‘Team Norman' Said To Vandalize Opponents' Campaign Literature

Campaigning was a real chore for those who worked for Clarence Norman, once Brooklyn's most powerful political boss.

Work began at 5 a.m., and over the course of the day, they risked violent confrontations as they distributed fliers, posted placards — and vandalized campaign literature belonging to the enemy camp.

"A ‘hurricane' may come, and the posters fall," a Brooklyn Democratic party operations manager, William Boone III, said yesterday on the witness stand at the fourth Norman corruption trial in two years, Norman, referring to ripping down opponents' posters on behalf of the "Team Norman" slate.

Mr. Boone, 55, was a get-out-thevote leader for Norman. Norman is on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court on charges that he strong-armed two candidates in a 2002 civil court race by demanding they pay tens of thousands of dollars to politically connected consultants in exchange for the party's crucial endorsement — a blessing Norman threatened to "dump" if they didn't pay.

One of the candidates, Karen Yellen, paid $9,000 to Mr. Boone on Norman's orders. She testified earlier this month that she feared she'd ruin her judicial career if she didn't pay Mr. Boone and another favored consultant who designed campaign fliers, Ernest Lendler.

The candidates didn't pay all the money that was demanded, Norman's lawyers note in his defense.

Still, prosecutors say the $9,000 check to Mr. Boone was just one example of a pattern by Norman of trading Kings County judgeships for cash. Mr. Boone did concede that only the judicial candidates were ordered by Norman to pay.

Despite Ms. Yellen's payment to Mr. Boone and the receipt of the county party machine's endorsement, both she and another judicial candidate, Marcia Sikowitz, lost to underdog candidates, who won without the party's support and shook up the Kings County political system.

Prosecutors presented a party memorandum itemizing how Ms. Yellen's thousands were to be spent toward getting out the vote, but Mr. Boone said in his testimony the $9,000 was solely to compensate him "for my efforts."

Norman, a former 12-term state assemblyman, is out on bail. He faces up to six years in prison related to an earlier conviction of pocketing campaign funds and seeking illegal contributions.

Mr. Boone, who compared himself yesterday to the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, said he lived in Brooklyn "with the people" to "educate and empower" them — a self-description one of the prosecutors, Kevin Richardson, questioned.

"How does removing the posters of opposition candidates encourage, and I believe your words were, ‘voter empowerment'?" Mr. Richardson said.

After a bit of demurring, Mr. Boone smirked.

"I would say ‘empowering' to vote for my candidate," he said as several jurors and spectators in the courtroom gallery laughed.

"So you empower them the way you want them to be empowered?" the prosecutor said.

"You can draw that conclusion," Mr. Boone, an aide to the president of Medgar Evers College, said. "I want my candidate to win."

The jury is likely to begin deliberations next week, the judge in the case said.