.by Jason Boog
October 20, 2006, from judicialreports.com

You would think that the disgrace of Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Clarence Norman would have at least slowed the gush of money from judicial candidates to his successor in the party machine. Think again.

When the Brooklyn Democrats elected Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez their new leader in October 2005, the already-powerful politician pledged to restore order to a party rocked by judicial corruption. He was replacing Clarence Norman, a prodigious fundraiser who had been convicted of abusing party funds and was accused of pressuring judges to hire party-picked workers.

Although not dogged by charges of malfeasance, the new leader has certainly continued his predecessor’s practice of vigorously shaking his borough’s money trees. And an examination of the Friends of Vito Lopez campaign disclosure file at the state Board of Elections reveals that his donors include almost every borough candidate for the bench.

Since his elevation last year, Lopez’s committee has collected $193,760 ­ including more than $6,000 in contributions from 18 different judges and judicial candidates. During the period of 1999 to 2005, Norman averaged roughly $4,400 from similar donors. (For year-to-year comparisons of judge giving, see today’s LexMetrics.) [also below]

The dynamics are most stark in this year’s Supreme Court race. Of the 20 non-incumbent candidates approved by the Brooklyn screening panel last July, 15 gave at least $250 to the Friends of Vito Lopez at a fundraiser held a few weeks before the evaluation.

According to an individual who attended the event and who demanded anonymity, Lopez held the event in the backroom of a pizzeria in Williamsburg. “They’ll send out an invite, usually you have food, drinks, and try to get as many people’s support as possible,” she explained. “You don’t want to be the person who doesn’t go.”

The five candidates who did not contribute to the judicial kitty did not receive the party’s nomination.

One of those losers was attorney Mark R. Dwyer, counsel to Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA. “I’m not in the habit of making political contributions,” he said simply, declining to discuss what his failure to donate might have meant.

When asked why he might have missed the Democratic fundraising boat, he responded, “I’ve never been involved in that circle.”

Civil Court candidates also donated. These races are essentially settled during the September primary, because like the Supreme Court race, the party’s nod assures election victory in the overwhelmingly Democratic borough. In June, the Friends of Vito Lopez received contributions from both Dena Douglas and Jacqueline D. Williams ­ the two candidates who won the Democratic Party’s nomination to the Brooklyn Civil Court.

Repeated calls to Assemblyman Lopez were not returned. In addition, several calls to his judicial contributors also went unreturned.

Some observers feel that the Brooklyn scene didn’t change too much with the new leadership.

Kent A. Yalowitz, an attorney at Arnold & Porter, spent months studying the Brooklyn Democratic machine. Yalowitz was one of the many attorneys leading Surrogate Judge Margarita Lopez Torres’s landmark lawsuit that overturned the Supreme Court selection system in New York.

“It’s a fair inference that under the current regime, candidates need to curry favor with these people,” he explained. “From what I can tell, Assemblyman Lopez doesn’t represent a change in the philosophy.”

The rules governing judicial campaign donations are in some ways more intricate than for other offices. According to Lee Daghlian, a spokesperson for the Board of Elections, most political campaign accounts can be kept open “forever,” but judicial campaign accounts must be closed shortly after the election.

Additionally, incumbent justices are prohibited from contributing to political campaigns ­ a rule that Daghlian said has been in effect for at least 25 years: “It was for ethical reasons,” he said. “They wanted judges to be insulated from this process, particularly sitting judges.”

This year, Lopez’s first test as party leader in Brooklyn, all five Supreme Court candidates backed by party leadership passed muster without a hint of struggle among the delegates who ultimately pick the justices at the convention. They will almost certainly win in the ceremonial election in November.

And every successful Supreme Court candidate in Brooklyn, barring one incumbent, contributed at least $250 to a fundraiser for Lopez.

According to the 2006 Judicial Campaign Ethics Handbook, these contributions are permitted during a “window period,” three months before and six months after the general election.

At the same time, the election window carefully limits the types of spending allowed: “During the judicial candidate’s window period, the candidate may (unless otherwise prohibited by law or rule) attend and speak at gatherings on his/her own behalf (including attending his/her own fund-raising event) and purchase two (2) tickets to and attend a politically-sponsored dinner or event, including a fund-raising event for other elected officials or candidates.”

During the last seven years of election filings, several other judges ponied up to the Friends of Vito Lopez committee.

In 2002, Brooklyn lawyer Eugene Hurkin and his household donated $600 to the Friends of Vito Lopez and, between 2001 and 2003, another $2,262 to the Committee to Re-Elect Clarence Norman. In 2001, his son, Allen Hurkin-Torres, donated $300 to Norman’s committee via his own election committee. That same year, Allen won a seat on the Supreme Court.

Ironically, the recent federal ruling calling for reforms of the judicial nomination process might just increase the number ­ and amount ­ of judicial candidate donations to the Lopez machine. How that will affect Lopez’s relationship to individual members of the bench is an open question.

In U.S. District judge John Gleeson’s January opinion in Lopez Torres vs. New York State Board of Elections, the judge overturned the state’s judicial selection system for the Supreme Court and ordered the state legislature to create a new one. Legislative action is expected early next year.

In one scenario, the current system could be replaced by an open primary. That would probably jack up the price of judicial elections by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Conversely, the new system could follow the lead of other states ­ selecting judges based by merit systems, rather than elections, or creating alternative public funding for judicial races.

In his 77-page decision, Judge Gleeson described Vito Lopez’s attempts to manipulate the career of Brooklyn Surrogate Margarita Lopez Torres:

“If she hired [Vito] Lopez’s daughter, a recent law school graduate, as her court attorney, [Vito] Lopez would get Lopez Torres nominated to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court that the party leadership had earmarked for a ‘Latino,’ ” Gleeson wrote, revealing the dark side of Vito Lopez’s exclusive circle of friends.

“Lopez Torres declined, refusing to fire the qualified attorney she had initially hired to the position. From that point forward, [Vito] Lopez never supported the judicial aspirations of Lopez Torres.”

Attorney Yalowitz was quick to draw the line separating Norman’s alleged crimes from the new Democratic chief’s enforcement of party opinion.

“What made Margarita Lopez [Torres] special was her unwillingness to do what the county wanted. They made a public spectacle of disciplining her,” he said. “There wasn’t anything in the Gleeson materials that suggested that these were crimes.”

Interestingly, Assemblyman Lopez does not sit on the Assembly Judiciary Committee. But he does hold a post as chair of the chamber's housing committee, creating a whole different campaign finance stream ­ which includes some judicial tributaries.

“From a legislative perspective, Vito Lopez is somebody that the tenant community has spent a lot of time schmoozing,” said one tenant lawyer who requested anonymity.

The campaign finance record bears this out. During the last seven years, the Affordable Housing PAC gave $6,000, West Manor Construction gave $9,000, and real estate developer Donald Capoccia has donated $3,750 to Lopez.

In addition, a few Housing Court judges have dropped money in his coffers, including Dawn Jimenez who gave $300 in 2005 and $500 in 2006.

These tenant law struggles and party controversies have played out in interesting ways over the course of Lopez’s rise to power.

In a difficult 2002 Civil Court primary, Housing Court Judge Marcia J. Sikowitz and incumbent Civil Court justice Karen B. Yellen both lost to insurgent candidates Lopez Torres (the same plaintiff in the primary fairness litigation) and Delores J. Thomas ­ which constituted a judicial selection coup that has only occurred twice in the last 20 years.

According to one insider who chose to remain anonymous, that tempestuous battle pitted Vito Lopez’s interests against his paying supporters in the tenant advocacy community. “It put the tenancy community in a bad spot. Vito had some serious clout. Sikowitz was considered mildly pro-tenant, but Lopez Torres was the people’s choice.”

That election will be rehashed in courtrooms this fall, as ex-party chairman Norman is put on trial for allegedly coercive actions during that election.

In 2005, acting Supreme Court justice Martin Marcus ruled that the Brooklyn DA could proceed with grand larceny and coercion charges against Jeffrey Feldman and Norman. Feldman, Norman’s right-hand man, recently struck a deal with the DA, and charges against him were dropped in exchange for cooperation in the Norman prosecution.

According to the indictment, Norman was accused of using the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s endorsement to pressure judicial candidates Sikowitz and Yellen to pay for consultants whom Norman approved. Ironically, that endorsement never mattered, as insurgent candidates swept the Civil Court race in the September primary.

According to campaign filings, the Friends of Vito Lopez received $300 from Marcia Sikowitz in 2000, two years before she was allegedly coerced by the Democratic Party.

And take note: This year Vito Lopez received $250 from the election committee of Delores Thomas, the one-time insurgent.

When it comes to judicial campaigns in Brooklyn, winning and losing doesn’t matter: eventually, everybody pays.

*Correction: Originally, this article misstated the length of the 'window period' for judicial candidates.

Posted by Jason Boog on October 20, 2006 06:23 PM | Permalink

The Song Remains the Same
By John Ennis
Posted 10-20-2006
from judicialreports.com

In this week’s lead story, The Friends of Vito Lopez, the Institute for Judicial Studies examined the process of campaign fund raising as it pertains to judges.

During the past year, events have occurred that are likely to change the manner in which Supreme Court judges are selected.

First, former Assemblyman Clarence Norman was convicted of abusing party funds. Norman had also been Chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, essentially holding all power to nominate the borough’s judicial candidates. Norman was replaced last October by Vito Lopez.

Second, a federal court decision declared the aforementioned Supreme Court selection system unconstitutional. New York is now under court order to design a new method for the 2007 election cycle. LexMetrics wondered if either of these events had affected the practice of judges donating to the Brooklyn Democratic Party Chairman.

IJS perused Clarence Norman’s donors since 1999, searching for sitting judges. Here are the numbers:

Number of Amount
YEAR Judges Raised
1999 20 $7,905
2000 15 $3,400
2001 14 $3,975
2002 18 $8,725
2003 16 $3,025
2004 10 $2,350
2005 6 $1,415
2006 0 $ -

As Norman entered the criminal justice system, his judicial contributions (no surprise) tapered off. Nevertheless, from 1999-2005 Norman averaged about $4400 a year from judges. Vito Lopez became the Democratic chairman in late 2005. Here’s how much money he’s raised from the bench, thus far, in 2006:

Number Amount
of judges Raised
2006 18 $6600

Of course, judges might be donating to Vito Lopez because he’s also an Assemblyman. But had they donated to his campaigns in the past? IJS looked at Lopez’s judicial donations going back to 1999:

Number of Amount
YEAR Judges Raised
1999 1 $250
2000 2 $600
2001 0 $ -
2002 1 $300
2003 0 $ -
2004 1 $300
2005 1 $300
2006 18 $6,600

Source: New York State Board of Elections