The current outbreak of "Vito Lopez and Judge Simpson are the root of reform in Brooklyn" that has been thrown at Daily Gotham in recent days has inspired me. The nastiness and lies of the machine supporters tend to motivate me to respond.

Just reminding people what Vito is really like. Not sure why you would object to that. I will check the links, though.

First off, the Brooklyn machine seldom pays any attention to defeating Republicans. That is one of my main objections. Vito Lopez often encourages people to register INDEPENDENT even though he is head of the DEMOCRATIC Party. He only wants his supporters to register Dem and discourages more widespread voter registration. Vito has supported Republicans over Democrats quite often but seldom supports a Democrat over a Republican in a close race. I am curious whether he will jump in for a Democrat against Fossella. Or sit it out again because it has little to do with his personal Empire.

In general, if you are out in Brooklyn on primary day, you see LOTS of machine people out campaigning for their candidates against other Democrats in primaries. Fine. I have had some great conversations with their people as we sit plugging our respective candidates (or, occasionally, our shared candidtes). I know people, though, who have been at the receiving end of outright thuggishness by the machine, and I mean Vito's machine. Can't give details though because all that was off the record. But the nasty words you see them spew on room 8 and occasionally here have at times been matched by actions.

So they are active on primary day. But then you see very few of them come general election day. Their primary goal is holding power WITHIN the party, not in defeating Republicans in the general election. THAT is a problem.

As to working with them, if they ever DID go out in force against a Republican in the general election, yeah, I'd prbably be working side by side with them. I also have made clear that there have been cases where good candidates are machine supported. Eric Adams is an example of a candidate pretty much everybody got behind, machine and myself included. I think there are some Civil Court judges this year that the machine at least initially supported along with reformers...though I hear that some of them are now being targeted by the machine with candidates they slipped in last minute the same way they did with Simpson. But I haven't kept up as much with the Civil Court races as I have with Surrogate, mainly because the machine has been using all their nasty for the Surrogate race and I feel some obligation to correct their lies. I believe last year (?) I even got some shit from some anonymous bloggers who thought I was supporting some machine candidates. I think I was supporting some good candidates who happened to be machine supported. If the clearly best candidate is supported by the machine, I still support that candidate. But machine support should be an automatic red flag indicating that a candidate may be unqualified (the machine has had a record of puttung cronyism ahead of qualificiations) and/or outright corrupt (and possibly destined for jail eventually...or at least investigation). Doesn't mean all machine supported candidates are bad, but they seldom are clearly the best and often are the worst.

In the case of the Surrogate race, Johnson and Simpson are very similar. Professionally qualified (residency questions aside) black women who both have machine ties either past or present. Johnson has better qualifications (more judicial experience) and her machine connections are more in the past while Simpson's are more in the present. Those are the main reasons I came out in favor of Johnson. Add to that the fact that the reform clubs support Johnson and the machine supports Simpson and you have another reason to support Johnson, though weaker in itself than the first reason (Johnson's somewhat better qualifications).

Finally, Simpson declaring under oath that she essentially doesn't know where he children officially live or how to contact their caretakers shows either she's lying or negligent. That adds ANOTHER reason to oppose her.

Who said I was talking about you?

But there are some who go on and on about how Johnson is all that is evil in Brooklyn and that supporting Simpson is the way to oppose corruption. But they leave out Simpson's corrupt ties. You talk about both candidate's ties to the machine, past and present. We do disagree about who is worse in that category. I am fine with that. We also both recognize that reform is not always so reform...though probably disagree as to who on the reform side are playing too much with corruption.

But there are others who bring the nastiness here. I directly respond to them. If Johnson's people spouted the same bile here that Simpson's people have (which they haven't as far as I am aware) I would correct them as well. Thing is, Rock often gets attacked for all this, but wasn't he fighting Diane Gordon last year (or am I misremembering). He has reasons for his choices and so do I. And so do you. All three of us have some level of agreement as to the state of corruption around here and the sickness of the reform movement.

But some are mere advocates of Vito and outright lie. If they do it here, I will respond. And I believe some you object to have been likewise responded to by the editors of DG when they went too far on our site, right?

As to policy, there are many machine politicians where I will agree with them on many issues. My objection is largely regarding corruption, and I condemn BOTH the old machine and the new machine and the many who are shared by both old and new, and the fact that they have little interest in defeating Republicans but only care about holding power.

But there are some policies I do object to. Vito became such a tool of Ratner than even Bloomberg, of all people, objected.

So, when Vito Lopez participates in corruption (and has been under investigation for said corruption more than once as I have previously reported), spends more time registering people as independents than as democrats, supports many Republicans (whose policies are not always so great) over Democrats, and sells himself to Ratner, well no one should be surprised when I take exception.