Albany's Hottest
Political Coup & Oooops!!!

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

. . .Wednesday, May 10, 5:40 PM: The phone has been ringing for the past half an hour. . .ringing very loudly with call after call whispering, shouting, confirming, elaborating and sharing the hottest political scoop we’ve heard since Rudy met Judy.

Expect to see Mike Bragman (left) topple Assembly Speaker Silver with the help of Tom Manton and friends.

Sheldon Silver is about to be overthrown as Speaker of the Assembly. Now this is still rumor, but take it to the bank.

Monday next (May 22), a no-confidence vote will be introduced in Albany against Assembly Speaker Sheldon. His person, Staten Island’s Speaker Pro Tempore Elizabeth Connelly, will immediately adjourn the session, giving Silver about three days of maneuvering time to save himself. However, three indepen-dent, inside, reliable sources have told this writer that the votes are there and by the end of next week, Speaker Silver will be out and Syracuse’s Mike Bragman shall be Speaker.

The finishing touches of this long overdue coup were put together at the Democratic convention last (Tuesday) night.

The Republicans, long mistreated by Speaker Silver, have signed on to help overthrow him. Queens Dem Leader Tom Manton was in Albany for the convention and the Bronx’s Dem Leader Roberto Ramirez met with Bragman yesterday. The deal has been done, we are told.

All of the Queens Dems (except Cathy Nolan — we told you recently of her loyalty to Silver causing her to vote with him to repeal the City Commuter Tax against the best interest of NYC) — the Bronx and the Republican members are aboard.

It gets a bit more complicated here. Yesterday’s Convention was the start of another political race: the 2002 NYS Governor’s race. On hand were the two Democratic stars seeking their party’s nomination — Comptroller Carl McCall and HUD Secretary Andrew (son of) Cuomo. Although Cuomo delivered an impressive speech, we’re told the convention and thunder belonged to McCall. His chances are greatly enhanced since the minority legislators are fervently committed to seeing him as the first black Governor in New York.

So is Mike Bragman. Silver we hear is with Cuomo.

So the black Assemblymembers are also favorably disposed to overthrow Silver.

With the numbers clear and the black caucus with Bragman, we are now hearing rumors that Denny Farrell Silver’s own County Leader is wavering.

Bragman and company would like to do this without Republican votes.

Silver, still Speaker until the vote is taken — at the end of next week — still wields considerable power. However, he has never expanded his political umbrella and it will be near impossible for him to cut deals with the members he has excluded, manhandled and alienated. But, he’ll surely try.

By the time you read next week’s Not4Publication, expect to hear of the Assembly Speaker Mike Bragman.

The upstater might just be good for us downstate folks.

FAUX PAS! Those longtime readers of this column already know and those newcomers are about to find out . . . in spite of the most careful efforts to be accurate and the most diligent efforts to proofread, we make mistakes (or is it misteaks?). When we do, we acknowledge them.

We have also been known to point out mistakes by others. To the elected officials in our new area of coverage in southeast Queens, beware: We read press releases and have been known to reprint parts, no matter how silly they seem — just ask Assemblyman Mike Cohen.

Well, of all the mistakes we’ve ever been involved in, last week’s takes first place — more on that in a moment.

To borrow an expression from our editor, Tamara Hartman, "Birthing a newspaper ain’t easy." Really, Tamara, our perfect grammarian, proofreader and copy editor said that.

It sure ain’t easy! A very overworked newspaper staff has been struggling for at least two weeks to keep our collective heads above water. The creation of the PRESS of Southeast Queens has been an awesome and overwhelming task. Its design, content, mission, distribution, sales, schedule, learning the community, meetings and staffing — oh, do we need staff — have consumed many of us recently.

However, in addition to "birthing a newspaper," we have to, without missing a beat, continue our weekly quality publication, the Queens Tribune. Under the best of circumstances it ain’t easy. Under a staff shortage, it is overwhelming. We still need an editor and writers (telemarketers and outside sales execs, too). Want to join our journalistic effort? Fax your resume to: (718) 357-0972.

By the way, amidst the craziness we did manage to get the PRESS website up and running. Although, there will be lots more to come online, check the PRESS out at: www.queenspress.com.

So, there we are, last Thursday night until 1 a.m., birthing the PRESS. We were over our collective heads — the first time is the toughest. It might be the most memorable, but you feel it for days. Several of us have yet to recover.

Tamara is proofing, Lianne our art director is designing and we are way behind schedule for transmitting the four-color front page to the pre-press department. Yes, we’re paginated and transmit color pages electronically via modem — impressive, huh?

So Shiek Mohamesd, our superstar page layout artist, and I attack the PRESS front page. It was pretty easy. We knew we were going with a picture of Building 90, which contains the radioactive Strontium 90 at the St. Albans Veterans Hospital. I had written the headline with Tamara late the night before after putting the Trib to bed — "THE LATEST BUZZ in Southeast Queens . . . RADIOACTIVE Strontium 90! We wanted to reefer (that’s a newspaper term for "refer to" — don’t get any wrong ideas) our two well known weekly columnists, NY1’s Gary Anthony Ramsay and Reverend Floyd Flake.

The front page practically laid out itself. Shiek gathered the elements, the PRESS logo was designed earlier, the lead picture was a horizontal, Shiek typed the head and with me standing behind him had to tweak the other elements: Flake and Ramsay’s pictures and reefers, a pic of the new PRESS distribution box and a couple of other words. I watched; he played; Lianne consulted; Marcia our Associate Publisher looked on; others walked over. He printed draft one; we tweaked a bit more. He printed the final version. Lianne, Marcia and Tamara signed off and he transmitted the page. It appears below.

Now, to your left, you have been wondering why there are the words in the triangular shape which by now most of you have read as: "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?"

Well, the eye and mind do funny things. When you are expecting to see something, you often see what you expect, even if it’s not there. Read the triangled words again. Now try it again — one word at a time: Where, In, The, The — yes, "the" appears twice, yet almost no one picks it up. You saw what you expected to see.

So did we late last Thursday night. Look again at the front page headline below. The LASTEST Buzz. Hmmm! That’s LATEST, not LASTEST. But last Thursday night, a large batch of professionals including this writer failed to see what was and saw what we expected.

As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until 25,000 copies were out in the community that we even realized the error. We had the front page (and the three pages that go with it) reprinted and made the change on a very small number of copies.

So here I sit, the perennial collector – having dabbled in stamps, coins and more then dabbled in Royal Doulton Toby mugs — wondering if this error will ever be worth anything? The philatelists out there will appreciate the true value of a quality error – like the 23¢ inverted Jenny postage stamp.

But alas, there are many more errors than correct versions and the true value of the front page error will be to set an example for others not to strive for!

We worked real hard, but . . . but we are laughing at ourselves. And, almost no one noticed.

We apologize to our new readers of the PRESS for our faux pas. It was our first, and biggest imaginable — but, it won’t be our last. We hope you can laugh with us knowing that with all the well-meaning and diligence in the world, we will never achieve perfection.

All we can do is try our best. And that is our newspaper’s commitment to you, 52 weeks a year.

Oh, and bring you the LASTEST news!

See you next week.

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Michael Schenkler can be reached at: MSchenkler@QueensTribune.com

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