Queens Machine chooses Simanowitz's successor

From the Times Ledger:

Following the death of state Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz (D-Flushing), the Queens Democratic Party has nominated David Rosenthal, a Kew Gardens resident.

Rosenthal has worked as district director for Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) and his nomination came with high praise from the Queens Democratic Party chairman, U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights).

Assembly Member Michael Simanowitz has died

From the Daily News:

Well-regarded State Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz, a devoted father and longtime public servant, died Saturday after battling an undisclosed illness. He was 45.

The Queens native was first elected to state office in 2011, representing a wide area in the center of his home borough — including his old neighborhood of Forest Hills.

He had previously served for 15 years as chief of staff for Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn, and worked for the city Housing Preservation and Development department prior to that job.

Simanowitz was eulogized in The Yeshiva World as “a tremendous voice for the Jewish community,” and Gov. Cuomo issued a statement hailing his colleague.

The Democratic assemblyman “worked every day to make life better for his constituents and I join them and all New Yorkers in mourning his sudden passing,” said Cuomo.

Seeking peace and quiet in Whitestone

From WPIX:

Neighbors in Whitestone, Queens enjoy the peace of their community. But they’ve been tracking the flight path of helicopters and sea planes. They are asking the government to review their data.

Their civic group, We Love Whitestone, is working to gather helicopter noise complaints. Dan Aronoff created airnoisereport.com and it has logged more than 2100 incidents in 2 months.

Senator Charles Schumer, State Senator Tony Avella and Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz are requesting the Federal Aviation Administration consider moving the flights closer to the water’s edge.

Whitestone rally features defensive architect

Vallone makes some grandiose statement of how he "negotiated with the architect and developer" but never would have let the people at the rally know that architect Joe Sultana was even there, except for the fact that he freaked out and verbally attacked Paul Graziano. Fun times!

Opposition to express bus between Flushing & Jamaica

From the Queens Courier:

As the city revs up plans to create express bus service between Jamaica and Flushing, residents and local politicians are throwing up speed bumps and roadblocks against the initiative.

“All they’re doing is shifting the burden of heavy traffic from one group of people to another,” Councilman Rory Lancman said. “And I can’t support anything like that.”

Across New York City there are several express lines that aim to cut down bus travel times by devoting a lane exclusively to express service, or Select Bus Service (SBS). But creating an exclusive bus lane means there is one less lane for regular traffic, a point that is a deal breaker for Lancman.

In a letter written by Lancman and Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz, the officials explain why they oppose the express bus lane to the Department of Transportation and the MTA. The Kew Gardens Hills Civic Association also signed onto the letter.

“No one can tell us exactly what the plan is, and that’s part of the problem,” said Jennifer Martin, co-president of the civic association. “If they’re going to reduce a busy thoroughfare to one lane, that’s going to create a tremendous backup. There has to be a better option.”

It's who you know and who you...

From Crain's:

On his governmental website, Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz, who has represented a Queens district since 2011, calls himself a "full-time legislator." In fact, Mr. Simanowitz has in recent months been picking up quite a bit of outside work in the legal field, with some of his assignments coming via a connection cozy even by the standard of clubby Queens politics.

Since March, Mr. Simanowitz, who is not an attorney, has been appointed as "court evaluator" in nine Queens state Supreme Court cases. For the six that have yielded payments so far, he has received $11,225 in compensation, records show.

The assemblyman is among 936 individuals on a list of people eligible for such appointments in Queens. Though Mr. Simanowitz is new to the field, he has some helpful connections: Four of his nine cases have come from Judge Lee Mayersohn, who is the son of Mr. Simanowitz's mentor and Assembly predecessor, Nettie Mayersohn.

A staffer for Mr. Simanowitz told Crain's that Mr. Simanowitz was doing the work as a public service, and that it was not especially lucrative compared to other types of work doled out by judges, such as guardianship appointments. But the assemblyman is not eligible to do much of that lucrative work because he is not an attorney.

Mr. Simanowitz is also the treasurer of the Queens Democratic organization. Judges in Queens are almost always elected because they are nominated with the political support of the Queens Democratic machine.

Queens Councilman-elect Paul Vallone has landed 14 court evaluator appointments over the past year. But during his hard-fought Democratic primary for the northeast Queens council seat, Mr. Vallone said that he would be a full-time legislator. A spokesman said that Mr. Vallone would indeed be taking his name off the list of those seeking appointments in 2014. Paul Vallone is the brother of term-limited Queens Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. and son of former Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr.

Hypocrites, a bit?

Photo from The Forum

From the Queens Gazette:

More than 500 people filled outreach center Ohr Natan on Thursday, July 25 to fight for the facility to remain open. Members of the community, spiritual leaders and elected officials voiced their support for Ohr Natan, where thousands of people depend upon for their food distribution, classes, children’s programs, events, lectures, referrals, ESL classes and Judaic studies each year. Ohr Natan is being evicted and possibly taken over by a developer who plans to convert the center into an apartment building. In attendance were Congressmember Grace Meng, state Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, Assemblymember Michael Simanowitz, Councilmember Karen Koslowitz, borough president candidate Melinda Katz and Barbara Baruch representing City Comptroller John Liu. Proclamations were presented to Ohr Natan by Meng, Stavisky, Koslowitz and Liu. The theme of the event was “We are here together with Ohr Natan —No to development! No to Destruction!”

No to development, no to destruction?!?

When was the last preservation rally that this cast of characters showed up for? They usually are the ones proclaiming that a structure needs to be torn down in the name of progress.

Melinda Katz is the reason that they are being evicted in the first place because she told the LPC in 2006 that the site was not worthy of landmarking (at the congregation's urging).  The other dopey electeds have caused similar harm throughout the borough.  So why all of a sudden is preservation so important?  How deep are the pockets of this crowd?

Limited love for Quinn?

From the Politicker:

When arguably the most powerful county organization in New York City, the Queens Democratic Party, endorsed Christine Quinn for mayor, political observers believed it was a coup for Ms. Quinn because Queens’s famously loyal elected officials would quickly back the Council speaker. But since party chairman Joe Crowley announced he was supporting Ms. Quinn on May 20, few Queens elected officials have followed suit.

“They’ve been surprised by the lukewarm reception for Quinn,” said one Queens Democratic operative, unaligned with any candidate. “Especially considering only three district leaders dissented at her endorsement.”

The black political leadership in southeastern Queens was irked on May 20 when Ms. Quinn was chosen over the race’s one African-American candidate, Bill Thompson, but the dissent was still relatively limited to a few older power brokers like former Councilman Archie Spigner. Ms. Quinn has secured the backing of some Queens elected officials, including Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, but thus far most have remained neutral.

Congresswoman Grace Meng, for example, has not endorsed Ms. Quinn, despite her close ties to the county organization. The same is true for elected officials like State Senator Toby Stavisky, State Senator Joe Addabbo and Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz. There is still time for elected officials to endorse Ms. Quinn and political insiders believe more, like Councilman James Gennaro, will back her. But she may also have an uphill battle in pressing her case to representatives of certain ethnic enclaves that have their own chosen candidates.

In addition, sources tell me that a lot of Dem club members are refusing to carry petitions for Quinn. This could get interesting.

Legislators want CB notification of brownfield cleanups

From Bayside Patch:

Three state legislators representing northeast Queens have introduced legislation that would require the city to notify community boards of brownfield cleanups in their vicinity.

State Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside and state Assemblymen Edward Braunstein, D-Bayside, and Michael Simanowitz, D-Flushing, are calling on the city’s Department of Environmental Conservation to keep all of the city’s community boards in the loop when a new brownfield site cleanup will take place.

The state legislators initiated the bill after Community Board 7 was not notified by the city about the Waterpointe-Whitestone brownfield cleanup site.

The bill recently passed the state Senate’s environmental conservation committee.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

It's Friday. You know what to do.

Photo from Times Ledger.

How the Queens Machine protects its candidates

From the Queens Chronicle:

In just under one week, Jacobs and about 10 of his volunteers had collected more than 1,600 signatures. After being told by the Queens Democrats that there wasn’t time to interview him to determine whether he could be a viable candidate for the party as they instead chose Michael Simanowitz, a former aide to Mayersohn, Jacobs was ecstatic that he might still be able to make a bid for the seat that represents the neighborhood where he has lived nearly his entire life.

Then, however, the city Board of Elections ruled last week that Jacobs’ signatures were invalid because he had not written the number of the Assembly district on top of each page of signatures.

“I followed the New York laws and rules regarding the Independence nomination, and I did everything that the petition form from the Board of Elections said to do,” Jacobs said. “Nowhere on the sample form did it say I had to have the Assembly district number on top of every single page. It’s upsetting.”

For a number of good government groups across the state, Jacobs’ situation is representative of New York’s tedious election laws, which they argue seriously deter people other than the party favorites from running for office.

“The function of all these convoluted rules is to protect the established parties from insurgent parties and to protect the established office holders from insurgents,” said Michael Krasner, a political science professor at Queens College. “The fact that you can make a good living as an election lawyer, someone who’s an expert in minutiae in laws, shows how difficult it is for someone without that expertise to mount a challenge to a candidate from one of the major parties.”

While Gov. Cuomo has said he hopes to make election reform a priority next year, Krasner and others have expressed skepticism that legislators would want to change the current system that often gives them a great deal of stability.

Smug as a bug with a rug

It's Friday, and the weather is cooling off a bit. Mother Nature has had enough hot air and so have Queens voters. It's time to caption this photo.

Machine bullies candidate off ballot

From City Hall News:

How high are the odds stacked against independent candidates in special elections? Ask Justin Wax Jacobs, a college student who wanted to run for the Queens Assembly seat vacated by Nettie Mayersohn. He first asked a local district leader if he could interview for the Democratic nomination - but says his offer was flatly rejected. He then somehow gathered 1,600 signatures in six days to run as an independent. Yet even though he posed no real threat to Mayersohn's chief of staff Michael Simanowitz, Queens Democratic election lawyer Frank Bolz was on hand at a Board of Elections hearing Tuesday to make sure Jacobs was thrown off the ballot over a technicality.

Profiling Nettie's right hand man

From the NY Times:

MICHAEL SIMANOWITZ, a longtime aide to Mrs. Mayersohn, wasted no time in publicly saying that he was planning to run for her seat, which would be filled through a special election on a date to be determined by the governor’s office.

Mrs. Mayersohn has denied that her retirement was timed to usher Mr. Simanowitz into her seat, and so did Mr. Simanowitz on Thursday, as he sat in a kosher bakery in Kew Gardens Hills.

He and Mrs. Mayersohn were not “pulling a Manton,” he said, referring to Thomas J. Manton, the late chairman of the Queens County Democratic Organization, who in 1998 announced his retirement in midterm to help his political protégé, Joseph Crowley, win it. Mr. Crowley is now the Democratic Party leader in Queens.

But of course not! NEVER!

From the Jewish Star, by our friend, Sergey:

With state law allowing up to 80 days for an election after a vacancy, Republican and independent candidates have time to establish their names, but are at a disadvantage in comparison to Simanowitz’s Democratic Party support and established ties to local leaders. “I think there are many good candidates possible, but there are not enough troops on the ground. We can win, but we are spread too thin,” said Phil Orenstein, an activist in the local Republican Party.

While no opposing candidates have officially announced their run, Simanowitz promised to make himself known to voters in the largely Jewish district.

Mayersohn retiring

From the Daily News:

Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn, the dean of the Queens delegation who was first elected back in 1982, announced today she is retiring.

Our Lisa L. Colangelo reports:

"After much deliberation, I believe the time has come for me to step aside," said Mayersohn, who turns 87 in May and represents the 27th Assembly district.

Mayersohn’s longtime aide, Michael Simanowitz, is being touted as the frontrunner to replace her.

Voters will pick Mayersohn’s replacement in a special election. But placement on the critical ballot is chosen by the four District Leaders - Mayersohn, Simanowitz, former Councilman Morty Povman and Charlotte Scheman.

Thank goodness the outcome has already been decided!