the albany project

And, man, this one smells. It smells real bad.

From the New York Daily News:

Westchester goes Dixie

Friday, November 10th, 2006

Welcome to Westchester County, the Deep South of New York State.
That's the message supporters of powerful Republican State Sen. Nick Spano gave to hundreds of black and Hispanic Westchester residents on Election Day with an ugly campaign of voter intimidation at several polling sites.

"For most of the day, it felt like I was in the South," said one Democratic Party lawyer.

....

Stewart-Cousins, Westchester's best-known black leader, was ahead by more than 2,100 votes. Spano, however, has refused to concede. He is clinging to the hope that a tally of absentee and affidavit ballots will erase his opponent's lead - one that withstood questionable tactics on Election Day.

The worst example was seen at the Police Athletic League gymnasium on North Broadway in Yonkers, a largely minority neighborhood.

A large throng of Republican volunteers, many of them wearing Yonkers Fire Department shirts and union caps, gathered inside the polling place and repeatedly challenged the signatures of many of those coming in to vote, said Frank Streng, a White Plains attorney who visited the North Broadway site in the late afternoon as a Democratic Party legal monitor.

The widespread challenges led to long lines of angry black voters. Eventually, Streng convinced police and county election officials to show up and reduce the number of Republican poll-watchers. The law allows only three per election district.

....

Ironically, it was the Spano campaign, not Stewart-Cousins, that benefitted from significant Election Day help from New York City outsiders.

That help came from Local 1199/SEIU, the powerful hospital workers union headed by Dennis Rivera. Rivera dispatched scores of his members to work the polls for Spano and threw his union's enormous resources behind him.

This was all done to help Rivera's close friend, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, the main politician in Albany who makes sure every year when the state budget is approved that the needs of 1199 and the city's hospital executives are met.

The Spano campaign has become the clearest example of how far 1199 has wandered from its rich legacy of championing civil rights.

The favorite union of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has gradually turned into just another deal-cutting political machine. Its charismatic leader, once the shining prince of this city's labor movement, has turned into just another political boss.

And this week came the lowest point of all.

The leaders of this union of mostly black and Hispanic workers did everything they could to defeat a progressive black woman Democratic candidate in Westchester. They did so even as their Republican allies in that race were intimidating black voters.

And despite all that, Stewart-Cousins was still leading in the count in the Deep South of Westchester.

Disgusting. I don't even know where to start. Does the membership really understand what their leadership is doing in their names? with their money?

Rivera should be ashamed of himself.

Posted by downtown on Friday, November 10, 2006 at 1:57 PM | Permalink