By Henry J. Stern
October 7, 2005

Last week, in "Clarence and Thomas", we reported the conviction of Clarence Norman, the Brooklyn Democratic boss, and the indictment of Thomas DeLay, the House Republican leader.  Today we observe the fallout from this toppling of political icons.
 
On conviction for a felony, under New York State law Norman immediately forfeited both his party and public positions: Deputy Speaker, Assemblymember, and county leader.  He now faces trial on other counts of self-enrichment, because District Attorney Hynes has additional arrows in his quiver.  Norman also will get the opportunity to lighten his sentence by testifying against the candidates with whom he may have engaged in financial transactions, particularly in cash.  In some of these cases, there is the fig leaf of purchase of services - printing, postering, etc.   A judicial candidate with a Democratic nomination in Brooklyn requires no additional services to be elected, although possibly funds should be set aside for a victory dinner.

The first candidate to publicly emerge as a potential successor to Norman is Assemblyman Vito Lopez of Bushwick, who despite his surname is not considered Hispanic by members of the caucus.  Biologically, Lopez is mostly Italian-American.  Other public officials named Vito include Congressman Vito Fossella of Staten Island, who considered challenging Mayor Bloomberg for the Republican mayoral nomination in 2004, and the late Congressman Vito Marcantonio of East Harlem, the American Labor party candidate for Mayor of New York City in 1949.  He lost to incumbent Wiliam O'Dwyer (Democrat) and future Parks Commissioner Newbold Morris (Republican-Liberal).
 
As Parks Commissioner in the Giuliani administration, we had dealings with Assemblyman Lopez in 1999, which were most unsatisfactory.  Lopez, who chaired the Assembly Housing Committee, had secured funds from Albany to build a senior center in his district.  The site chosen had previously been assigned by the City to Parks, with a view to constructing a recreation center to serve the children of Bushwick.
 
Lopez wanted the site for a senior citizens center, to be operated by an organization he founded and controlled.  Parks thought that a building on the site would be appropriate, and since Lopez had obtained the funding, we offered him a five-year permit, renewable by mutual consent, for the use of the building.  He angrily refused, demanding a long term lease, to be awarded to his Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizen Center.  There would be no competitive bidding by social service providers, and no City input on how the building would be used or shared.
 
When we explained that the people's parkland could not and should not be leased for a generation to a particular organization, the Assemblyman used his political influence to get a Deputy Mayor to take the land away from Parks and give it to a more pliant agency.  It was explained to us that as Housing Chairman in the Assembly, Lopez would hold hostage the city's entire housing program unless he got his way.  We were not amused at this demonstration of personal power used in a manner which we believed was contrary to the public interest.
 
Whoever succeeds Norman will most likely be the object of intense prosecutorial attention, since there are a certain number of judgeships to be filled each year, and what better guide has there been to decide who should receive these plums than Adam Smith (1723-90, in case you thought he was a district leader).
 
The DeLay vacancy has been filled without delay, since nature abhors a vacuum.  Congressman Roy Blunt of Missouri, a conservative who came to Congress in 1997, was chosen as acting majority leader.  Since last week, DeLay has been indicted on two additional counts, the District Attorney responding to DeLay's claim that the first indictment was legally insufficient by securing another indictment from an understanding grand jury in Travis County (Austin).  It should be noted that the same DA, Ronnie Earle, previously indicted Texas Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, but that case was dropped before trial.  We New Yorkers should take comfort in the fact that indictments are better ways for Texans to conduct political warfare than shootouts.
 
Both the Clarence Norman and Thomas DeLay cases are far from over, and we will try to keep up with communiqués as they arrive from the prosecutors, the defense and the judges.  With regard to last week's headline, 'Clarence and Thomas', we point out that an alternative, Norman and Thomas, are the names of one of America's leading socialists, who ran six times for President, from 1928 through 1948.  BTW, Norman Thomas graduated from Princeton in 1905, while Woodrow Wilson was president of the university.  Clarence Thomas, not otherwise part of this story, graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, and is the only Yale Law School alumnus on the high court. (Harvard has six, including Chief Justice Roberts.)
 
In his perennial Presidential candidacy, Thomas succeeded Eugene V. Debs (for whom radio station WEVD was named).  Debs ran for President four times, starting in 1904, when he lost to Theodore Roosevelt.  His last candidacy, in 1920, was from a Federal prison, but his incarceration did not affect the outcome, which was the easy victory of Warren G. Harding of Ohio, thought by historians to be America's worst President.  1920 was the year in which the defeated Democratic candidate for Vice President was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
 
Although we are not Socialists, we cannot help but believe that their two candidates over ten elections, Debs and Thomas, were more honorable and more principled than Norman and DeLay, the two elected officials whose misconduct we have described.


#257  10.07.05  944wds