The 2011 Manh. Judicial Nominating Convention & Electing Judges the Old-fashioned Way

A QUICK OVER-VIEW OF THE 2011 JUDICIAL CONVENTION

By Alan Flacks (212) 840-1234

The 2011 First Judicial District (Manh.) State Supreme Court judicial nominating convention was held Sept. 21st. There were five vacancies to be filled: three “open” seats and two held by incumbents who were seeking re-election and were not opposed. The incumbents are Laura Visitacion-Lewis and Joan Madden. A screening panel, used since 1977, found the following nine applicants--in no particular order--as the most highly qualified of those who applied: Arthur Engoron, Barbara Jaffe, Rita Mella, Peter Moulton, Ruth Pickholtz, George Silver, Anil Singh, Shlomo Hagler, and Analisa Torres. Additionally, there were four carry-over candidates created by a recent Party rule change (called “2/4”; that is, reported as most highly qualified by two prior panels in the last four consecutive years). They are: Saliann Scarpulla, Deborah Kaplan, Ellen Gesmer, and Manny Mendez.

At the convention, there was a "dog-and-pony" show. All candidates were nominated, received nominating and seconding speeches, spoke and then withdrew from consideration except for those candidates who garnered enough delegate votes after a pre-convention week of furious "speed-dating" of politicking, calls, and receptions. (At a future date, ample explanation of this and of the maneuvering, machinations, predictions, palavering, and a cast of characters to be provided.)

The eventual nominees in addition to the incumbents Joan Madden and Laura Visitacion-Lewis are: Analisa Torres, Deborah Kaplan, and Ellen Gesmer. These five shall be on your November 8th General election ballot for the Democratic Party.

Once again, County Leader Keith Wright was not a "player" as Ellen Gesmer steam-rolled through based upon her own supporters, Deborah Kaplan made it backed by District Leader Louise Dankberg and her cohorts, while Analisa Torres trumped Manuel Mendez. And Sheldon Silver's fave Shlomo Hagler couldn't put together enough delegate support.

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Lombardi On Electing Manhattan Judges The Old-Fashioned Way: Before Election Day

BY Celeste Katz, N.Y. Daily News, 27 October 2011

No need to count the votes that will be cast in the upcoming Nov. 8 general election in Manhattan. The results are already in.

Our incisive Frank Lombardi reports in this week's Uptown News column (27 Oct. 11):

In this off-year for most public-office elections, there are only 14 judicial seats to be filled in Manhattan. There's just 14 names on the ballot; all unoppposed. In effect, they've been pre-elected. Voters who show up to cast ballots in the no-choice election will be mere rubber stamps. Four candidates are from northern Manhattan, but uptown voters - and in the rest of the borough (and in most of the city) - will find their choices were made for them by Democratic leaders and clubhouse loyalists. There's a million registered voters in Manhattan, and 69% are Democrats. So the party's judicial nominees invariably win.

Other parties rarely bother to nominate rival candidates. This year, Manhattan Republicans cross-nominated three of the Democrats. Some choice, uh? Of the 14, five (including two incumbents) are running borough-wide for 14-year terms on the state Supreme Court. That's a trial-level court that handles major civil cases and felony crimes.

The nine other candidates (including four incumbents) are running for 10-year terms on the Civil Court, which handles civil cases worth less than $25,000 and misdemeanor criminal cases. Two are to be "elected" county-wide, the others by voters in their respective court districts (so ballots will vary).

Of the 14, only one Civil Court candidate was nominated by winning a contested Democratic primary (Tony Cannataro, running in the Chelsea district). The others were nominated through procedures scripted, staged, choreographed and directed by Manhattan Democratic chieftain Keith Wright of Harlem and his assorted party officers, district leaders and judicial delegates.

Supreme Court candidates aren't subject to primaries, so those five were actually elected the moment they received the Democratic nominations at the party's Sept. 21 judicial convention. The unanimous nominations came after weeks, if not months, of behind-the-scene politicking, dickering and deal-making among Democratic leaders and club stalwarts.

It sounds almost illegal, but the clubhouse way of picking state Supreme Court justices was declared Constitutional by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2008. Defenders will say it's representative democracy by well-informed party activists, but the U.S. Supreme court acknowledged the state can "determine it is not desirable and replace it." No move is afoot in Albany, the elephant graveyard of reform. Judicial hopefuls - both those who get nominated and those bypassed - devote a good deal of time and money courting clubhouse support. Judicial campaign rules allow them to buy tickets to political events, during prescribed periods.

Here's just a few of the typical political pit stops by one nominated Supreme Court candidate from March 3 to July 11: $175, lower East Side Democrats; $400, Community Free Democrats; $500, New York County Democratic Committee (headed by Wright, a Harlem assemblyman and district leader); $400, Ansonia Independent Democrats; $100, Barack Obama Democratic Club; $150, Village Independent Democrats; $100, Fred E. Samuel Democratic Club (Wright's club); $100, West Harlem Independent Democrats; $100, Friends of Bill Perkins, and so on and so on.

They're not big amounts but, year after year, they add up. This particular candidate spent $7,455 for tickets during that period, and $4,760 the prior year. Multiply that by a dozen or so would-be Supreme Court justices each year, and an equal or higher number of Civil Court seekers, and you have what a court expert calls "a movable feast" for the clubhouse pols.

Defenders of the Manhattan way will also say they only nominate qualified candidates who pass muster with their screening committees, whose members are named by various bar associations and civic groups. But it's the clubhouse system that ultimately decides who is nominated. The more-rigorous screening system set up through the state's unified court system is voluntary and often ignored by candidates. Judges seem destined to be elected the old-fashioned way: before Election Day.
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Now is the winter of our fiscal discontent
made glorious summer by this sun of Mario.

The Flacks Report [19 Oct. 11]

Get Out the Vote!---Kalev Pehme Memorial Service---Pfau Leaves O.C.A.---Tammany Sheet Music
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Get Out the Vote!

This 90-second spot promoting Sunday's election in Tunisia is the best "get-out-the-vote" ad I have ever seen! Make sure to watch the video.
---Douglas A. Kellner, N.Y.S. Commissioner of Elections

http://www.tunisia-live.net/2011/10/19/ben-ali-is-back/

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Kalev Pehme Memorial Service

Memorial Service for Kalev Pehme, ace political reporter, is Sunday, 6th November, 2011, at 1 o'clock P.M., at the Estonian House, 243 East 34th Street (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.).

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Pfau Leaves O.C.A. Steps Down as Chief Administrator

By John Caher, New York Law Journal, Thurs., 20 October 2011.

[Excerpts]

Chief Administrative Judge Ann T. Pfau, who has managed the state court system through 4½ exceptionally tumultuous years, today informed colleagues that she will step down on Dec. 1 to take over a new medical malpractice program and try cases in her home borough of Brooklyn. She announced her plans in a conference call with the state's administrative judges. A successor was not immediately named.
Judge Pfau's tenure on Beaver Street coincided with rancorous and often bitter controversy over judicial salaries, early retirements, layoffs and budget cuts. Yet the first woman to hold the highly stressful and often thankless job said in an interview that she "wake[s] up every day thinking I am the luckiest person in the world to have this job." "This is the career of a lifetime," Judge Pfau said. "But there comes a time when you need to do something else. I want to be a judge."
Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said Judge Pfau approached him several months ago expressing a desire to move to a new assignment, but agreed to remain in the position through the resolution of the judicial pay dispute and the submission of the next budget, which is due Dec. 1, the day she departs. . . .
The chief judge said he will appoint a new chief administrative judge within a matter of days, but declined to identify his choice. Judge Lippman said he is reassigning Judge Pfau to the position of coordinating judge of the New York State Medical Malpractice Program.
In that position, Judge Pfau will administer a federal grant and oversee a program that promotes early settlement of medical negligence cases through judge-directed negotiation. She will be working with Bronx Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon, who initiated the pilot program. Judge Pfau, who has maintained a regular commercial caseload during her years as an administrative judge, will preside over medical malpractice matters in Brooklyn in addition to her coordinating role.
As chief administrative judge, Judge Pfau earns $147,600 a year. Her new salary has not yet been determined, Judge Lippman said. Under the state Constitution (Article VI, §28), the chief administrative judge supervises the daily operation and administration of a court system that handles 4.7 million cases a year, overseeing a $2.5 billion budget, 3,600 state and local judges and 15,000 judicial employees spread over 300 different locations. . . .
Judge Pfau, 63, is a career court administrator who entered the court system in 1985, shortly after graduating from Brooklyn Law School with two young children. "Like a lot of women in those circumstances, I went into government," Judge Pfau said. She began her career in the courts as an assistant deputy counsel in the Office of Court Administration, an assignment she describes as "just marvelous."
In 1997, she was appointed to the bench by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and later served as deputy chief administrative judge for management support, administrative judge for the Second Judicial District and first deputy administrative judge. Judge Pfau also has served as an acting Supreme Court justice in the Commercial Division of Supreme Court in Brooklyn. . . . In every court position she has held for the past 22 years, Judge Pfau worked closely with Judge Lippman. . . .

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Tammany Sheet Music [Copy this link to your clipboard and paste into a web browser]

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/a/a62/a6277/

[Courtesy, Evan Edwards]

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Now is the winter of our fiscal discontent
made glorious summer by this sun of Mario.

Random Items [14 October 2011]

The Week Downtown: Soumas, Wall St. Bull, MTA Stone Str. Service Center---Brief Judicial Convention Report---Cleaning Postponed

Soumas

Notably absent from this week's Board of Elections Commissioners' meeting: Manhattan Democrat and Board secretary Gregory Soumas. He also stayed away from last week's executive session although he was at the Board H.Q. Is he on his way out? Paste into browser if this doesn't open:
[ http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2011/10/f-bombs-at-the-nyc-board-of-elections ]

Wall Street Bull

The large sculpture of a bull symbolizing Wall Street was placed under heavy police guard. The island it is on at the north end of Bowling Green has been barricaded (causing tourists to stand in moving traffic lanes). Twelve N.Y.P.D. officers and a supervisor have been assigned "24/7" to protect it against--against?

MTA Stone Street Service Center

The M.T.A. N.Y.C. Transit Authority sole City service center (for maps, damaged cards, reduced fare cards etc.) on Stone Str. right around the corner from the T.A. H.Q. at 2 B'way in lower Manhattan has been caught closing early. It is open until 5 P.M. on weekdays, but they exclude the public they serve 15-20 minutes early every day "to close down our computers." Wrong and highly improper. M.T.A. Director Andrew Albert promised to call the T.A. Prez to task.

Brief Judicial Convention Report

A QUICK OVER-VIEW OF THE 2011 JUDICIAL CONVENTION: The 2011 First Judicial District (Manh.) State Supreme Court judicial nominating convention was held Sept. 21st. There were five vacancies to be filled: three “open” seats and two held by incumbents who were seeking re-election and were not opposed. The incumbents are Laura Visitacion-Lewis and Joan Madden. A screening panel, used since 1977, found the following nine applicants--in no particular order--as the most highly qualified of those who applied: Arthur Engoron, Barbara Jaffe, Rita Mella, Peter Moulton, Ruth Pickholtz, George Silver, Anil Singh, Shlomo Hagler, and Analisa Torres. Additionally, there were four carry-over candidates created by a recent Party rule change (called “2/4”; that is, reported as most highly qualified by two prior panels in the last four consecutive years). They are: Saliann Scarpulla, Deborah Kaplan, Ellen Gesmer, and Manny Mendez.

At the convention, there was a "dog-and-pony" show. All candidates were nominated, received nominating and seconding speeches, spoke and then withdrew from consideration except for those candidates who garnered enough delegate votes after a pre-convention week of furious "speed-dating" of politicking, calls, and receptions. (At a future date, ample explanation of this and of the maneuvering, machinations, predictions, palavering, and a cast of characters to be provided.)

The eventual nominees in addition to the incumbents Joan Madden and Laura Visitacion-Lewis are: Analisa Torres, Deborah Kaplan, and Ellen Gesmer. These five shall be on your November 8th General election ballot for the Democratic Party.

[Your correspondent has not been able to send out his Report or events of late because of hand and nerve problems, typewriting with one finger at 5 w.p.m.(!). No announcement was made, but as many of you have seen him at recent meetings wearing a sling and have been asking, suffice it to say: carpal tunnel median nerve release and cubital tunnel ulnar nerve release. WebMD anyone?]

Cleaning Postponed

Suzanne Jacobson and Alan Flacks were going to cab over to the Eastside this morning to clean Mayor Mike's E. 79th Str. townhouse's second floor, but it has been postponed.

Now is the winter of our fiscal discontent
made glorious summer by this sun of Mario.

Manh. Elections Commish Makes the Daily News

The N.Y. Daily News's Celeste Katz Weighs In With the Scoop on Manhattan Democratic N.Y.C. Board of Elections Commissioner Greg Soumas.

Link to or paste into your browser:

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2011/10/f-bombs-at-the-nyc-board-of-elections

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NYDailyNews.com Blogs October 6, 2011 By Celeste Katz

F-Bombs At The NYC Board Of Elections?

Bronx Republican Elections Commissioner J.C. Polanco is casting a vote for Manhattan Democratic Commissioner Gregory Soumas to step down from the board after what he said has been a series of vitriolic attacks and threats of beatdowns.

In an email to his fellow commissioners obtained by the Daily Politics from an outside source, Polanco wrote that after the board's Sept. 27 meeting:
"As I awaited an elevator to return to work, Secretary Soumas approached me and said, "don't ever f---ing come near me" and went on to say, "I will f--- you up any time any day; let's go outside right now so I can f--- you up" and proceeded to call me a f---ing a----- and I better not write any checks my mouth can't cash."

Polanco also claims Soumas has been verbally abusive to other members of the elections staff and that it's time for him to resign to end what has become "a terrible hostile working environment."

He specifically says in the letter that he declined to go to the authorities about what he said was not only verbal abuse but "threats to kill me." Reached by phone, Polanco confirmed he wrote the email, but declined to discuss its contents or personnel matters at the Board.

Called this afternoon, Soumas appeared taken aback by the allegations and denied them entirely: "I don't want to comment because it simply isn't true. It's bizarre. It never happened. It's absurd. There are no eyewitnesses to this, because it didn't happen." Soumas said all that happened was that he and Polanco had a disagreement during an executive session about a union matter that then spilled over into a political issue about a Bronx Republican employee at the Board of Elections.

Afterward, Soumas said he and Polanco met at the elevator, and he asked Polanco to "get the f--- away from me." That, he said, ended the matter as far as he was concerned. "It's certainly crazy. How do you respond to something like this? It's purely political -- and there's a history among the Bronx Republicans of doing things like this," he said.

Polanco responds, "I am appalled at Commissioner Soumas' remarks, especially those referring to the Bronx Republicans. I want to thank the members of the Citizens Union and our legal staff that followed up with me after witnessing the incident to make sure I was ok. It's a shame that the hardworking men and women of the Manhattan Democratic Party and [county] Chairman Keith Wright have this bully as their commissioner."

polanco soumas email 10-6-2011 3-02-21 PM.bmp_.jpg

Necrology

THE FLACKS REPORT
[1st Oct., '11]

Kalev Pehme---Elnor Geissman---Mary Scarpulla

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Kalev Pehme

Kalev Pehme, ace reporter and first-class political journalist, died this August in California, where he resided. A memorial service will be held in New York city. Watch this column for time and date or call New York Civic at (212) LOngacre 4 - 4441. [See järelehüüe, below.]

Elnor Geissman

Elnor Geissman, mother of Mary Geissman, died last month at her home in Illinois. She was 97 years young. Condolences to Mary and Jerry Koenig.

Mary Scarpulla

Mary Scarpulla, mother of Acting State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla. Wake Monday, 3 Oct., Mathew's Funeral Parlor, 2508 Victory Blvd. @ Willowbrook Rd., Staten Island (718-761-55.44). Funeral Mass Tues., 11 A.M., Holy Child R.C. Church, 4747 Amboy Rd. @ Arden Ave., S.I. Condoglianze to Saliann, her husband Paul Gillow and children Michael and Gabrielle.

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Pehme, Ex-Editor of Our Town, Dies

By Dennis King in Our Town on September 8, 2011

Kalev Pehme, a former managing editor of Our Town, died two weeks ago of natural causes at his home in Redondo Beach, Calif. He was 61 and had been in poor health for several years.

Pehme worked at Our Town during the 1970s and 1980s. He shared the passion of then-publisher Ed Kayatt for taking on stories that the major media ignored as too controversial. He delighted especially in commenting on the underbelly of New York politics and ferreting out below-the-radar-screen corruption in the court system. He also placed a strong emphasis on combating religious and racial bigotry and the deceptive practices of cults such as the Unification Church.

Perhaps his most important achievements were his series on the endemic problems of New York’s federal bankruptcy court and his upholding of Our Town’s reputation as a fearless paper with a strong point of view. Betty Dewing, a long-time columnist for the paper, has written that Pehme’s “scorching editorials were legendary, but best were his critical comments that followed some letters to the editors.”

Pehme’s father, Karl Pehme, born in Estonia, was a noted sculptor. His mother, Guerel Oulanoff, trained as a concert pianist and was the daughter of a Kalmyk writer and political figure who had fled to the west after the Bolshevik Revolution. The couple met in Paris and Pehme was born there in 1949. Two years later, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in the New York City area. Pehme graduated from Lake Forest College in Illinois in 1972. After working briefly for a theatrical agent in Manhattan, he became an editor at the East Side Express, where he met his wife, Scarlett Lovell, one of the paper’s photographers. They had one child, Morgan, born in 1978. The couple divorced in 1986.

Pehme nurtured Morgan’s early talent for chess, and both father and son would be depicted as secondary characters in the 1993 film "Searching for Bobby Fischer." Pehme was played by David Paymer and Morgan by Hal Scardino. With his father as his coach, Morgan would become a national scholastic chess champion.

After leaving Our Town, Pehme became the editor of the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board’s Recodification of the Law project. He worked as a book editor and as the editor of Chess Life magazine and became an adjunct professor of journalism at St. John’s University in Queens, where he taught from 2003-2008. He would tell friends and family that working with college students was a “delight.”

A voracious reader and a devotee of hermeneutics, Pehme was learned in a dizzying array of subjects from Greek philosophy and Renaissance magic to the I Ching and French literature. He had a generous sense of humor and love of laughter. His favorite comic writer was the British novelist P.G. Wodehouse, creator of Bertie Wooster. Several days before his death, Pehme wrote on his Facebook page that he’d been re-reading Wodehouse “for the sake of a few laughs—no, many laughs. My life has a great void in it, i.e., that I could never join the Drones Club” [a reference to the fictional band of aristocratic scamps to which Wooster belonged].

Aside from his son Morgan, Pehme is survived by his daughter-in-law Patricia and two-year-old granddaughter Fiona, of Brooklyn, and his two sisters, Reet Caldwell of Chicago and Olivia Pehme of Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands.
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Dennis King worked with his friend Kalev Pehme at Our Town.