Civic punishes anti-Machine candidate

From the Times Ledger:

Oster Bryan, the former candidate who ran for an Assembly seat in southeast Queens against incumbent Clyde Vanel (D-Queens Village) in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary was asked to resign from his post as the president of the St. Albans Improvement Association.

Bryan believes that an $8,000 grant sent to the civic association before the Sept. 13 primary by Vanel was at the heart of the decision of him getting booted from organization.

“They are trying to remove as president, and they are saying it’s because I ran for public office, but that makes no sense to me,” said Bryan. “There is no such rule on our books that says I can’t.”

The eight-page bylaws from the civic association did not indicate a member or leader of the organization could not run for office; however, a letter sent to the former candidate said that he knew of the funds that were sent to the civic association before he decided to run and put the needs of the nonprofit at risk.

“It appears that you had no interest nor respect for the welfare of this organization and its members. Instead you choose to join the race for the Assembly seat after already knowing Assemblyman Clyde Vanel gave the Civic a grant,” said the letter that was sent out by the organization’s Vice President Martha Oliver.

Vanel implied he had nothing to do with Bryan being asked to resign and that funds were sent to the civic association long before the primary race; however, he did not have records on hand as to when exactly he offered the grant as of Wednesday night.

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." - 1 Timothy 6:10

Pols want to monitor restaurant inspectors

From the Times Ledger:

Queens lawmakers and small business owners gathered Tuesday at Flushing Town Hall to introduce a new bill aimed at protecting restaurants from unfair inspection practices.

State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing), state Sen. Jose Peralta (D- East Elmhurst), Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Howard Beach) and Assemblyman Clyde Vanel (D- Queens Village) said the bill would help lessen the amount of burdensome fines levied on small businesses that can not handle them.

The bill is intended to reform the New York restaurant health investigation system, according to Kim. As a teenager Kim saw his parent’s grocery store go bankrupt and close after suffering from what he termed overregulation, excessive fining and high rents.

According to Kim, the bill, titled “The Restaurant Owner Whistle Blower Protection Act” will establish an independent oversight body to receive complaints about health inspectors. Complaint intake will create a hotline and website in multiple languages, including Arabic, Bengali, and Chinese. Kim said the if the bill passes, the city must provide an annual summary report on total number of independent complaints, what type of complaints and investigative findings. Finally, restaurants owners will be given three opportunities to deny the inspections on sitet and request a new inspector. Every time the restaurant owner will pay a fee, $75 for the first denial, $150 for the second denial and $250 for the final denial.

Smith has 2 challengers for Senate primary

From the Politicker:

State Senator Malcolm Smith, a Democrat charged last year in a sprawling bribery scheme to land himself on the GOP ballot for mayor, looks like he will now be fending off at least two challengers if he seeks re-election this year.

Mr. Smith, is already facing attorney Munir Avery and will now also contend with Clyde Vanel, a former candidate for City Council and the State Assembly.

Mr. Vanel, like Mr. Avery, appears to be viable. He recently ran for an open City Council seat last year, finishing a strong second to the eventual winner, Daneek Miller. Mr. Vanel promised a “strong showing” in fund-raising numbers set to be released next week and said he was building coalitions within the district to win.

“The numbers show I have strong support in the neighborhood,” he explained. “It differentiates me from any one else in race.”

Democrats wanted, dead or alive

From City Hall News:

Twelve-term Assembly Member Barbara Clark is counting on her old friends Gloria Black and Warrington Canston, two state committee members from Clark’s district in Southeast Queens, to help her win another term in office this year. And she did not let the fact that both Black and Canston are apparently dead deter her from putting their names at the top of her petitions.

Clark’s opponent, Clyde Vanel, a 36-year-old lawyer and former candidate for City Council in 2009, filed a challenge to Clark’s petitions with the Queens Board of Elections last Thursday. He said Clark’s indifference toward the petition-gathering process speaks to a wider sense of apathy in the community he hopes to provoke with his candidacy.

“That’s just ridiculous,” Vanel said. “Barbara’s county committee people, a majority of them don’t even know that they’re on county committee. We’re fighting against something that has historically kept a majority of the community uninvolved and outside the process.”

“Is a dead person a Democrat?” he asked. “I don’t know.”

But Clark could end up skating by without much damage to her re-election efforts. According to the Board of Elections, while it may seem odd to include the deceased on a candidate’s petitions, the signatures that are collected are technically counted as separate for each person on them. Therefore, while the fact that they are deceased makes Black and Canston ineligible for the ballot, as long as Clark herself is living (which she is), there is no legal problem.

Upsetting the apple cart in southeast Queens

From the NY Times:

Clyde Vanel’s yard signs were surprisingly ubiquitous. His billboards were “in your face.” And his bus-shelter ads were “tacky, tacky, tacky.”

That was the buzz at the Guy R. Brewer United Democratic Club one night in August. Right outside the club, the headquarters of the local political power structure, Mr. Vanel’s face grinned out onto a busy street in southeast Queens and greeted Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr.’s supporters as they filed in to plan their fight against Mr. Vanel, the upstart Democratic challenger.

“Takes a lot of heart,” said Richard Gibbs, a Comrie supporter and vice president of the United Black Men of Queens County, a civic group. He chuckled, adding, “Somebody’ll take a contract out on him if he keeps on going like that.”

Mr. Vanel, 35, said he knew the club would find the ads cheeky. Democratic Party leaders, he believed, viewed the very act of challenging their candidate as bad manners.

That is why Donnie Whitehead, the driving force behind Mr. Vanel’s campaign, says he is staking his reputation — built over decades as an unofficial neighborhood leader — on an inexperienced candidate he met just months ago. Traditionally, Mr. Whitehead says, just as the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ, the only way into office in southeast Queens has been with the blessing of the Brewer club and the man who has run it for 39 years, the former councilman Archie Spigner.

“No more only getting elected through Archie,” Mr. Whitehead said.