Ed Towns, Who Said There’d Be “No Going Negative,” Appears to Be Going Negative

This morning, well-known Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who is now apparently working for Brooklyn Rep. Ed Towns’ congressional campaign, unleashed a couple of negative attacks on Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries:

“Former white-shoe lawyer Jeffries — who has never won a real contested campaign — is expected to continue raising big money from his rich Manhattan donors whose only knowledge of Brooklyn is that they sometimes detour there on their way to the Hamptons,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

“No one, including the already anointed candidate of Manhattan’s one percent, Mr. Jeffries, is a candidate until petitions are filed,” he told Capital New York.

Political campaigns in New York are often brutal affairs and Towns certainly can’t be blamed for hitting back at Jeffries, who has himself said some pretty negative things about Towns.

Still, Sheinkopf’s statements seem notable only because Towns told me a little more than a month ago that he absolutely, positively would not engage in any negative campaigning against Jeffries or his third opponent, Councilman Charles Barron, under any circumstances. This came after Jeffries called Towns’ seniority in Congress a “race car with no engine.”

“There will be no going negative on Charles Barron or Mr. Jeffries,” Towns said, citing his status as an ordained Baptist minister as a prohibitive factor. “I’d rather lose than be negative.”

He added, “So I’m shocked. But I’m not responding to him. It’s just not me.”

Towns then released a statement “insisting that he will not be dragged into a negative campaign war.”

Of course, in the month since Towns made those statements, a lot of questions have been raised about his campaign’s overall lack of aggressiveness – and hiring Sheinkopf to take on Jeffries will undoubtedly help solve that problem.