City Council Turf War Fought on Lawns

The fight for the 43rd District’s City Council seat is playing out on thousands of little battlefields. Nearly every lawn in the Brooklyn district, which covers Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, and Bath Beach, is marked with a sign for either Democratic incumbent Vincent Gentile or Pat Russo, his Republican challenger. By last count, Mr. Russo, 37, has been pulling ahead on the lawn front.“It’s kind of like going to the moon,” Mr. Russo said as he strolled down one of his district’s quiet streets the other day. “It’s like planting the American flag. You say, ‘This is it. We came here.'”Mr. Gentile isn’t convinced. “When we had an election here two years ago, the person with the most lawn signs came in fifth.”Mr. Gentile, 46, might brush off the lawn war, but he can’t cast his opponent aside so easily. Mr. Russo, a lawyer, was a legitimate threat when the two squared off in 2003. That time, Mr. Gentile bested Mr. Russo 55% to 45%, but this time around, Mr. Russo might be a more difficult obstacle to overcome. While Mr. Gentile now comes to the table with a record of service, he doesn’t run on the same party line as Mayor Bloomberg, who has been gaining ground in the area in his re-election race against the Democrat, Fernando Ferrer.On Election Day, Mr. Russo’s name will be right below Mr. Bloomberg’s on the ballot. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the area about two to one, but party affiliations are especially slippery on this turf, where left-wing liberals are few and far between, and many Democrats take on middle-of-the-lawn labels like “Reagan Democrats” or “Clinton Conservatives.”Mr. Gentile is out there, stumping up a storm, schmoozing with commuters at 7:00 every morning, picnicking with senior citizens in the afternoon, and staying on his feet until midnight or so. “I like to say I’m a Democrat Republicans can love,” he said. He has to sneak a few minutes in the afternoon to read the papers, and a nightly check-in with 1010 WINS keeps him abreast of the baseball scores. This could be the fight of his life, yet he is loath to call it such, pointing back to his run against Christopher Mega for State Senate in 1998. “That was my battle royale,” he said over coffee near his City Hall office the other morning. He painted his opponent as a lightweight, somebody with no record of service. “He will espouse the Republican philosophy. But that’s what’s carrying him along. All he can say is what he will do or would do.”Yet to judge by the lawns, Mr. Russo isn’t just running on hypothetical bluster. “My impression is Russo is going to do very well,” said Mitchell Moss, who teaches urban policy and planning at NYU and who has advised Mayor Bloomberg. “Ferrer simply doesn’t resonate with the community. The challenge for Russo is to tag Ferrer around Gentile’s neck.”Mr. Gentile’s political career has resembled a game of musical chairs. After eight years in State Senate, he lost the seat to a Republican City Councilman, Martin Golden, in 2002. In the special election to fill Mr. Golden’s vacated seat, Mr. Gentile beat out Rosemary O’Keefe, a former aide to Mayor Giuliani, by 31 votes. A few months later, in the regular election, he faced off against a newcomer named Pat Russo. And now, two years later, Mr. Russo is trying once again to swipe Mr. Gentile’s seat.Should Mr. Russo succeed, the City Council’s Republican block stands to increase from three to at least four. Out of 51 Council members, this wouldn’t be a major chunk, but the body’s Republican faction wields a significant amount of influence within the chambers. “But for the three Republicans in the City Council, there would not be debate and dialogue in the chambers,” said Council Member and minority leader James Oddo. “The three of us speak on behalf of hundreds of thousands if not millions of moderate and conservative New Yorkers.” In the crowded City Council speaker’s race expected to take place this winter, a block of four votes can’t hurt.Pasqualino Russo, 37, grew up in an Italian immigrant household in Bensonhurst. His father was a barber and his mother sewed in a factory for religious garments. “I had an Italian accent when I was a little boy,” Mr. Russo said. He attended Xaverian High School, a Catholic school in Bay Ridge, where he spent time in student government. In 1994, he graduated from Brooklyn Law School and got a job with the Brooklyn law firm Cullen and Dykman. Three years later, he started as counsel for the state welfare inspector general and went after welfare fraud cases.Campaigning outside of Foodtown last weekend, he stooped down to look old ladies in the eye. “I think you’re more handsome than in the photo,” one told him. “Well, thank you,” he said, holding on to her wrist with both hands. “You just made my day.”The campaigning school he follows could be described as the What-a-Small-World one. At a block party later that afternoon, he waded through a sea of little girls playing with hula hoops to reach the few adults who were around. His aides say his problem is he spends too much time talking to every single person when he’s out campaigning. In each new conversation, it takes him a while to dig around before establishing a common bond. A joint interest in lowering taxes or abolishing gay marriage isn’t enough. He keeps going until he’s at the point of: “Oh you’re on Karen Crain’s block!” or “Oh! Frank Licato’s your husband!”Mr. Gentile also believes in being out among the people for as many hours as humanly possible, but he takes a different approach. He doesn’t believe in hamming it up as much as being on hand for his neighborhoods, and he says his greatest contributions would be, in descending order, securing $15 million for the district, the abolition of Sunday parking meters, and rezoning Bay Ridge to protect historic houses against development.The Gentiles grew up in Bay Ridge. His father worked in real estate and newspaper distribution; his mother stayed at home with her four children. Mr. Gentile went to Cornell, studied law at Fordham, and worked as a prosecutor in Queens for 11 years. He insists that the race doesn’t boil down to party lines; it’s about a man with a record versus a man who would be in the minority and, as such, would find it difficult to get funding out of the Council’s budget.Still, Mr. Russo won’t be deterred. He’s out there, grabbing hands and holding on for dear life. “He’s chatty,” the head of the Brooklyn Conservative Party, Jerry Kossar, said. “He has plenty to say.”

City Council Turf War Fought on Lawns

City Council Turf War Fought on Lawns

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