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Volume XX • Number 31 • August 1 - 7, 2013 •
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Stanton: We should ‘celebrate’ strip club owner Daily News article confirms the revelations in our reporting
By PAULETTE SCHNEIDER and the RIVERDALE REVIEW STAFF City Council candidate Clifford Stanton received a major setback on Sunday, when the Daily News published a full-page exposé of his ties with strip club kingpin Robert Gans. Particularly galling was that the article fully confirms previous accounts of the questionable relationship published over the past two weeks here in the Riverdale Review. “Rather than do the right thing and return these thousands of dollars in tainted contributions,” said Andrew Wolf, editor and Publisher of the Riverdale Review, “Stanton has compromised all of our communities by putting out the welcome mat for Robert Gans, the owner of Scores and the Penthouse Executive Club. “Informed voters need to ask the question, ‘why is Gans targeting our community as the only campaign he is funding so far this year?’ What does he expect in return in exchange for such a large investment? What is the quid pro quo? “ Observing that Stanton has adopted a “shoot the messenger” defense for his actions by attacking the Riverdale Review, Wolf noted that the Sunday Daily News article “confirmed every fact we have revealed as the truth.” “It is time for Stanton to take responsibility for subverting the political process by insinuating strip club money into this race,” noted Wolf. “Anyone that believes that there are no strings attached to such a large campaign contribution, must have been born yesterday.” Stanton’s main opponent, attorney Andrew Cohen, has demanded that Stanton return the tainted funds. The issue took center stage at the broadcast debate held by BronxNet host Gary Axelbank Monday night. As his opponents looked on incredulously, Stanton stated that the strip club impresario Gans should be “celebrated.” Last week Stanton called Gans a “philanthropist,” and insisted to the Daily News that Gans is running “cabarets,” not strip clubs. At the debate, ignoring the latest article in the Daily News, once again Stanton implied that it all was a fiction concocted by the Riverdale Review.
A second issue has emerged with Stanton’s efforts to remove a third candidate, Cheryl Keeling, from the primary day ballot by having his paid staffers challenge her nominating petitions at the Board of Elections. Stanton fears that Keeling, as one of his opponents in the Democratic primary race for the 11th District Council seat soon to be vacated by G. Oliver Koppell, will cost him votes in the attempt to overtake front-runner Andrew Cohen. Following the BronxTalk debate on Monday featuring Stanton, Keeling and Cohen, Keeling discussed how Stanton, who hasn’t been “appointed, anointed or elected,” is trying to have his way and subvert the democratic process. In June, he simply asked her to withdraw. “He said, ‘Let’s make a deal. You get off the ballot and I will owe you. It would be a big help to me if you did,’” Keeling recalled. She would not speculate on what he envisioned he’d “owe” her if she agreed. “How can he take it upon himself to make the determination as to who he wants out of the race?” she said. “He would have been perfectly happy to push me out of the race or have me leave the race because it was better for him. He wasn’t taking into account the desires and needs and rights of the district.” The Stanton campaign has also challenged many of the signatures on Keelings’s ballot petitions. Keeling said Stanton had told her on many occasions that he had no intention of challenging her candidacy, but during the debate he claimed he’d merely broached the subject with her. Keeling was puzzled by the zealousness of the challenges. “In a thousand signatures, I had more than 7,000 objections,” she said. For example, “over 200 times, they challenged me that a person was not registered or not enrolled in the party.” Another challenge claimed there were many out-of-district signatures. Keeling said she was told to expect that as many as 50 percent of signatures taken on the street are likely to be from people
Full-page article that appeared in Sunday’s Daily News confirms the facts revealed by the Riverdale Review over the past several weeks. who live in a different Council district, but her percentage was considerably less. “When you’re getting signatures in the supermarket and on the corner, you’re going to get some that are out of district,” Keeling said. “But out of 1,009 signatures, I had only 146 out of the district—which is a very low number.” “They challenged me 55 sep-
arate times on ‘no address,’” she continued. “But the Board of Elections found just one. So how did they make that error 54 times?” The Stanton campaign also challenged the witness statements on some petitions, claiming they were altered. This kind of challenge can invalidate a number of signatures. Some witnesses were challenged as not
being registered Democrats. But the very same witnesses were not challenged for that reason on other petition pages, Keeling explained. Many of the challenges are “just so obviously wrong,” she said. “They just put challenges down without even checking themselves to see whether the person was registered.” Continued on Page 2