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NY Times Saturday 14th September 2012 By  and  Published: September 14, 2012</h6>

 

In a state with a scant history of electoral upsets, it was not in anyjob description, but it might as well have been: Once an incumbent, always an incumbent.

The results of Democratic primaries on Thursday turned the tide, though, on job guarantees for those in Albany facing financial-wrongdoing inquiries.

Two incumbents — Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera of the Bronx and State Senator Shirley L. Huntley of Queens — lost after being embroiled in scandals that were tabloid fodder for weeks leading up to the election.

A third incumbent, Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. of Brooklyn, who is facing federal bribery charges, won his race, though with less support than some expected for a son of a prominent political family.

“People have had it with candidates who are tainted and bring dishonor to their community,” said George Arzt, a political consultant, adding that in recent years, voters have set higher expectations for politicians. “I think more and more voters are looking for bright new faces who care about them and not about themselves.”

That was echoed by Vishnu Mahadeo, a Queens businessman, who said that he thought Ms. Huntley had been in office “much too long.” Ms. Huntley, first elected to the Senate in 2006, was charged last month with conspiring to help a niece and an aide steal taxpayer money directed to a nonprofit agency that Ms. Huntley had founded. Ms. Huntley and her co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Mahadeo, who is president of the Richmond Hill Economic Development Council, contributed $4,000 to Ms. Huntley’s opponent, City Councilman James Sanders Jr. Mr. Sanders won the primary with 57 percent of the vote; Ms. Huntley received 40 percent.

Basil Smikle, a political strategist, said voters had less patience now for elected officials accused of misappropriating taxpayer money because so many voters were struggling to pay their own bills in a tough economy.

“They don’t want to see you doing well on their backs,” Mr. Smikle said.

In addition, others said, even relatively minor transgressions can loom large over elections when they are magnified through the lens of countless news media outlets, Web sites and blogs. “Scandals have never been good,” said Jerry Skurnik, a political consultant. “Now, with the 24-hour news cycle, it’s even worse. You never want to be involved in a scandal.”

Ms. Rivera is being investigated after The New York Post reported that she may have misused her position and taxpayer funds to hire her current and former boyfriends. She has not been charged with a crime, and she could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Ms. Rivera was defeated in the primary, 52 percent to 41 percent, by Mark Gjonaj, a real estate agent and community activist who was a first-time political candidate. She has served in the Assembly since 2005 and comes from a powerful Bronx political family: she is a daughter of Jose Rivera, an assemblyman and Bronx political leader, and a sister of City Councilman Joel Rivera.

Zef Balaj, a Bronx resident, said that while the corruption allegations “didn’t help” Ms. Rivera, he, like other voters, had also grown dissatisfied with what he saw as her lackluster record. “She really did not deliver to the constituents,” Mr. Balaj said.

Gjon Chota, a real estate broker in the area who knows Mr. Gjonaj, concurred: “She hasn’t done much, so somebody has to step to the plate.”

In Brooklyn, however, voters were willing to give Mr. Boyland another chance even though he was arrested last year on bribery charges, less than three weeks after being acquitted in a different bribery case.

Mr. Boyland, who has pleaded not guilty, held off six challengers to win his race, with 37 percent of the vote.

Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College, said that Mr. Boyland had the name recognition and resources to dilute the impact of the bribery charges. “He won in spite of being under a cloud and very wet,” he said. “He had an organizational advantage that no one else could overcome.”

Some political consultants also pointed out that Mr. Boyland had a reprieve because unlike Ms. Rivera and Ms. Huntley, the investigation of him did not surface right before he ran for re-election.

“If you have a scandal,” Mr. Arzt said, “don’t let it be in your election year.”

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An article from the past

 

timesledger 

 

 

 

Activist rouses Queens Indo-Guyanese voters

 

Vishnu Mahadeo, one of the newest members of Community Board 9, in 1999 undertook a small but significant project. Before the winter holidays, he collected funds from shop owners along Liberty Avenue. Within days he had several blocks of Richmond Hill’s downtown illuminated with seasonal lights.

 

 

Mahadeo, originally from Guyana and now a 20-year resident of Richmond Hill, wants to do something similar for his Guyanese community. He wants them visible. He wants them heard. Mahadeo works with the city’s Board of Election to register voters and teach new Americans how to exercise their fundamental democratic right.

 

“I don’t care who you vote for, just register,” Mahadeo said recently over a cup of coffee at the Flagship Diner in Jamaica.

 

But he soon followed with a message for politicians seeking votes: “It’s your business to get them to vote for you.” Mahadeo said he wants no part of steering those votes.

 

Mahadeo, 42, flipped over a placemat and began avidly sketching voting districts. His thinning hair was pulled from delicate, dark features into a George Carlin pony tail as he praised America with a zealot’s enthusiasm.

 

“It’s a living democracy,” he said, pecking an index finger in the air. “If I don’t like you, I vote you out. It’s as simple as that.”

 

Mahadeo, a father of two teenage girls who is now teaching math at MS 226, previously managed the billing at Jamaica Hospital. Prior to that he worked as an engineer on aerospace projects for Parker Hannifin.

 

CB 9 District Manager Mary Ann Carey said she first met Mahadeo when he stormed her office raising concerns of the Guyanese community.

 

“I told him we are looking for people to represent your community,” Carey said, adding that with “his natural exuberance” he quickly got the necessary signatures from the City Council and the borough president to join the board.

 

Historically, immigrant communities in the United States have tended to vote along Democratic lines, but the Guyanese community is an exception. Since the community began to grow in the 1970s and ’80s, Guyanese have traditionally registered as Republicans, Mahadeo said.

 

He attributes the conservative registration to three factors: the opportunity for people to vote across party lines during general elections, the Queens Democratic Party’s early brush-off of Indo-Caribbean candidates and lastly residual voting habits from Guyana.

 

In Guyana, Mahadeo said, people traditionally voted along racial lines. The Indian community “always expressed a preference for the European,” he said. In an ironic twist, when the voters arrived in this country and learned the local elected Democratic officials were people of color like themselves, their old Euro-centric habits kicked in, he said.

 

Even so, not enough of the community was heading to the polls. When Mahadeo worked for Jamaica Hospital, he saw firsthand the large number of infants born to Guyanese parents.

 

“I saw it at the hospital. I saw it at my ashram. I saw it as a parent. I saw it at the schools. I saw it at the cricket game,” Mahadeo said.

 

But the increase, he said, was not reflected in census data or in the attention politicians gave the community.

 

Part of the problem was the United States’ complicated voting process, he said. In Guyana voting was a mass event. Offices were closed and everybody, even the illiterate, went to vote. If someone could not sign his name, he pressed his thumb onto an ink pad and pressed his print where a signature would normally go.

 

In the United States economics often kept the Indo-Guyanese at work and away from the polls. Voting along district lines was foreign as were the registration cards and booths filled with clunky levers and switches.

 

One Election Day, while working as a voting clerk at his local school, Mahadeo saw the cultural divide and its impact on voting.

 

“I realized how little they knew. They were well-dressed, well-spoken but they were too ashamed to ask for help,” he said. Instead of waiting to be asked, Mahadeo offered to assist them. He then began a registration campaign to bring booklets and a portable voting machine from site to site, teaching people the basics of casting a ballot.

 

Traveling between mosques, churches, civic centers and door-to- door, Mahadeo had become a missionary of democracy.

 

But it is a newfound role. In Guyana, Mahadeo never voted.

 

“It didn’t matter,” he said, because at that time the Guyanese government did not count votes.

 

“They know to the second decimal place what your vote is,” he said since the government already had calculated the results of the balloting based on ethnic voting patterns. “Democracy is a word that’s discarded.”

 

Reach reporter Jennifer Warren by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 155.

 

 

 
Vish M

in 1999 undertook a small but significant project. Before the winter holidays, he collected funds from shop owners along Liberty Avenue. Within days he had several blocks of Richmond Hill’s downtown illuminated with seasonal lights.

 

Liberty Ave used to light up before 1999

Pointblank

Seems as though another other tainted politician is trying to reach out to the Indo Caribbean community with the help of the Angels Band.

 

An Indo Caribbean Event at Smokey Park tomorrow

Vish M

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