When I first started writing about Brooklyn politics on Daily Gotham, I assumed maybe two people would ever read it. But it turns out that some of our most read pieces around here deal with Brooklyn in general (suspicious fires and development issues) and with the CD-11 race in particular. Sure, Brooklyn politics doesn't beat the readership of articles dealing with the Westside Stadium, but next to that, Brooklyn politics has become one mainstay of Daily Gotham.

It is mere coincidence that the main Daily Gotham writers all are supporters of Chris Owens. Or, perhaps, it is more that Liza sought out progressive voices for DG and Owens really is the most convincingly progressive candidate. Hence the site's admitted bias. But from there we don't all agree. I maintain more respect and friendliness with the Yassky camp than my "neo-Bohemian" compatriot, and I have found myself warming to Clarke as she shows leadership in the City Council on supporting PB/OS machines over the expensive and inaccurate DRE machines. Others here have a different opinion on these candidates than I do.

But I think one thing is clear: we have something of a niche position here that developed almost accidentally. CD-11 is something writers on this site know something about. What that knowledge gives me, though, is something I am not too pleased with. What is happening, though fully expected, is very typical Democratic splintering to a degree that can make future politics more difficult.

What am I talking about? Well, these are the things I have personally seen:

Rumor mongering and feeding selected information: If I had been in Michael Bouldin’s place yesterday I would have missed out on beating the NYT on the Nick Perry withdrawal. Why? Because I had heard about five times before that he was withdrawing. Yesterday the rumor was true. Months ago it was mere rumor probably floated by an opponent to hurt Perry. An anonymous source tried to get me to report that Chris Owens was withdrawing some months back. Of course I know Chris so I knew it was untrue. I have no idea who floated these rumors, but I do know that this was a common tactic of the Clarence Norman machine as recently as 2005. Creating rumors of an opponent's withdrawal is a common tactic in Brooklyn politics and certainly has been a part of the CD-11 race.

As to feeding of information, well, this is something that should have been obvious to me but I never really saw coming. Essentially I have contact with three of the five (now four) candidates' campaigns as well as several local organizations and most of them have at one time or another fed me information. Sometimes that information is just factual information with no agenda attached. But two campaigns and a couple of organizations feed me information specifically to further their own agendas. Well, that's politics and that is how people who write about politics get a lot of their information. But I have never really LIKED it. When someone feeds me information with an agenda, I am always reluctant to use it. Of course if the info turns out to be true, I probably use it. But in the case of one campaign, they have tried to influence my writing to, in essence, smear a candidate. I did NOT follow up with that information because it was not factual information. I never write about agenda-linked information unless I can confirm it with someone who is objective and separate from that agenda. If I can't, I don't report it. If I can, well even if it serves someone else's agenda, it is factual. But I will also be looking at the people who fed me that information for any signs of hypocrisy.

Then there are misleading statements. I don’t mean run-of-the-mill exaggerations, which all of the candidates have done. I am talking about statements that are clearly and demonstrably untrue yet are stated boldly. Here I have to single out the Yvette Clarke camp despite my overall respect for her leadership on opposing DRE machines. The first instance of this came not directly from her campaign but from one of her supporters in IND. Buddy Scotto, one of the founders, I believe, of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats, claimed in his endorsement letter of Yvette Clarke:

In 2004 IND endorsed Yvette because we believed that she understood the needs of our special community and would be a very effective congresswoman for us in Brooklyn and represent our interests in Washington.

The problem with Buddy's statement is that out of the entire membership of IND, Yvette Clarke received only two votes for an endorsement. Major Owens, our current Congressman, got 21 votes. So the implication that Clarke received IND’s endorsement for Congress in 2004 was highly misleading. However, this came from a perhaps overly eager supporter, not directly from Clarke’s campaign.

But more recently there was a similarly wrong statement made by Councilwoman Clarke herself at the Democracy for NYC CD-11 Candidates forum. In that forum she claimed that she had the endorsement of Emily’s List, a large organization that supports Democratic women running for office. Now it is not unreasonable to think that Clarke might be the kind of candidate that Emily’s List would endorse. However, Councilwoman Clarke appears to have jumped the gun. I find no mention as of yesterday afternoon of an endorsement of Yvette Clarke anywhere on Emily’s List’s website nor through a web search. I find no record of any Emily’s List endorsement of Yvette Clarke even in the past. I have confirmed from two other eyewitnesses (one completely unbiased) that she did indeed make this claim. I have written to Emily’s List asking if any such endorsement is pending in case Clarke knows such an endorsement is pending but hasn’t been made public. I have yet to hear from Emily’s List regarding this. So at the moment it seems that Clarke has misrepresented Emily’s List by claiming an endorsement.

These two misleading statements are relatively minor. But a pattern of such misleading statements would hurt the credibility of a candidate. I don’t think two statements makes a pattern, but they do raise an eyebrow and should be a warning to Yvette Clarke’s camp to be a bit more careful.

The somewhat underhanded or distasteful actions I mention above are pretty minor and really are par for the course. They are not necessarily right if they are dishonest, but they are par for the course. But there have been much more disturbing issues surrounding the CD-11 race and it is really these that I fear will further fragment the Democratic Party and Democratic activists in Brooklyn.

First there is the race issue. There is a very real and legitimate difference of opinion here and this difference rapidly becomes divisive. One side basically states that race SHOULDN’T matter and that any qualified candidate is legit and should have a shot at the voter’s approval. The other side recognizes that CD-11 is a district designed to further the minority representation in Congress and hence sees a white candidate as a threat. Let’s be clear. Blacks in America are still separate and not equal. When you look at employment, health care, housing conditions, sentencing in our judicial system, treatment by cops, and even life-expectancy, blacks still get the short end of the stick. And that is without even mentioning the message of Katrina. Thanks to Voting Rights districts like CD-11, one area of progress has been representation in Congress. Whether or not Yassky has a right to run (he does), or whether or not he is the best candidate, having CD-11 represented by a white reduces the direct representation of blacks in Congress and is a bad message for the Democratic Party to send. Yassky is running because he thinks he is the best candidate. I may disagree with him on that, but he is running because he thinks he can best represent the district. To me that is legit. But, as long as there are good black candidates running, I think that the message sent by the Democratic Party if Yassky wins is lousy and could damage the party as a whole in a small but very real way. This is particularly the case given that the political calculus Yassky apparently is making is that there are several good black candidates and therefore they will split the black vote.

It is absolutely true that Yassky has every right to run and voters have every right to vote for him. It is also true that Yassky’s political calculus could work. And it is also true that, should Yassky win, the message sent to blacks regarding their role within the Democratic Party is a lousy message. All of this is true and it is very divisive. What makes it even worse are terms thrown around like “colonialist” and “blood libel.” There is enough legitimately divisive about the race issue in the context of CD-11 that using aggressively divisive terms only makes matters worse. Discussion of the race issue is important and if he wins Yassky will be dogged by it for the rest of his political career. But discussion of the race issue should not mean accusations of racism.

Finally, the most divisive aspect of the CD-11 race are the outright smear campaigns. Painting Chris Owens as anti-Semitic or claiming David Yassky had a hand in the Greenpoint fire are lies. Period. They are smears and should not be done even if such smears are common in Brooklyn politics. Accusing the Owens campaign of initiating the connection between Yassky and Greenpoint arson is also wrong. Although the person who claimed that Owens started that rumor repented mightily, the fact that it happened shows exactly how far people are willing to go to denigrate candidates in this race. Less egregious smears are websites like StopYassky.com. At first I found it amusing. But ultimately I found it went too far in personally attacking Yassky. I may agree with much of the factual information contained on that website, but I think the nature of the attack goes too far and creates the exact kind of divisiveness that Democrats need to avoid. I should note that I have been accused (anonymously!) of smearing candidates. In all honesty I don’t see that. I try to be fair and factual. But such an accusation should also make me be more careful of what I say lest I make the same error I am criticizing others of making. Some have claimed a connection between the StopYassky.com website and the arson accusation to a particular campaign. I had originally thought the source was elsewhere. But I have no evidence to pin it on any particular person or campaign.

These kinds of very nasty smears can form unbridgeable rifts and lead to grudges that, in Brooklyn at least, can span generations. The Democrats cannot afford any more rifts!

There are real issue that we can discuss to advocate for or against a candidate: choice, marriage equality, impeachment, Iraq and Iran, voting machines, corruption…and, yes, race. We should not be forming blood feuds over rumors, lies and smears.

Democrats, particularly Brooklyn Democrats, tend to form deep and generation-spanning grudges. The CD-11 race already includes such grudges (the Owens/Clarke feud; the Perry/Clarke feud) and may yet form new grudges. Here is my key concern: the nasty rhetoric, misleading statements, and mud slinging, though fully expected in a hotly contested race like this, are starting to reach a level that could create new grudges, deepen existing grudges and could make future cooperation among Democrats harder. Even among supporters of candidates divisions within clubs like IND have formed over this race leading many from the Clarke and Owens campaigns to suggest “no endorsement” as the honorable way of preserving club unity.

This is politics and this kind of mixing it up is fully expected. And I have sometimes been a part of it, though I try not to alienate any potential future allies too much. But I think we still need to have some perspective.

Each and every candidate running for the CD-11 seat is not only a pretty good candidate, but is far better than any Republican. I would take Nick Perry (now no longer an option) or Carl Andrews (despite connections to Clarence Norman) let alone the candidates I actually mostly agree with (such as Yassky and especially Owens) over, say, Vito Fossella or George Pataki or any other NY Republican ANYDAY. Whoever wins this race will be my Congressional Rep. and I will most likely be reasonably happy with that person, at least when I look at the nature of Congress as a whole. Yes I think Chris Owens is the best candidate, but that doesn't mean I have to hate the other candidates.

Whoever wins will be the person we have to work with and who we have to support if they show the backbone we want to see our Reps have when standing up to the Republicans. We can't weaken their position by creating even deeper divides among Democrats in Brooklyn. And even more importantly, those of us who avidly support one candidate or another should not get so avid that we start hating the supporters of other candidates. We are all Democrats. And though too often that means we fight like crazy, in these days of Republican destruction of America’s economy, integrity and democracy, we Dems had better be able to unify to preserve America despite any differences we have in the primaries.