear before and receive fiduciary appointments from. Some in Albany and within the state’s court system want to take the control of electing judges even further away from the voters.  With NY Chief Judge Janet DiFiore stepping down from a position that was once elected, and now appointed, it is time for the media, elected officials, and all New Yorkers to investigate who picks and controls NYS judges.

To Restore NYC’s Democracy and Empowering the Public Change the Political System

With only 13% turning out in the June primary and 9% in the August Primary the only people elected were the special interests candidates, who in this case were incumbents. If an election were held in Russia or any other socialist county with a single district turnout, we would ridicule it as a sign of a dictatorship or fascism. What is most disturbing is that the media, Good Government Groups, and elected officials have ignored the dangers connected with low voters. The unions that in the 1970s helped save NYC from bankruptcy still worked to defeat the 2017 NYS Constitutional Convention where reforms to NY’s political system could have been accomplished. Now that unions and NY’s political insiders are being challenged by progressives for control of low turnout elections, it will be interesting to watch if they become part of a coalition to change NY’s government. If the recession that is predicted for NYC a lot of interest groups will start pushing for government reform that makes the cost of governing twice as expensive for the large state of Florida and disconnects voters for the convenience of the special interests, including progressives who reap the spoils of low turnout elections. 

If a recession causes an opportunity to reform NY’s voting system New York should move to adopt nonpartisan, multi-round elections, where candidates of all stripes have the chance to compete against one another on their records and ideas, instead of trying to outdo each other by winning over a small slice of the base. NYC should change its campaign finance system which failed lobbyists have used to make a living on. Adopt Democracy Voucher that provides city residents with four vouchers, each worth $25, that can be pledged to eligible candidates running for each municipal office, like the mayor, council, and borough president. Another reform to reconnect New Yorkers is to use the same district lines for Community Board and Council District and allow every registered voter to vote on important issues facing their community. The Jewish Voice wrote how Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer had the right idea about how to reconnect NYC’s residents to participate in elections when they ran for office in 1969, decentralizing local government: To Fix NYC We Need to Reinvent the City’s Strong Neighborhoods of the Past.

@GaryTilzerTips