2014 GIVES LONG BEACH SHOT AT BETTER ASSEMBLY REPRESENTATION

Now that Harvey Weisenberg has announced his intention not to run for re-election, I believe that the 2014 elections give Long Beach a great chance of upgrading its decades-long under-representation in the New York State Assembly. 

For years, I have believed Harvey Weisenberg was a poor choice to continue as Assemblyman. He allowed us to be taxed mercilessly.  He failed to stand up to Assembly boss Sheldon Silver, who rams through an Assembly agenda that treats Long Island like a cash cow for a City-oriented agenda. He sat by while the State budget deficit doubled and has supported what has been an unsustainable rate of State spending.  He double-dipped pension and salary, a practice legislated as illegal in 1995, for which Mr. Weisenberg, appropriately, is “grandfathered.”  He preferred to build pyramids, rather than coalitions, relying on his “back-slapping, beach-bum shtick.”

Weisenberg had but a tepid legislative record.  Lacking gravitas and creativity, he was myopic in his scope of advocacy, rooted in vested, personal and special interests.  He would never “count the casualties before he crusades."  He was indebted to organized labor and public education interests. Weisenberg posed as moderate and bi-partisan, while steadfast in his dedication to the liberal ideology of the Assembly docket.  His legislative initiatives resulted in little more than New York being the highest taxed and most costly to do business. He bore a record of bringing pennies back in member-item grants while taking dollars through taxes. 

Weisenberg showed embarrassing hubris by his literacy signs in the library, attempts to rename the Long Beach Recreation Center, and the ludicrous billboard that he withdrew under questions raised during his 2006 campaign. The billboard in question was on Rockaway Turnpike and featured Harvey Weisenberg in a suit at a legislature podium with the caption “I will save you in Albany” and at the ocean shore dressed in a small bathing suit, captioned “I will save you at the beach.”  Sandwiched in between is the message “Save yourself…check your sunscreen expiration date…” Who paid for it?  In his campaign financial disclosure reports, there was no reference to this expense and no reference to ‘in-kind service’ contribution of any entity or person. His life has been one of taxpayer-financed employment from his short tenure with the Long Beach Police Department (which he puzzlingly resigned) to become a Special Ed School Teacher, to his time on the City Council up to his being elected to the Assembly, a self-perpetuating incumbent.    

While quick to talk about himself, Harvey Weisenberg stayed strangely mute on issues needing moral leadership.  He never commented on Assemblyman Vito Lopez, former head of the Brooklyn Democrat Committee, who was censured over accusations that he groped or sexually harassed multiple female staffers.  He remained mute when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver authorized a secret $135,000 settlement with two women who had made claims against Mr. Lopez, two months before the Assembly censured Mr. Lopez for allegedly harassing two other women.  Stunningly $103,000.00 of the settlement was from public, taxpayer funds!  Several years earlier, when Silver’s chief counsel J. Michael Boxley, was charged with raping two women, Weisenberg never criticized Silver nor Boxley, but rather stated “We’re not responsible what happens off campus.” Weisenberg’s support of Boxley, Silver and Lopez—tacit or otherwise-- stood in contrast to any claim he could make as an advocate for women’s issues and as a political independent. If Weisenberg claims to have had prestige and experience in the Assembly, he should have addressed the issues affecting his Assembly colleagues.  Still, Weisenberg would crow about his accomplishments with so-called “women’s issues”, such as his support of the extreme and dangerous partial birth abortion, while falling short on advocating for a woman’s dignity in the face of official misconduct of his colleagues.

I ran against Harvey in 2006.  I am not a bitter candidate; I am a bitter constituent, since I, too, had to suffer from his mediocre representation of me in the state legislature.  Harvey Weisenberg is not a legend…he is a myth.  I may have Long Beach sand in my shoes, but I don’t have rocks in my head.”  Blow off the dust of his platitudes and canards, and you will see in Mr. Weisenberg a man who has been for a long time ready to be retired.