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Around new York The best items from The Notebook, City & State’s political blog City & State’s political blog, The Notebook, is your key source for political and campaign developments in New York. Stay on top of the news with items like these at www.cityandstateny.com/thenotebook.
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1. ALBANY
Gov. Andrew Cuomo will appoint Fran Barrett (above), wife of muckraking reporter Wayne Barrett, as his new interagency coordinator for not-for-profit services, a Cuomo source said. The position is a new one, created to help coordinate the agency’s process of reforming the state’s contracting with not-forprofit groups. Barrett, an experienced nonprofit group consultant, once described herself to The New York Times as “Wayne’s liaison to the planet Earth.” Barrett was formerly the executive director of Community Resource Exchange, a management consulting firm she founded in 1979 dedicated to advising nonprofit organizations. In 2009 Barrett was the recipient of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management’s 2009 Founders Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals for contributions to nonprofit capacity building over periods of 25 years or longer.
(above), Halloran.org? Officially, you would first have to go through Normannii Thiud, Inc., a defunct, neopagan charity founded by Halloran, which owns all the campaign-related sites. A campaign spokesman for Halloran, Steve Stites, said that Halloran initially began creating websites registered to the nonprofit years ago. (Halloran.org, for instance, was created in 2005, initially for religious purposes.) Later Halloran used the same credit card to register a slew of campaign-related sites as his political career blossomed, according to Stites, so the sites have continued to be officially registered to the religious nonprofit. Halloran’s neo-pagan religious beliefs have sparked interest; the Republican councilman is the country’s first elected official of that religious persuasion.
County Executive Dan McCoy. But Breslin says that won’t amount to much in the primary. “I think he probably is an ally [of McCoy’s], but I don’t think that’s an impediment to my victory,” Breslin said. Breslin bested attorney Luke Martland in a closely watched race in 2010. “Luke Martland was a very bright guy, but was an outsider,” he said. “Now we have Shawn Morse, who is an insider but has no support within the district.” Morse naturally did not take kindly to being called an insider. “This type of name-calling is one of the political games that longtime politicians like Neil Breslin play,” he said via email. “After 18 years in office, 18 years of collecting special-interest money and 18 years of not delivering for the people of this district, the guy who just announced his 10th reelection attempt surrounded by politicians decides to call me an insider.”
raise money for a run against Grisanti, a top target for Senate Democrats, who has a heavily Democratic district. Former Democratic Erie County Legislature Chairman 1, 3 Chuck Swanick (above), who has been endorsed by the Erie County Conservative Party (a major blow to 5 Grisanti) is already in the 2 Democratic primary. And earlier this month, Tonawanda attorney Kevin Stocker registered a campaign committee to run as a Republican. Queens Sen. Mike Gianaris, chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has been spending a fair amount of time in Western New York trying to determine who will challenge Grisanti—but it’s as yet unclear who the DSCC will back in the Democratic primary. A spokesman for the DSCC did not immediately return requests for comment. But it does appear that the Erie County Democrats—who have had tensions with Swanick, a conservative Democrat who has alleged ties to Steve Pigeon, an opponent of Erie Democratic chair Len Lenihan—may be interested in backing Panepinto’s run: A fundraising invite has been posted on the Erie Dems’ website.
3. ALBANY
2. QUEENS
Want to buy up the domain name HalloranForCongress. com? How about HalloranWatch.net? Or perhaps the official site for congressional candidate and Queens Councilman Dan Halloran 4
Albany County Legislator Shawn Morse (above) had barely declared his intention to enter the primary against State Sen. Neil Breslin before the sniping began. Morse, who announced his run for Senate May 2, is hoping the redrawn 44th District will be favorable to his candidacy, as well as his alliance with newly elected Albany
May 7, 2012 | www.cityandstateny.com
4. BUFFALO
The Democratic primary to take on GOP State Sen. Mark Grisanti is getting more crowded. Marc Panepinto, an attorney who has been rumored to be interested in taking on the freshman Republican, registered a campaign committee to
5. WESTCHESTER:
What’s this? A Republican attacking a Republican for attacking a Democrat?
Strange things are afoot in Westchester County. Diane DiDonato-Roth (above), a realtor and member of the North Castle Town Council in Westchester County, is calling out her primary opponent Bob Cohen for calling into question campaign expenditures made by the Democrat both are vying to face in November, Assemblyman George Latimer. It goes like this: Cohen’s campaign sent out a release last week charging Latimer with violating state campaign-finance laws by failing to itemize $17,000 in credit-card payments on his most recent filing. Of particular interest to Cohen were payments for “dinners for two,” which local news site Talk of the Sound took to be a not-so-subtle jab at Latimer for his “close, personal relationship with New Rochelle Judge Susan Kettner.” Latimer is married with children. “The Cohen campaign specifically called on Mr. Latimer to make public the names of who he dined with on those various occasions, many of which were clearly dinners for two,” the campaign’s statement said. DiDonatoRoth, who announced her campaign to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer in February, accuses Cohen of suggesting that Latimer was engaged in an affair with Kettner, even though her statement makes no reference to the judge’s name (though it does provide a link to the Talk of the Sound article). “The only people this kind of gutter politics hurts are the innocent family members of all accused,” DiDonato-Roth said in a statement. Cohen spokesman Bill O’Reilly said he was flabbergasted by DiDonato-Roth’s statement. “What smear?” he said. “All we asked is that Latimer account for his campaign spending, which looks like a series of dinners for two. I’ve never even heard of the judge before.”
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