Vincent Gentile Won't Pay Small Printing Press For Flyers Used In His Failed Election Campaign, Owners Say

Update: Radix Media said Gentile's campaign made its payment 20 minutes after this article was published.

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — A worker-owned printing shop is still waiting for Brooklyn City Councilman Vincent Gentile to pay the $1,300 he owes for campaign materials purchased a month ago, according to its co-owner.

Gentile, the Bay Ridge representative who recently lost the race to become the next Brooklyn District Attorney, has not paid for more than 1,800 campaign letters he ordered from Radix Media in August, said co-owner Lantz Arroyo.

“We are a worker-owned, unionized, three-person Brooklyn-based small business,” said Arroyo, who has been trying to get Gentile to pay his bill for more than a month. “We have families and expenses like anyone else.”

As part of his campaign to become the next Brooklyn District Attorney, Gentile ordered 1,816 mailers — campaign materials that are stuffed into envelopes and sent to potential supporters — from Radix Media in mid-August, Arroyo said.

But when Arroyo sent an invoice to campaign manager Samuel Powers on Aug. 17, after the materials had been mailed, he received a promise of payment that never came, Arroyo said.

Arroyo waited one week to hear from Powers, who finally explained the bill wouldn’t be paid because 15 subscribers on the list had not received mailers, which Powers believed was proof they had not been sent, said Arroyo.

But this news surprised Radix’s partner, a company Arroyo declined to name, because the owner added his own name to the subscriber list and received the mailer (pictured above) on Aug. 21, he said.

On Sept. 28, Arroyo sent Gentile's office a post office receipt — which Patch reviewed — that shows that 1,816 mailers were sent on Aug. 14 from a post office in Cleveland, OH, but he has yet to hear back from the Gentile campaign manager.

Finally, Arroyo tried making his plea public and tweeted his invoice directly to the councilman on Oct. 3.

Arroyo told Patch in an email that he would continue to pressure Gentile to pay his bill by garnering support from fellow union representatives and Radix Media’s online followers.

“It seems as if the Gentile campaign is trying to get out of paying their bill for campaign materials now that they lost," said Arroyo. "The fact that a sitting Councilmember would be so unresponsive and dismissive of the money they owe is shameful and should be upsetting to all of our fellow New Yorkers."

Powers wrote in response to Patch's request for comment, "I believe this payment was being made today."

Photos courtesy of Graham Morrison/Stringer/Getty Images (left) and Lanz Arroyo (right)