With Three Spirited Primaries, Competitive Democracy Is Breaking Out in New York

She doesn’t call him, she doesn’t talk to him, Mr. Lopez says. It’s rude.

“I get a lot of agita as leader,” explains Mr. Lopez, a hulking fellow who is perhaps the city’s foremost practitioner of tomahawk-in-the-forehead politics.

“Why not say to me” — Mr. Lopez offers his closest possible approximation of a cheery tone — “ ‘Hi Vito’; ‘How are you, Vito?’; ‘Are you well, Mr. Democratic Leader?’ ”

He goes silent at the other end of the telephone line, to let the absurdity of her affronts sink in. (He persuaded City Councilman Erik Dilan to mount a tough challenge to Ms. Velázquez, a longtime reform Democrat.)

“If there is a tiger, you wouldn’t go around kicking it, would you?” he says. “That wouldn’t be very wise, would it?”

I allow that this sounds unwise.

We are deep into New York’s own curious Arab Spring, an almost disorienting outbreak of competitive democracy. Often a one-party town, New York will at least play host to three spirited and unusual congressional primaries on June 26.

In a race for an open congressional seat in Queens, the Democratic boss and Congressman Joseph Crowley, who rules that borough from his home in Virginia, passed over his cousin, Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, and endorsed Assemblywoman Grace Meng. In Manhattan, a remnant of a once-fabled Harlem machine, Representative Charles B. Rangel, faces an extinction-level challenge from State Senator Adriano Espaillat, whose victory would offer one more sign of Dominican political ascent.

Back in Brooklyn, Mr. Lopez carried out a little more home wrecking in the Eighth Congressional District, where he convinced the long-serving and near moribund Representative Edolphus Towns that retirement was preferable to leaving (metaphorically) feet first. “I made clear it was time to go,” Mr. Lopez notes. “That’s all the context you need.”

Mr. Lopez gave his nod in that district to Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who is bright and personable, a leader in the fight against police stop-and-frisk tactics and a touch too close to hedge fund donors and charter school champions for the comfort of some. He faces off with Charles Barron, a natural born politician whose enthusiasms range from rhetorically slapping Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to assailing stop-and-frisk tactics to celebrating the lives and legacies of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Robert Mugabe.

Asked about the historical penchant of those two leaders for thuggery and torture , Mr. Barron replied that stop-and-frisk was no less a human rights issue. While it’s true that a federal judge recently held that the Police Department routinely violated constitutional protections, that is a radical stomp of an analogy. Our police officers do not hang suspected malefactors upside down, nor do they practice execution.

The scent of change may hang thick, but so do odors less edifying. In Brooklyn, Mr. Dilan is a dynastic product. His father, Martin, ran in 2001 for the State Senate and bequeathed his Council seat to his son. The Dilans, who run a small duchy in the shadow of Vito Lopez’s far grander operation, much admire the milk-cow of patronage known as Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. Not long ago, the hospital hired Jannitza Luna-Dilan, wife of the younger Mr. Dilan, as its $75,000-a-year director of public relations.

Mr. Lopez’s own Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council has proved a bountiful spring of jobs and campaign workers for decades. In Manhattan, Mr. Espaillat recently dissolved a nonprofit group that had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in state money and accomplished not so much.

(Before we rend cloth for Mr. Rangel, it’s worth remembering that the congressman sluiced tens of millions of dollars into Harlem, some of which produced admirable low-income housing and social services, and some of which produced jobs for his own formidable political machine).

In Queens, as the maverick consultant and journalist Gary Tilzer points out, the Democratic machine now wheezes but has not yet been eased into the crypt. Its phalanxes of campaign workers long ago disappeared — it’s instructive to recall David I. Weprin, a loyal if dead-eyed party soldier who ran for Congress last year. His consultant yammered about his field operation, which amounted to unenthused union workers who retired early for beers.

Mr. Weprin fell to a Republican businessman, Bob Turner.

The Queens Democratic machine’s legal soldiers offer more elite services. Although a striking number live in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, they are expert at knocking candidates off the ballot, or putting them on. Earlier this year, they stood accused of trying to tuck an extra Jewish candidate onto the ballot, to siphon support from Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, who is Jewish.

In Brooklyn, democracy has agreed with Ms. Velázquez. After a couple of unspirited terms in Congress, she sounds like a woman revived. She paused recently to talk about Mr. Lopez.

“I advocate for cleaner politics, and he appoints cronies as judges.” She shrugs. “So be it. I will face the music and so will he.”

As for Mr. Barron, I caught up with him late last week. We talked foreign policy, sort of. I asked about Syria, he told me to ask about Africa. I asked about Sudan’s attacks on South Sudan, he replied by talking about the West’s recolonizing of Africa.

What about Syria?

“I’m not sure I will tell you,” he said, “but I’m sounding pretty good. You’ve convinced me to vote for myself.” As for Mr. Jeffries?

“He’s not part of our movement,” Mr. Barron replied.

That might be just as well.

E-mail: powellm@nytimes.com

Twitter: @powellnyt

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For Three New York Lawmakers, Falls From Grace After an Attempted Coup

They were state senators from New York City, Democrats who threw the upper house of the Legislature into chaos after the 2008 election, at a time when Democrats should have been celebrating winning control of the chamber for the first time in more than four decades. Instead, the amigos — a term they bestowed upon themselves — gleefully posed before camera crews and loudly courted both sides of the aisle for perks, power and patronage.

Two of the amigos, Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate, even briefly allied with the Republican caucus in 2009, orchestrating a coup that for a time paralyzed the state government.

Ah, karma.

Now, two amigos — Mr. Monserrate and Carl Kruger — are headed to prison, and the fate of a third, Mr. Espada, is in the hands of a jury after a federal corruption trial. Jurors said Wednesday that they had reached an impasse, but the judge, Frederic Block, instructed them to continue deliberating.

Few of their fellow Democrats are sorry to see them gone from Albany.

“Three are gone,” Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, said with a broad smile on Wednesday, before walking into the legislative chamber.

Senator Diane J. Savino, a Staten Island Democrat, said: “You almost want to say, I don’t have any sympathy for you. But I’m human, and I don’t wish anybody ill. It’s so frustrating; we were kneecapped by the four of them after Election Day.”

One amigo remains in office: Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister who is one of the Legislature’s most outspoken social conservatives, is unrepentant about their rebellion.

“Never in the history of New York State has there been something so exciting,” Mr. Díaz said. “Never, never, never. That was history. That will go down in the book of history.”

The amigos stole the spotlight in 2008, right after the Democrats won control of the Senate. Only a day after the election, the four lawmakers shocked their colleagues by refusing to commit to backing a member of their own party to lead the chamber.

Three of the four lawmakers are Hispanic, and their stated reason for rebelling was that Latino lawmakers needed a greater voice in government. “We have a black president, a black governor, and we have a concern that we have to be sharing power,” Mr. Díaz said at the time.

Mr. Espada, with his well-tailored suits and unflappable style, seemed particularly to enjoy playing to the cameras. He would tell reporters he was leaning toward supporting a Democrat for leader, then mention he was having dinner with Senator Dean G. Skelos, leader of the Republicans.

Eventually, the amigos agreed to back a Democrat, but for a price. Mr. Kruger was named head of the Senate Finance Committee, and Mr. Espada was made a vice president of the Senate and given the chamber’s top housing post. That was not enough for him. By the following summer, he and Mr. Monserrate had orchestrated a coup by briefly joining with the Republicans.

After Mr. Monserrate returned to the Democrats, the chamber was evenly split and rudderless, culminating with both sides holding dueling sessions at the same time, in the same chamber. Mr. Espada eventually returned to the Democratic fold and claimed the lofty title of majority leader, if not all of that title’s traditional powers.

“What they did is take what should have been a real moment of celebration and turned it on its head, and quite frankly we never recovered from it,” said Ms. Savino, now part of a new splinter group, the Independent Democratic Conference, that has allied with Republican lawmakers.

The fate of the amigos has taken a considerable turn in recent weeks. This month, Mr. Monserrate pleaded guilty to improperly using public money to finance a failed political campaign, acknowledging that he was guilty of mail fraud and mail fraud conspiracy. He was ousted from the Senate in 2010 after a conviction for domestic assault.

In April, Mr. Kruger was sentenced to seven years in prison by a federal judge; he had been accused of accepting more than $1 million in bribes from two hospital executives, a lobbyist and a health care consultant.

Mr. Espada faces charges of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a nonprofit health care network to support his lavish lifestyle. And he was recently ordered to pay $80,000 worth of fines and restitution by a legislative ethics commission, which said he had violated state law by hiring his uncle to join his official staff.

Mr. Díaz remains bitter about Mr. Espada’s fate. He says he believes that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, when he was still attorney general, overreached in corruption cases that he brought against Mr. Espada.

“I think that Pedro Espada was targeted,” Mr. Díaz said. “Why would Andrew Cuomo accuse him of stealing $14 million? Why? Because it was a vendetta.”

Of the other two amigos, he said, “I will continue being a friend and praying for them, and anything that they need, I will be there for them.”

Senator Neil D. Breslin, an Albany Democrat, said: “Neither Democrats nor Republicans should have embraced Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate. We all share in the guilt of doing that. Shame on us.”

But Senator Eric L. Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat, was more forgiving. “Our caucus, unlike the Republican caucus, we don’t look alike, sound alike; it’s extremely diverse,” he said, alluding to the fact that the Republican caucus is exclusively white. “I don’t think they hurt our conference; they added flavor to our conference, a flavor that’s missing from the guys across the aisle.”

Mosi Secret contributed reporting.

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Three Democrats Challenging President Obama for the Nomination (ContributorNetwork)

With all of the focus of the 2012 presidential election firmly, and rightfully, placed on the Republican Party's nomination process, most probably believe President Barack Obama is running unopposed as the Democratic Party's candidate. Technically, at least, that is untrue.

While these three candidates may have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning the Democratic nomination--and that is not an exaggeration, they do have a much better chance of getting struck by lightning--let's take a look at three of the Democrats who have decided to challenge the president in 2012:

* Darcy Richardson -- A former insurance specialist and progressive Democratic activist from Pennsylvania, Richardson is the author of a multi-volume history of third-party politics in the United States. He has never held public office before but, as Richardson states on his official campaign website, he was compelled to campaign for president because he has been "disappointed by President Obama's abandonment of many of the progressive values that he articulated so eloquently -- and passionately -- during the 2008 presidential campaign…" Richardson finished in ninth place in New Hampshire's Democratic primary with 264 votes.

* Randall Terry -- A pro-life Democratic from New York, Terry was arrested at Notre Dame in 2009 for protesting a commencement speech by pro-choice President Obama. Terry's sole purpose for running against Obama seems to be so that he can attack him for his pro-choice stance. He also strongly favors the legalization of marijuana, establishing a national sales tax, and the expansion of oil drilling, a diverse mixture of positions for sure. Terry had a better finish than Richardson in New Hampshire coming away with 442 votes, a full one percent of the total.

* Vermin Love Supreme -- A performance artist and anarchist who claims to be "the only bona-fide American presidential candidate to actually donate a living organ." Supreme favors colorful and odd outfits and also claims to be the only candidate who supports funding time travel research in order to go back to kill Hitler before he was born. According to his website, he also believes that brushing one's teeth should be mandatory. Perhaps this eclectic platform helped Supreme beat both Richardson and Terry in New Hampshire. Once all of the votes were counted he carried the day among all three challengers with 833 votes.

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