Ladies & Gentlemen,
Saturday I showed up with a group of volunteers working for Paul Graziano’s city council candidacy. In the recent Democratic primary he lost to the Vallone machine by a small margin. He’s got a real shot to win the General Election Nov 7th. But the tactics of Paul Vallone are thuggish as exemplified Saturday. Vallone and his campaign crew posted up outside of a Stop and Shop supermarket in the Bay Terrace Plaza which is in Bayside. They were first there so when we arrived we respectfully worked the back of the exit line from the supermarket.
Everything was going fine until Paul Vallone himself noticed that many of the shoppers were calling me over and having long conversations with me. He decided that he had had enough of freedom of speech and fair competition. He called the mall police on us who then instructed us that we were standing on private property and were without a permit which Paul Vallone had. I requested to see the permit but I was denied.
Rather than create a big scene since I was well aware that management was a Vallone crony we did the next best thing and marched outside onto the entering street and started to stop cars, talk with passengers and give out Paul Graziano literature. Thankfully the NYPD did not hassle us. Paul Graziano’s crew was working hard and rolled with the many changes that I had to make from our original plan.
This was New York State Reform Party teamwork at its best. We rolled with the adversity and turned it into a great campaign day. Now it’s onward to victory November 7th. (You can see in one of the pictures that Paul Vallone himself is leading the effort to remove us from us in front of the Stop and Shop).
- Curtis Sliwa, Chair of the NYS Reform Party
