The great debate — not: Well, our efforts to set up a debate between Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Alexander Meadows unfortunately have not gotten very far. Basically, Glick is ducking the idea of a debate, charging that Meadows — who is running on the Progressive Party line — is not a legit candidate. Glick charged — accurately — that Meadows, despite a few weeks ago telling us that he had $30,000 in finances on hand, had not filed anything with the Board of Elections. Indeed, while he is listed as a candidate, and will be on the ballot on Nov. 4, and thus is definitely a “real candidate,” there was no money listed last week under either his name or his campaign committee’s name. Similarly, Republican candidate Nekeshia Woods apparently has no funds on file. Meanwhile, Glick has plenty of cash contributions listed on the site, with more than $80,000 in her war chest. A perusal of her donors shows a who’s who of local activists who have given her anywhere from $100 to $250 to, in some cases, $500. In a phone message and again, when we tried to buttonhole her at the street co-naming for former Councilmember Miriam Friedlander on E. Sixth St. last Sunday, Glick fumed that Meadows has “flouted basic campaign finance law,” and so she does not feel she should debate him. The fine for not making the periodic filings in elections for state office is pretty mild, only $500, though rises to $1,000 for the more important biannual filings — but that’s not the point, she stressed. She told us she was “surprised” that both The Villager and Village Independent Democrats have called for a debate. “It was only by one vote!” she said of the V.I.D. resolution. Meanwhile, it’s been hard to track down Meadows — which is something we also experienced when he briefly ran in last year’s Council primary against Corey Johnson and Yetta Kurland. We’ve been unable to get him on the phone recently, and in the past couple of weeks have only gotten a few brief e-mails back. In one, he said the reason he didn’t file was due to an “administrative error.” He added, “It would be a shame if our constituency were deprived of a debate about policy issues that will affect the neighborhood for the next 20+ years.” Arthur Schwartz, Meadows’s campaign lawyer, said he recently asked him about why he didn’t file, and that Meadows told him he’d do it in a couple of days. Meadows did have a team of consultants collect petition signatures to get him on the ballot, and they definitely do want to get paid in full, Schwartz said. We agree with Meadows: Many in the community — including us — want to hear a healthy discussion of last year’s 11th-hour stealth Hudson River Park air-rights legislation, the Pier 40/St. John’s Center “secret M.O.U.” and the candidates’ thoughts on speaking out about sexual harassment in Albany. Anyway, we kept asking Glick about it after Sunday’s ceremony and she kept giving us curt answers before quickly peeling off to talk to other people in the crowd. Finally, we thought about just telling her, “Enjoy the football games!” before she left — but somehow we thought better of it. Local politicos didn’t want to talk on the record, but said they support a debate. “She’s being like Cuomo,” said one of Glick’s frontrunner strategy. Andrew Cuomo similarly refused to debate long-shot primary rival Zephyr Teachout. Another politico, fearing Glick would be vindictive against those publicly calling for a debate, said, “I’m not going to take Alexander Meadows’s bullet.” … Meanwhile, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, led by Allen Roskoff, which endorsed Teachout over Cuomo, is backing Meadows. This Monday, the Owles club blasted out their endorsement, saying, “We firmly believe that there are elected officials who become what’s wrong with government when they stay in office past their prime. Assemblymember Glick is such a person. After 24 years in office she has become part of the establishment and no longer shines as a voice for her progressive district. Her support of Christine Quinn for mayor over Bill de Blasio was a vast disappointment, as was her support of Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul over Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu. In all these cases the voters in Glick’s Assembly district voted to the left of Glick’s choices. Glick’s not supporting Tish James’s successful bid for public advocate also was in conflict with the district’s voters and she thus opposed the candidacy of the first woman of color to hold citywide office. It’s time for a change. The Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club has therefore endorsed Alexander Meadows for new leadership and a more progressive voice.” Apparently, they must be able to get Meadows on the phone! Well, it turns out that Meadows was good to his word when he told Schwartz he would file — or at least file something. Before we went to press, we gave the Board of Elections site another look and saw that Meadow does have some filings up there now. However, why nothing was displaying last week is a mystery to us. Anyway, this January he had $9,214 in campaign funds, which by July had dropped a bit to $8,424. Last July he had $10,848 on hand. But there is nothing more recent than this July. There was a 32-day pre-election filing he was supposed to make, for example. Glick had told us last week that she wasn’t even sure that if Meadows “scrambled” to file something late she would deign to debate him. But now we’ll ask her again! … As for the Miriam Friedlander street co-naming ceremony, we’ll have a full report in next week’s issue.
Return of the Lenape? Jean-Louis Bourgeois, calling from New Mexico, left us a message to tell us that he is in the process of donating his Weehawken St. building to the Lenape tribe, Manhattan’s original inhabitants. As a result of Manhattan’s sale to the Dutch, and the subsequent colonization of the entire continent, the Lenape (pronounced “le-nah-pay”) who once inhabited a broad swath of territory around New York and New Jersey, today mainly live in Ontario, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. We tried calling back the scion of famed sculptor Louise Bourgeois for more details, but couldn’t reach him.
Election intrigue: The election for chairperson of Community Board 2, as well as for other board officers, is heating up, with candidate slates forming. We hear that one slate sports Tobi Bergman for chairperson, with Terri Cude for first vice chairperson and Maury Schott for second vice chairperson. A rival slate is headed by Bo Riccobono for board chairperson, with Jon Geballe for first vice chairperson and Katie Bordonaro for second vice chairperson. The board’s Nominating Committee will announce a slate of candidates at the Thurs., Oct. 23, C.B. 2 full board meeting, but other candidates and slates can also be “nominated from the floor.” There are a lot of rumors and accusations flying around, with some charging that current board chairperson, David Gruber, is even trying to handpick his successor. Gruber denied this to us, and added that he wants to do something to make the process more informative for board members. We’re told there will be a question-and-answer period with all the candidates at Thursday’s meeting, with only C.B. 2 members allowed to query the candidates.
Radical case: East Village radical attorney Stanley Cohen got a brief reprieve Monday, when he was due in court in Syracuse for sentencing on charges of obstruction of taxes. The sentencing was adjourned to Oct. 31. Cohen is reportedly facing 18 months in jail. But speaking to us last week, he was holding out hope that he might serve less time, though didn’t want get into too many details. “Whether there will be jail, how much jail — 18 months could be a year,” he said. “There’s reductions and halfway house.” When we spoke with him, he was getting ready to leave his Avenue D pad for a four-day trip to an undisclosed country in the Middle East, where he said he was “going to deal with a situation.” We later read — in media reports blasting his radical tweets — that it was Kuwait. “Terror suspects’ lawyer Stanley Cohen rants before prison sentence,” blared the headline on an NBC News online article. The article displayed some of his Kuwaiti tweets, including: “Palestine for Palestinians, every one else apply for a terrorist visa,” and “So what are we now to call those Israelis tired of genocide and going back home — to Europe. Self-hating realists.” Anyway, on a lighter subject, we asked Cohen — who we knew is a big Knicks fan — about another crisis situation, New York sports. “I’m very depressed. I love Carmelo Anthony,” he said. “But I don’t have a lot of respect for the surrounding team. I like Tyson Chandler a lot. I had hoped they’d get a real point guard. … I’m a Yankees fan — we suck. We lost Jeter.” His team the Giants need to improve, and forget about the Jets, he said, especially since they signed Michael Vick. “I’m a dog person,” he said. “I can forgive a lot of things, but… .” Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street folks have made a video on Cohen, in which he and journalist Chris Hedges make the case for why Cohen should not be “silenced” by the feds but should be shown leniency. In short, as they both say in the clip, Cohen — who used to represent the East Village squatters — stands up to power, which is why the government wants him behind bars.
