Source: Capital New York

By Mark Hay

On a rooftop just south of Park Slope, just after the last major salvo of July 4 fireworks over Manhattan petered out,  a lightly buzzed Jonathan Judge, president of the Brooklyn Young Republicans, stepped in front of the view of the skyline.

“We are gathered to celebrate our independence from foreign domination,” said Judge, a compact young man with bright orange hair and, like most of the men in attendance, a thick goatee. “And our independence from corruption and for reform.”

Judge and 15 club members and guests had gathered atop the roof of former congressional candidate and vice chair of the King’s County Republican Party Susan Cleary, simply to celebrate, they all said. Also in attendance were Lucretia Regina-Potter, the B.Y.R.-backed candidate running for State Assembly against Peter Abbate in the 49th district, and Joseph Hayon, a N.Y.-9 Congressional candidate running on religious values. (Hayon claims no affiliation with the B.Y.R. He said he got an e-mail about the event and just decided to make a prolonged appearance.)

With the view of the city’s major fireworks largely obscured by midtown’s skyscrapers, and the fireworks from the Gowanus and Prospect Park coming in irregular bursts, the night turned to drink and discussion of their core values.

“We’ve got all kinds of Republicans here—conservatives, libertarians, all kinds,” said communications director Roy Antoun, a Rutgers student and county committeeman and an enthusiastic admirer of Ron Paul. “But at our core, we all believe in two things: reform and some type of limited government.”

“Our club has matured into an individual, reform-thinking organization,” said Judge, seeking to distance his organization from the county Republican organization, and by implication, Brooklyn Republican chair Craig Eaton. He added, “We find flaws in both parties—the way that they support the status quo.”

Still, they spent most of the evening talking about the ineffectiveness of the local Republicans. They think the state party is fairly useless, they don’t like the county leadership, which they feel is insufficiently transparent, and they had complaints about sub-leadership party functionaries, too.

Antoun was unhappy with his first local organizer because she failed to tell him where to show up to be a Community Council delegate. Regina-Potter has it out for the organizers and low-level folks in the 49th Assembly district.

Mostly, they were angry at the whole existing New York Republican firmament, in a comprehensive, Tea Party kind of way: for them, the party is an edifice that needs to be destroyed and remade.

“It’s not a party, it’s just a messed-up institution,” said Yakkov Bard, who says he is still a registered Democrat but intends on changing his registration soon. “I don’t think they have a goal, really.”

It should be said here that it’s hard to know what the goal for the Brooklyn Republican Party ought to be, realistically.

Brooklyn Republicans exist in helpless, seething discontent in a very Democratic borough within a very Democratic city. In Brooklyn, the 900,000 enrolled Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly eight to one.

The only real Republican force in the borough is State Senator Marty Golden, who is a sort of hyperlocal powerhouse, but thoroughly actualized in his fiefdom as it currently exists, and certainly no threat to the city’s established political order.

A beleagured state party, led by Chariman Edward Cox, provides no succor to Brooklyn, seemingly resigned to putting the same brave, hopeless candidates up against incumbent Democrats in downticket races, and focusing what little energy and means it possesses on manufacturing enthusiasm for gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and on boxing out Mike Long’s Conservative Party of New York from the party’s tactical decision-making processes.

“Party leaders don’t do anything to organize or consolidate the party,” said Antoun, claiming that the Republican leadership has gutted the civil society mechanisms that could help Republicans to take more of Brooklyn than ever before.

“When associations are made by organized clubs—outside the express will of the party boss,” added Judge, “they are attacked.”

He says that the local Republicans organization deliberately seeks to destroy grassroots movements, and that a number of candidates had been called and harassed by higher-ups in the party for expressing dissent. Judge, Antoun and Regina-Potter say that internal debate about the direction of the party has been all but eliminated in Brooklyn, if not the city and the state.

Asked for his observations on the party, Judge said, “It doesn’t exist to be observed.”

(Reached for response, Eaton suggested that the Brooklyn Young Republicans were long on talk on short on constructive action. “It’s all smoke and mirrors and blogs and e-mails and statements instead of rolling up their sleeves and getting out in the field for a candidate,” he said.)

The first goal of the Brooklyn Young Republicans is to establish a foothold somewhere by actually winning. They deplored the lack of more significant help from the party firmament for Regina-Potter, who looks like CJ Craig from The West Wing if you took a picture of Craig and compressed it in Photoshop. She’s matronly and very proud to be so, leading her child with her around the event, pushing food and drink on a guest-reporter and pivoting from political topics to talk about the dinner she had just cooked and how incredibly hot the stove was.

She was not unaware of the odds she faced. “How can any average person who’s involved in politics go up against dinosaurs with huge war chests?” she asked.

There was no answer.

The Brooklyn Young Republicans speak about substantive politics with the zeal of Tea Partiers (not accidentally), and considered themselves locked in a fight with a party leadership that is not only complacent but ideologically compromised. They believe they’re gaining traction: Judge claimed that the organization, as of last count, had some 100 paying members and another 1,000 on its mailing list.

“We provide a place where we can speak without being condemned and judged for what we believe in,” said Judge. He claimed that a lack of transparency, choice on their ballots, and discourse had led many to abandon the Brooklyn Republicans. “And we bring them back,” Judge said. “We stop a lot of bloodletting.”

“The challenge of Republicanism in Brooklyn is about enunciating the common sense to enough people so that they can see that they’re digging their own graves,” said David Testilbaum, who recently became a member.

There seemed to be a consensus among the attendees that Brooklyn is teeming with secret Republicans—immigrants who have not broken into civil society, outcasts disillusioned by the party, and even Democrats In Name Only who vote for their party only for the chance to participate in a real debate and see real change come from their vote.

“There are a lot of Democrats out there who are strongly sympathetic towards the Republican Party,” said Judge. “We have actually been converting Democrats!”

Bard presented himself as living proof of that. “I used to think that conservatives ate babies,” he said. Now, he said, he believes that “conservatives are the most character-assassinated group in history.”

He told me he believes in the Brooklyn Young Republicans and their power to overcome the no-hope Brooklyn old Republicans. And he said he believes in Judge’s vision of Brooklyn as “hopefully soon a formerly Democratic borough.”

The event, scheduled to end at midnight, broke up early, with most of the attendees leaving after the food and drink started to run out. Bard and Judge stayed on the rooftop to the very end.

If it looks like a party, and it sounds like a party, then it must be a party, right?

Well, no…

One of the most glaring dysfunctions in the operation of the New York State Republican Party that I’ve noticed over the past several years is that we are hardly an organized party.  It’s really sad to see this because in a year where so much could be gained from teamwork, we are still lacking in the fundamentals of a healthy, vibrant and successful organization, whether locally or statewide.  (As a note, this pre-dates current Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox, so it would not be fair to implicate him in this just yet.  However, he does have the power to decide whether the status quo stays or goes.)

Right now, the campaigning wing of the New York State GOP is made up of three major entities: the State Committee (the officially recognized governing body of the Republican Party in New York State), the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee (RACC), and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee (SRCC).

In my experience and that of many other candidates, none of them have anything to do with each other except for the fact that they share the word Republican in their names.

Essentially, the State Committee is the most pro-active in special elections and statewide races.  It otherwise rarely, if ever, provides hands-on operational assistance to make the party more competitive at the county level.

RACC only handles New York State Assembly campaigns.  SRCC only handles New York State Senate campaigns.  Essentially, with rare exception for a very select few of highly targeted races, it is every candidate for himself or herself anyway.

In fact, the reason why we have done so poorly as a party (and it remains to be seen whether we will actually maximize a return on our investments this year as part of the anti-incumbent wave) is that the Empire State GOP has no clothes.

If we were to compare the Republican Party in its current state to a period in history, it would be the Middle Ages.  In the absence of active communications, consistent, unified messaging of our principles, sharing of resources and mutual collaboration and support for fellow party members, the Party of Lincoln in our Great State has devolved into an unwieldy confederation of aging local feudal warlords, feeding their factions with whatever crumbs of patronage and cash are left before the other local Republican faction, or the local Democratic Emperor, wipes them out for good.

The Senate Republicans, for their own personal benefit, have long sold out to the Democrats the hope of regaining anything close to a majority in the State Assembly–or a Republican majority anywhere else but the State Senate.  In a few counties, I have heard that incumbent Senate Republican candidates are not even carrying petitions with any Republican Assembly candidates names on them.  In fact, the incumbent Republican Senators probably can’t even name all of the Assembly Candidates whose names would be sharing the same Republican ballot line in November.

Again, with very rare exception, I haven’t seen Senate Republican candidates and Assembly Republican candidates campaigning together at all.  More importantly, I have hardly–if ever–seen a statewide candidate campaign with and for a Senate or Assembly candidate.

What’s even more disconcerting is the fact that on the State Republican Party’s own website, among a list of statewide candidates, Congressional candidates and State Senate candidates, not a single Republican Assembly candidate is listed. Perhaps they don’t know who they are, as unfortunately is the case for most voters when they get into the booth for the General Election, or they don’t care, or worse yet, both.

The point is that without a clear and coherent statewide message, and the requisite teamwork for attracting as many votes on the Republican line for candidates up and down the ballot line, we are going to miss out on a tremendous opportunity this year to level the playing field of politics in New York and clean up the mess as professional, principled government reformers.

Again, Bill Hammond of the NY Daily News said it best:

But the stunning fact is, with five months to go before Election Day, voters like the GOP even less. Democrats hold solid double-digit leads in every statewide race, and not a single Republican has broken 30%.

Think about that. New York’s Democrats are the ones who brought you former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his hooker habit, a massive pay-to-play scandal in the pension fund under former Controller Alan Hevesi, Gov. Paterson’s floundering, weak-kneed leadership, the month-long shutdown of the state Senate last summer and a seemingly endless parade of legislators in handcuffs.

Beating at least some of these guys should be like shooting fish in a barrel. But the Republicans are losing – and losing badly.

They have no one but themselves to blame. They don’t have a compelling message as a party. They haven’t managed to recruit A-list candidates. And they aren’t raising money.

In short, they’re failing to play the vital role of holding Democrats accountable for their many failures.

Democrats “are not paying a price because there’s no Republican Party,” says Republican consultant Ed Rollins. “If there was an opposition party in this state, if there was competition, they would pay a price.

The best reform we could seek for the party in this state is an imitation of the political dynamics we see nationally, and for the sake of illustration, I’ll use some of the candidates that we have now to demonstrate what I mean.

Rick Lazio, as the designated party candidate for Governor, should be making scheduled appearances with every Republican Assembly and Senate candidate in the state within their own districts, regardless of the anticipated Republican vote potential in that district.  That includes any mailings or literature that gets distributed (at shared costs between the campaigns, of course).  You can, and should, always be more selective with where to campaign right before the election, but not throughout the campaign.  Everyone must count if we are to make any headway.

The Lazio campaign, in consultation with the appropriate local and statewide campaign committees, should be cultivating talking points for all the candidates based on the best Republican solutions for the problems plaguging New York State government.  Most of these candidates are actually running to get elected, so they will do much of the leg work for you if you just try to coordinate and reach out.

Even if there is a Republican primary for a local race, in the absence of a gubernatorial primary, both candidates should profess their support for the message and platform that everyone has a hand in developing.  The central theme of such a primary contest should be, in fact, who is better able to execute that unified platform on behalf of the people of the district.  If there were a gubernatorial primary as well, then each candidate can and should choose who they want to work with if elected to public office, and run with that gubernatorial candidate.  After all, Congressional candidates, while campaigning on local issues of relevance to their particular districts, still frequently mention how they are running to support President ______’s agenda, or Speaker _______’s agenda, or Senate Leader ______’s agenda, especially if they are trying to elect that person to that particular office.  In marginal districts, the President or the de facto leader of the party always goes out to campaign in support of someone who will be supportive of his/her agenda in office.  Lazio should be doing the same thing, and not just for the State Senate.

If we cobbled together a strategy like this, even if we may be too late to make great headway this year, it would lay the foundation for a remarkable transformation by the next state legislature elections in 2012 and gubernatorial election in 2014.

After all, even more impressive for our party is not the prospect of a Governor Rick Lazio or Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, but an Assembly Speaker Brian Kolb.

If we are working together, it won’t just be an idea scribbed on a blog, but a palpable reality within our grasp.

The event was well attended by dozens of Young Republicans and free-minded thinkers. We had a special guest, Laquan Word, who is a candidate for the 18th Senate District. We also enjoyed some wine, fine antipasto and good conversation with good company

(L to R): Moshe Muratov, Executive Director, BYRC; Laquan Word, 18th Senate District Republican Candidate; Jonathan J. Judge, President, BYRC; Glenn P. Nocera, Treasurer, BYRC; Christina M. Bennett, Secretary, BYRC; Samuel M. Rivera, Vice President, BYRC.

]]> http://www.brooklynyr.com/2010/06/18/brooklyn-yr-annual-party/feed/ 0 http://www.brooklynyr.com/2010/06/06/the-brooklyn-yr-actioncast-519/ http://www.brooklynyr.com/2010/06/06/the-brooklyn-yr-actioncast-519/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:23:18 +0000 Roy Antoun http://www.brooklynyr.com/?p=808

The first ever Brooklyn YR ActionCast was held on May 19th and received over a hundred viewers. Minus the minor technical difficulties, the ActionCast was a huge success as the club discussed issues like Puerto Rican statehood, local State Assembly elections, and foreign policy publications.

Judge has released the following statement in reference to his candidacy:

100 Year Association. Taken at 2007 100 Year Association/DCAS College Scholars Award Ceremony at One Police Plaza. Left: NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly; Center: NYC Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler; Right: Jonathan J. Judge

“My neighbors and I have been deeply concerned about the direction in which our city and community is heading.  Too many of our representatives in City Hall have stopped listening to the people on many key issues.  These tough times require constant vigilance and someone who knows how city government works to keep our district running at its best for everyone.  It is time for a true public servant to step up for the people of our district.  My experience working in government and with our diverse community over the better part of the last decade would be a tremendous asset to our community as our City Council Member.

“Therefore, after much consideration and many kind phone calls and emails, I have decided to seek election to the New York City Council in the 44th District.  I am putting together a committee of local residents, community leaders, and experienced activists to prepare for my candidacy in the upcoming special election.  We will be releasing more details in the days ahead.”

Judge’s decision was made in response to the recent news that a special election will be called after current Council Member Simcha Felder’s resignation takes effect on January 31, 2010.

— ABOUT JONATHAN J. JUDGE —

Jonathan J. Judge, who resides in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, has spent his entire adult life in public service.  At the age of 17, he began volunteering at Brooklyn Community Board 14, where he interned throughout college and now works as part of the board’s staff. There, he has worked with the Board and many constituents over the years to help resolve complaints on city services, to identify funding priorities for a variety of city programs, and to ensure local government meets the needs of the residents and businesses of the district.  In 2005, CB14 presented Jonathan with the Certificate of Appreciation for his service to the Board and the community.

While in college, Jonathan interned with the New York City Office of Emergency Management, working with the press office in conducting outreach to ethnic and multilingual media outlets so everyone in the City of New York can instantly receive and understand urgent emergency communications.

Jonathan also served for two years as the 70th Precinct Community Council’s Recording Secretary, creating the 70th Precinct Community Council Blog (http://70pctcc.blogspot.com), which keeps residents informed of all the latest information about the council and public safety in the community.

Jonathan has had a thoroughly New York education.  He attended parochial grammar school in Brooklyn, and graduated from Xavier High School in Manhattan. He then graduated magna cum laude from CUNY Brooklyn College as a Macaulay Honors College scholar with a B.A. in Classics and Linguistics.  He first got a taste of local politics by running for Brooklyn College Student Assembly on the PHD Party line, where he served for three sessions–one of which as Speaker.

His dedication to public service has been greatly inspired by the transformative administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and from his own family’s background of public service. For instance, his parents, Victoria and Kevin, both have served in the New York City Police Department, as have other members of his family who also served in various government agencies.  His father, Kevin, recently received a Certificate of Service Achievement from New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly for his longevity of service to the department for over 35 years.

Jonathan has also been very active in local politics and issue advocacy.  For instance, he organized StopNYCCongestionTax.org, an online advocacy site organized against the city’s proposed congestion pricing plan, which resulted in thousands of emails and petitioners who protested the adoption of this traffic tax on New York’s residents and small businesses. During the process, he worked with various elected officials and business and community leaders to mobilize opponents of the plan.  Jonathan also participated in debates, testified before the City Council, and attended public forums on the proposed plan as well.

Jonathan is now pursuing a Master’s degree at New York University in political ethics, focusing on the causes of corruption and strategies for government reform.

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Hi-Res Photo Link: http://www.jjjudge.com/jonathan-judge-photo.jpg

Photo Credit & Description: 100 Year Association. Taken at 2007 100 Year Association/DCAS College Scholars Award Ceremony at One Police Plaza.  Left: NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly; Center: NYC Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler; Right: Jonathan J. Judge