Bay Ridge Democrats…What Happened to Them?
Three years ago, The Bay Ridge Democrats were concerned about having the best people represent our community.
The Bay Ridge Democrats spoke about against politicians who stood up against developers and lobbyists:
That was the main reason many people supported Gounardes and Brannan. The Bay Ridge Democrats wanted an honest player and a lot of people could get behind that. Update: Kings County Politics uncovered that Senator Gounardes has accepted thousands from a developer. (See here)
We see the way Bay Ridge looks now and the Bay Ridge Democrats don’t seem to care that Andrew Gounardes and Justin Brannan are taking money from developers.
Justin Brannan ran for office here saying he would stand up to developers and lobbyists. (See here) Justin’s all over NYC’s lobbyist database. You can do a quick search here – just select 2018, 2019 and 2020. Then go down to targets – choose the green button and type in Justin Brannan, select his name in the list and then search.
Have you seen the money involved?
Justin Brannan doesn’t see anything wrong with him using our council seat to do this.
District Leader, Christopher McCreight used to speak out against lobbyists all the time! (See here) McCreight is Councilman Brannan’s chief-of-staff and doesn’t talk about lobbyist much, unless he is insulting Republicans, like Malliotakis.
Why is Chris McCreight in the NYC Lobbyist Database? How is this helping Bay Ridge?
Why does McCreight think it’s okay for Democrats to be involved with lobbyists?
What happened to the Bay Ridge Democrats?
We believe that the club had a surge of socialist members join their organization. The group supported Bernie Sanders over Biden (even though Democrats were overwhelmingly supporting Biden throughout the country).
The current members of the Bay Ridge Democrats either don’t realize or don’t care that Justin Brannan accepts money from developers or lobbyists. Political organizations like Radiofree Bay Ridge have not spoken out against Brannan receiving support from developers or lobbyists. I asked them about it a few weeks ago and their silence says a lot (considering they were never silent)
The Bay Ridge Democrats were firmly against Ethan Lustig when he ran against Mathylde Frontus. Lustig received money from State Senator Diane Savino. Diane Savino was with the IDC (a group of Democrats who voted with Republicans for years). Now Savino’s staffer is running for office and the Bay Ridge Democrats support that?
Why isn’t Senator Andrew Gounardes speaking out about this? Gounardes definately knows this is going on as Andrew served as Eric Adams attorney. Gounardes is listed in the lobbyist database fifteen times as an employee of Eric Adams over two years – 2015 to 2017. (You can search here) Adams has received a significant amount of money in the database. Adams faced scutiny from the papers over his fund receiving so much money. See here and here. Gounardes is certainly aware, but chooses to look away. This is the trouble with having political friends in office representing us.
Hugs,
marlene
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