Dear Editor:
On the morning of Tuesday, May 8th, Newport residents awoke to discover that campaign literature from candidate Tom DeGise had been slipped under their doors. While in any other neighborhood one could write this off as part of the normal Election Day promotional frenzy, Newport is anything but normal. When just a few months ago residents began expressing interest in the mayoral campaign, the LeFrak management threatened any tenant found distributing literature of a political nature in the building with eviction.
When a local tenants organization attempted to merely set up voter-registration tables in lobbies of Newport Towers, management turned them away.
So how, then, did the DeGise campaign literature make it through this management gauntlet? How did it find its way into, apparently, seven buildings and almost 3,000 apartments overnight? Frankly, it appears to this Newport resident that only management itself could have pulled off such a logistically difficult feat. And is it a coincidence that Brian Dougherty, the attorney for LeFrak and many waterfront developers, lives in Newport and is the campaign manager and fundraiser for Tom DeGise?
It makes sense that the LeFrak Organization would want to support the candidate it has spent so much money on — Tom DeGise has certainly proven that he’s their man. That a developer can use its organizational resources to promote its own interests while suppressing the interests and political activity of its tenants reflects the ominous reality of Newport politics.
Heather Gibbons