FOR MENG CONSULTANT, A HISTORY OF VOTE-SPLITTING

Written by Chris Bragg on April 18, 2012. Posted in Blog, Campaigns/Elections.

Tom Cooke

Rory Lancman has accused Grace Meng’s campaign of planting a Jewish candidate in the NY-06 congressional race to siphon votes away from his campaign. And while Meng denies the allegation, her top campaign consultant at the center of the controversy, Michael Nussbaum, has pulled a similar trick before.

One of the people involved in the scheme during a 2009 New York City Council race in northeast Queens fessed up during an interview yesterday with City & State.

In 2009, Nussbaum, who runs the Queens firm Multi-Media, was the main political consultant for council candidate Kevin Kim. Also in the six-way Democratic primary was Tom Cooke, a wheel-chair bound war veteran who headed up a prominent group for people with spinal injuries.

Upon hearing that Cooke was having trouble collecting enough signatures to make the ballot, Nussbaum reached out to Cooke’s campaign and lent Cooke several skilled signature gatherers to help gather petitions, said Robert Giuffre, who managed Cooke’s 2009 Council race.

Nussbaum wanted Cooke on the primary ballot order to siphon off white votes from two top tier white challengers to Kim, Paul Vallone and Jerry Iannece; Kim was the only Korean-American in the race.

“Let me put it this way,” Giuffre said, “Tom didn’t get into the race because anyone asked him to, but as the race progressed, our interests aligned with the Kevin Kim campaign. And we coordinated with them and they provided some expertise.”

Giuffre said that the Kim campaign had merely provide Cooke with signature gatherers and expertise – and that Cooke had paid for the actual work out of his own campaign account.

The revelation comes as Lancman’s campaign has charged that Nussbaum planted a 70-year old Board of Elections employee, Jeffrey Gottlieb, into the NY-06 congressional race in northeast Queens to split the Jewish vote. Meng’s campaign admitted that Nussbaum had suggested another Jewish candidate Matthew Silverstein run, but insisted the suggestion was not serious. (Silverstein, meanwhile, did not deny he’d been asked to run, but declined to comment.) Meng’s campaign also denies planting Gottlieb in the race, despite the fact that Gottlieb was gathering signatures for Meng until recently.

A spokesman for Meng’s campaign, Michael Tobman, declined to comment beyond referring to past statements he has made denying involvement with Gottlieb’s candidacy.

Kim rode heavy turnout in the Korean-American community to win the 2009 primary with 30.7 percent of the vote, while Iannece got 24 percent and Vallone got 23 percent. Cooke, after being helped onto the ballot by Kim’s campaign, got 7.2 percent. (Kim ended up narrowly losing the general election to Councilman Dan Halloran, who is also running in the NY-06 race.)

Giuffre said he very well could see Nussbaum having planted Gottlieb into the 2012 congressional race, given Giuffre’s own experience in 2009.

“I honestly wouldn’t be surprised at all if that was the case,” Giuffre said.

UPDATE: April 25

Cooke called in to say he believes this article improperly characterizes him as a planted candidate (though his campaign manager explicitly says he was not in the above article.) Cooke also says that the initial conversations with Kim about lending signature gatherers came innocently enough, outside a grocery store one day where both were gathering signatures. In other words, he disputed the idea that any sort of organized “scheme” had taken place

“I think there’s a big difference between being a planted candidate — someone who’s actually not serious about running for office — and two guys having a conversation in front of a grocery store one day who are friendly with one another, about one guy lending paid petitioners to the other,” Cooke added.

Tags: Dan Halloran, Grace Meng, kevin kim, Matthew Silverstein, michael nussbaum, Rory Lancman, tom cooke

Trackback from your site.

Pingback: Report: For Queens #NY6 Consultant, Splitting Votes is a Regular Service | Gestetner Updates
http://www.vjmachiavelli.blogspot.com VJ Machiavelli

Really he has done it before

SHOCKING

I guess thus comes as a surprise to Rory who was a product of the Queens Democ”RAT”ic organization.

When he was “PART of IT” I he did not seem to mind or complain Why now is he making such a fuss ?

This has been going on for ever

Before there was the “Oracle of Delphi” there was Count Vampire J. Machiavelli

VJ Machiavelli
Power to the People who “VOTE”
Kevin D. Kim

The allegations set forth in this article are false and dangerously misleading.

To my knowledge, no one associated with my campaign was contacted to respond to these false allegations before this article was published. If we had been contacted, you would have discovered the real story – a completely different set of facts than those set out by Mr. Robert Giuffre, a person whom Tom Cooke fired prior to the primary for undisclosed reasons.

First of all, let me begin by praising Tom Cooke’s history of service to others and to his country. I have tremendous respect for his military service, as well as his service to the Board of United Spinal.

As for the allegations set forth is this article,

1) Mike Nussbaum and Multi-media never had any contact with the Cooke campaign or any other candidate to “encourage” anyone to enter the race. My campaign entered the race in May 2009, long after the five other candidates had been actively raising money and campaigning in the community (please see NYC campaign filings).

2) As for assisting the Cooke campaign, here is what transpired during the primary:

Tom Cooke, unsolicited and unprompted, approached me after a debate and told me that he was having trouble finding petitioners and that he might fall short of the required number of signatures. He then again, unsolicited and unprompted, asked for my help insisting that our interests were aligned because he did not want either Paul Vallone or Jerry Iannece to win this race for reasons he stated publicly numerous times during the campaign. He also told me that if he didn’t win, he would want me or Steve Behar to win.

Our campaign gathered over 4,000 signatures prior to the deadline, but we continued to have many young people from the neighborhood come to our campaign office looking to do petition work. At this point, we informed these young men and women that we were done with petitions, but that we knew Tom Cooke’s campaign was still hiring. I assume Mr. Giuffre hired some of these petition workers because Tom Cooke managed to get on the ballot.

3) As for the results of the primary, please note the final numbers below from the NYS Board of Elections:

District 19

Democratic Primary: 119 of 119 precincts reporting (100%)

Kevin Kim 2,561 31% 2,561 (winner)

Jerry Iannece 2,007 24% 2,007

Paul Vallone 1,907 23% 1,907

Steven Behar 818 10% 818

Thomas Cooke 601 7% 601

Debra Markell 437 5% 437

The article suggests that were Cooke’s 601 “protest votes” (think Nader) somehow not given to Cooke, someone else might have won the primary. Without breaking down in detail the math behind the numbers, Vallone still would have lost if he got every single Cooke voter, and Iannece would have needed 92% of Cooke’s voters to go to him, a highly unlikely scenario with 4 other candidates in the race.

In addition, the article also suggests (unintentionally I assume), that we won the primary only because of the Korean-American voters. Indeed, our campaign is extremely proud to have mobilized sectors of the voting population that had not been as active in previous elections in District 19, including Americans of Korea descent, college-age voters, etc. Hopefully, our efforts will last long beyond this election.

According to Prime New York, in 2009 there were approximately 1,300-1,400 registered Democrats in District 19 (approximately 7% of eligible voters) who were Americans of Korean descent. Given that we received votes from 2,561 Democrats of all ages and backgrounds, I think it is equally important to refrain from insulting, intentionally or not, the intelligence of voters not of Korean descent who voted for the person they believed to be the best candidate, irrespective of race or ethnic background.

Thank you for this opportunity to respond to this story.

Sincerely,

Kevin D. Kim
Former 2009 Democratic Nominee, NYC Council District 19
Rob Giuffre

While I admit that Bragg didn’t misquote me, he is taking what I said out of context.

Putting a picture of Tom with the story isnt right. Bragg caught me off guard and I did not know he was going to quote me. I thought I was having an off the record conversation as a professional courtesy. The fact that he is using the very little I said as some sort of proof of some grander theory is hackish. I am disappointed.
Robert Giuffre

I thought I was having an off-the-record conversation as a professional courtesy to Chris Bragg. I thought I was maybe helping him find a track to something else. But to use this as the meat of his story is pretty lame. There was no wrong doing. And by the way nothing I said isn’t public information. Please.

Robert Giuffre

Excuse my poor writing. This got me worked up. Did not expect this to happen based on our phone call.

Robert Giuffre

“Nussbaum reached out to Cooke’s campaign and lent Cooke several skilled signature gatherers to help gather petitions, said Robert Giuffre, who managed Cooke’s 2009 Council race.”

I never said that. I don’t even know who that is.
Tom Cooke

I just learned of this article this week when a friend pointed out that it was recently referenced in the Queens Chronicle.

I’m very angry that the tone of the story portrays me as a planted candidate in the 2009 Democratic City Council primary in District 19 of northeast Queens. Nothing could be further from the truth. I called the reporter, Chris Bragg, today to voice my displeasure and point out what I feel are a great many inaccuracies in this story.

First of all, I wouldn’t know Mike Nussbaum if he walked into me on the street. I’m aware of who he is and he was pointed out to me a couple of times during the campaign as a consultant for one of my rivals, but I don’t know if I’ve ever even been introduced to the man. To my knowledge there was no communication between myself, Nussbaum, or anyone on my campaign.

Secondly, it is true that I hired some former paid petitioners from the Kim campaign who were no longer working on that campaign. While in hindsight this may have not been the best idea it came about completely innocuously. What people fail to understand is that there is a human element in these types of situations. I’m a very personable, friendly guy and while the six of us competing in the primary that year were rivals, there were many occasions in which we spoke to each other in a rather friendly fashion, often after events. I think the truth is that it was a strong field and that for the most part we respected the abilities, backgrounds and hard work of our rival candidates. I had been in the race for months before Kevin Kim entered the race. I had never met him nor knew anything about him until he showed up at the local Democratic club for a candidates night early in that campaign. People who know me know that I am able to divorce the professional from the personal. I was already good friends with one of my opponents — Steve Behar — and I was cordial with Mr. Kim and the other candidates as well. As each of us went through the different stages of the campaign sometimes we would talk shop after an event. Candidates would ask each other how they were doing on signatures, how they felt about a certain tough endorsement interview, kid each other in a good-natured way while remaining competitive. This is just human nature and while I know that campaign looked divisive to outsiders the candidates generally were cordial to each other.

Now, going off events of nearly 3 years ago I can recall that many times I would be at a train station or at a supermarket collecting signatures or handing out flyers and another candidate would arrive and we would end up working the same location. It’s a small district, there are some key locations, and I would imagine different combinations of candidates ended up working the same location several times. I can remember that the morning of the primary four of us showed up at the Bell Boulevard Long Island Railroad station to hand out flyers and it was rather comical. Anyway, I have a recollection of being outside in good weather and Mr. Kim happened to be working the same location I was. I think it was probably about a week before ballot petitions were due. Kim was known for having a great many campaign workers collecting signatures for him. As many of the candidates had done to each other and with me, we engaged in a little small talk. I asked how he was doing for signatures and I believe he said he had something like 4000. If I recall correctly the threshold was 900. I asked how many he was shooting for and he said he was done, that he would not be collecting any more. A lightbulb went off in my head as I was concerned about not reaching the “triple threshold” number that most candidates should for. I asked if he would be willing to let me hire some of his former petitioners — at my campaign’s expense and under my campaign’s direction. These weren’t some kind of “skilled signature gatherers” as Mr. Bragg calls them in the article. We are talking about college kids who quite frankly need a lot of instruction to do the job properly. This was a matter of common sense. I knew that Kim would realize his chances were better if I was on the ballot. I was concerned about not having enough signatures because of the ludicrous process of having one’s petitions frivolously challenged. There is a long history of this in local politics. I was confident my campaign was going to have at least 2000 good signatures, but I had heard horror stories of people having their legitimate petitions challenged and having as many as 70% of them thrown out. Consequently, I was looking to hire more petitioners. If these people had recently been doing the job, great, I wouldn’t have to train them. But to be clear this was my idea coming out of a simple conversation when Mr. Kim and I happened to be working at the same location. That’s all that happened. There was no conspiracy, there was no initiative by Mr. Nussbaum, there was just a naïve first-time candidate looking to get on the ballot and thinking he could do better then he ended up doing. I refer to myself in this instance. As for Mr. Kim, he made the same type of political calculation that all candidates do. He was better off with more candidates of a different ethnicity in the race. It’s the same type of “group analysis” that everyone looks at. A good example would be this year’s Republican presidential primary. Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were playing to the conservative vote. If one would have stepped out of the race it would have been easier for the other. But in simple terms, Mr. Kim simply referred some former employees to my campaign. We are talking about college kids making 12 bucks an hour. There is no great plot here.

I regret not returning Mr. Bragg’s call in time to impact the article before its publication. I understand that he has a job to do and that he was going off of the information he had at the time. I do believe that the tone of the article is misleading and that people will read it and believe I was a planted candidate in 2009. Nothing could be further from the truth. While Mr. Bragg told me today that the article was intended to focus more on Mr. Nussbaum’s behavior, as soon as you click on the link you see my smiling face and name and it is my good reputation that is being unnecessarily sullied. To summarize, I ran for office in 2009 because I have a passion for politics and I thought I could do much better then I ended up doing. No one approached me about running, no one came to offer me assistance, Mr. Kim responded to my initiative. Perhaps we both should have thought of the perception more. The truth is that I would have made the ballot without the additional paid petitioners I hired and the public was served by my campaign, which was issue-oriented and helped bring the best out of my opponents in the true spirit of democratic competition.