Al Sharpton Leads a Political Lynching in New York City

By Nicholas Stix

November 9, 2001
Toogood Reports

"Invoking race should never happen again." So said Democratic New York Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer, about the 2001 New York City Democratic mayoral primary. The odd thing is, Schumer's remark was directed not at candidate Fernando "Freddie" Ferrer, who had made a purely racial appeal for votes, but at his socialist opponent, Mark Green, who had not invoked race.

Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, and Green, the city's public advocate, led the pack in the Democratic Primary, held on September 25, after the original September 11 primary was canceled on account of war. Ferrer barely won that round, but since he failed to clear the 40 percent hurdle required to secure the Party's nomination, a runoff was held between the two on October 11. That day, Green made the mistake of his political life: He won.

Although Green and Ferrer are both white, Ferrer is Puerto Rican, and thus politically, a "person of color." Just as in race relations on the street, in the classroom, and on the job, in American politics today, "persons of color" may be as racist as they wanna be, and may make wild, baseless charges of racism against whites, but whites are not permitted to refute such charges, and are not permitted to aggressively compete against opponents enjoying such privileged status.

Green beat Ferrer in the October 11 runoff. But that couldn't be -- a white candidate MAY NOT beat a "minority" (or minority surrogate, as in the case of Al Gore last year) candidate; the only permissible explanation is that racist whites stole the election. In fact, police at a polling place did accidentally double-count votes they were tallying to bring to the counting central, and Green's victory, in the official count was eventually only by 19,000 votes, but no fair-minded person could doubt that Green had beaten Ferrer.

Unsurprisingly, many New York blacks, looking to reprise the 2000 Florida Disenfranchisement Hoax, insisted that "the white man" stole the primary. After the October 11 runoff, liberal Daily News columnist, Michael Kramer, quoted a Harlem man, Jimmy Brown, as saying, "'They stole it. Simple as that. Just like in Florida. They stole it."

"'Who stole what? I asked Jimmy Brown as he walked across 125th St. in Harlem yesterday.

"'The election,' Brown said. 'They stole it from Freddy.

"Who stole it? I asked again.

"'The white man. You see that Al and Charlie want Washington brought in," a reference to a call by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Charles Rangel for the Justice Department to investigate and monitor a recount. 'You don't ask for that unless they stole it because they don't want a minority being mayor.

After initially conceding, Ferrer did an Al Gore, and retracted his concession, grumbling that he had been cheated. Ferrer said that he would support the Democratic nominee, but that "We don't know who that nominee is." Ferrer and his supporters, most notably the Rev. Al Sharpton, then claimed Ferrer had been cheated by "racist" campaign tactics employed by Green.

It seems that in the days leading up to the runoff, Green supporters in Jewish neighborhoods made fliers with a photograph of Ferrer and Sharpton together, their hands raised, with the caption, "Do you want this man to be our next mayor?" They also distributed copies of political cartoons by the New York Post's take-no-prisoners caricaturist, Sean Delonas. One Delonas cartoon depicted an elephantine Sharpton marrying the slender Ferrer, with the latter in a wedding dress, and a Homer Simpson-like, white spectator in an "I LOVE NY" t-shirt yelling, "I object!" In another Delonas cartoon, Ferrer bent down to kiss Sharpton's humongous derriere.

The beauty part of the captioned photograph of Ferrer and Sharpton, was that it left to the reader's imagination, who "this man" was. Would Ferrer be mayor, or would Sharpton?

All this was "racist," according to the Ferrer forces, who added to their indictment the line in Green's ads that Ferrer's ideas for rebuilding New York were "borderline irresponsible." The black and Hispanic leaders denouncing that phrase knew fully well, that it was a quote from a New York Times house editorial criticizing Ferrer, but acted as if the evil Green had coined it -- and as if he had no right to criticize his opponent.

This, from people who all supported the 2000 Florida Disenfranchisement Hoax, and in many cases, (still) supported the Tawana Brawley Hoax, which Sharpton had helped perpetrate, in 1987.

Mark Green did not okay the use of the fliers in question (and what if he had?), nor did his campaign officials, but it seems that four of his deputies were at a meeting in which some of Green's supporters discussed the idea, as the Daily News reported on November 2. Wannabe Democratic kingmaker Al Sharpton pounced on this factoid, as an excuse to try and sink Green's candidacy, and hand City Hall over to "Republican" media magnate, Michael Bloomberg. Sharpton announced, "We're not talking about people targeting me, we're talking about targeted race baiting. [The tactics discussed in front of the Green aides] smack of the worst form of racial politics of our lifetime."

You read right: Al Sharpton was damning folks for "racial politics" and "race-baiting." Sharpton also insisted that anyone in the room during the meeting in question, was equally "guilty," though he never explained what crime had been committed.

In the Gospel According to Rev. Al, a witness to a crime is himself a criminal, and even witnesses to non-crimes are criminals -- if they are white. If Sharpton is serious about that standard, then he is a one-man crime wave, guilty of conspiracy and fraud in the Tawana Brawley Hoax, and seven counts of murder in the December 8, 1995, Harlem Massacre, which he helped incite. The media gave Sharpton a free pass, both regarding his own history of racial demagoguery, and the illogic of his charges.

What the media and Green himself have left untouched, is that the Ferrer campaign was built entirely on an explicitly racial call for blacks and Hispanics to vote for him, because he is one of them. Ferrer's TV ads spoke of "two cities" and "the other New York," and showed a youngish, middle-class, black couple responding with alarm to an oncoming police car's beacon.

After winning the primary, Green sought to make peace, meeting separately with Ferrer and Sharpton, and both did publicly agree to support him -- sort of. Ferrer met publicly with Green to announce his support of his previous opponent, but did so with a face and manner so glum, that they thoroughly undercut his words of support. At the same time, Ferrer's chief Hispanic supporter, Bronx Democratic Party Chief, Roberto "Bobby" Ramirez, attacked Green in the pages of the racist, black Amsterdam News weekly newspaper.

After agreeing to support Green, Sharpton stabbed him in the back on November 2, announcing that "We are not the bastard children of the Democratic Party!" Using the Daily News story that day on the anti-Ferrer poster campaign as a pretext, Sharpton withdrew his support for Green. But only a simpleton would take Sharpton's newest theatrics at face value. He was just making it clear to those black voters who might have been confused by his previous mixed signals, what he wanted them to do. Black voters responded by voting for Green over Bloomberg, 75-22 percent. That might sound like a good result for Green, but consider that in 1989 and 1993, 96 percent of black voters chose black socialist David Dinkins over Rudolph Giuliani.

Things went much worse for Green with Hispanic voters, who split 48-48 between Green and Bloomberg. This was nothing but racist revenge, pure and simple. Green had beaten their man, and so they were going to destroy him. Bloomberg even got away with disparaging bilingual education, a terrible program which nonetheless is popular with Hispanic leaders, without suffering any repercussions. Bloomberg picked up endorsements from the NYPD's Latino Society, and on election day, I heard a voice over on one Spanish-language radio station keep urging listeners to vote for Bloomberg.

The Spanish-language newspaper, Hoy (Today), quoted Hispanic voters saying nice things about Bloomberg. Elisa Mora said, "I'm a Democrat, but Bloomberg sounds like a good person who will help Hispanics." ("Soy democrata pero votare por Bloomberg porque es un persona muy correcta y que ayudara a los latinos.") Translation: "I'm a Democrat, but since the white guy beat my guy, I'll vote against the Party."

New York's racist black newspapers, the Amsterdam News and The Daily Challenge, both supported Bloomberg, while publishing reams of anti-Green invective, much of it by Ferrer supporters such as Bill Lynch (who was former Mayor David Dinkins' chief of staff) and Roberto "Bobby" Ramirez. Bloomberg got the support of racist black radio station WBLS, owned by lifelong Democrat, Percy Sutton, the former Manhattan borough president, who still supports racial hoaxer Tawana Brawley. The black supremacist, fraternal police organization, The Guardians, also backed Bloomberg. Again, none of this had anything to do with Bloomberg, and everything to do with Green.

(Even Mortimer Zuckerman's -- who also owns U.S. News and World Report and the Atlantic Monthly -- Daily News came out for Bloomberg. Playing a common, and perverse refrain in the Daily News, veteran political reporter Joel Siegel claimed that "Bronx Democratic boss Roberto Ramirez and the Rev. Al Sharpton sat on their hands in the past week," when in fact they were busy attacking Green both in front of cameras and in the black press.)

Finally, Mayor Giuliani and Ed Koch, New York's last three-term mayor (1978-89), came out for Bloomberg. Giuliani did so only days before the election, when it looked for the first time like Bloomberg had a real chance to win. The Democrat Koch did so out of a now tiresome personal treachery, which has seen him cozy up to his old nemesis, Al Sharpton (the two were photographed standing back-to-back, for a Village Voice cover shot two years ago).

The anti-Green campaign worked: Bloomberg beat Green by 41,941 votes, 50.4 to 47.4%, in the unofficial count, and Green, who was hoping for a Florida scenario, replete with challenges and recounts, conceded defeat.

There is one positive consequence to all this race-baiting: In a city with a 5-1 Democratic edge in registered voters, Al Sharpton has singlehandedly given a legitimacy to the local Republican Party that its own inept, local stewards could never earn for it.

That's another way of saying that Sharpton, the would-be kingmaker, has unmade the Democratic Party in New York. About ten years ago, some disgruntled, black Democrats formed a racist party, which they euphemistically called the "Working Families Party." That party exists in name, but wields no power. Instead, the Democratic Party has largely been remade in the same racist mold. Thus continues the development begun in the mid-1960s, whereby racist blacks, with the help of white elites, have chased whites out of one New York institution after another -- the schools, the civil service, neighborhoods.

However, this is New York we're talking about, a city that for the past eight years has been ruled by a man who supports abortion rights, gun control, and immigrants' and gay rights, yet whom the media and socialist political elites have always considered a "right-winger." Although Mike Bloomberg is the first Republican mayor to succeed a Republican since the 1898 joining of The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island to Manhattan, thus creating Greater New York, this is the same man who only weeks ago, much to the discomfort of Republican New York Gov. George Pataki, publicly described himself as a "liberal," a man who openly supports affirmative action. At this point, in New York City the Republican Party functions largely as a Democratic Party II, for candidates who, as Mike Bloomberg admitted about himself, cannot gain traction in the Democratic Party.

Somehow, I find myself feeling sorry for Mark Green, who in less than two weeks, went from leading Bloomberg in polls by as much as 15 points, to being defeated in his last chance in political life -- even if he doesn't deserve compassion. After all, this is a man who spent his political career supporting affirmative action and related apartheid schemes. As late as two days before the election, Green had black supremacist NYPD officer, Lt. Eric Adams, the founder of 100 Black Men in Law Enforcement Who Care, appear as his surrogate at a debate on WBLS.

Mark Green was like the man who, upon seeing a mugger rob his neighbor, turned away, hoping the robber would leave him alone, if he didn't say anything. He then graduated to speaking out for compassion for muggers as life's victims. Well, the muggers have now come for Green, too. To borrow from Malcolm X, the chickens are coming home to roost.