CITYWIDE

MILLER UNVEILS SECOND ANTI-STADIUM WEB SITE

The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, announced a new Web site yesterday opposing Mayor Bloomberg’s advocacy of the construction of a football stadium on Manhattan’s West Side. The site, www.subwaysnotwestsidestadium.org, criticizes the mayor for putting a stadium for the New York Jets ahead of repairs for the city subways.

The new site is nearly identical to a Web site Mr. Miller launched in March. The Web address for that site was the same, but for the word “schools” in place of “subways.” Mr. Miller, one of four Democrats hoping to unseat Mr. Bloomberg in November’s election, dismissed the idea that his new campaign was meant to boost his political standing.

Mr. Miller said subway repairs and upgrades were being delayed because Mr. Bloomberg has put pressure on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the development rights to the 13-acre West Side site, to accept $700 million less than market value for its land in order to grant the Jets the right to build a 75,000-seat stadium. The Bloomberg administration has argued that the stadium will generate economic activity on the West Side.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MOSKOWITZ SEVERS TIES WITH INDEPENDENCE PARTY

City Council Member Eva Moskowitz cut off her relationship with the Independence Party yesterday, citing accusations that the party’s leader, Lenora Fulani, has made anti-Semitic remarks.

Ms. Moskowitz sent a letter to a party official saying she would not seek the party’s nomination in her bid to become the next borough president of Manhattan. The move could mean added pressure for Mayor Bloomberg. The mayor won 59,000 of his 744,757 votes in 2001 on the Independence Party line, accounting for his 35,000-vote margin of victory over his Democratic opponent, Mark Green.

In 1995, Ms. Fulani was quoted as saying Jews “had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism – to function as mass murderers of people of color in order to keep it.”

Last month, during a television interview on NY1, she refused to retreat from those remarks, saying they were “leftist” and “progressive,” and represented concerns about the role of Israel relative to the Palestinian Arabs. “I’m not an anti-Semite. And that quote, in my opinion, isn’t anti-Semitic. It’s raising issues that I think need to be explored,” Ms. Fulani said.

At the time, the mayor’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, said the mayor strongly disagreed with Ms. Fulani’s comments, but that her ideas did not represent all Independence Party voters. He said the party was a “growing voice of the centrist movement” and cited the fact that Ms. Moskowitz and several other Democrats had accepted its nomination in the past. In her letter, Ms. Moskowitz commended the party, but said: “It must be made clear that there is no place in the Party for anti-Semitism.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

MANHATTAN

MAN WHO FOUND MISSING STUDENT’S CELL PHONE ARRESTED

A homeless man who authorities say used the cellular phone of a missing college student three days after the student disappeared in New York City was arrested Tuesday night.

Maryland State Police Sergeant Rodney Morris said John Dennis Koppinger was being held on unrelated warrants. Sergeant Morris said, however, that he did not know whether Mr. Koppinger had provided any clues to the April 15 disappearance of Patrick Welsh. Sergeant Morris said Mr. Welsh is still missing, and New York police said they had no information to release on the case.

Mr. Welsh, 22, was last seen at the train station in Harrisburg, Pa., and police said he used his cell phone that night in Manhattan. Three days later, Mr. Koppinger called his father in Ridgefield Park, N.J., to say that he was okay, and said that he had found the cell phone.

Mr. Welsh, of Sykesville, Md., is a professional writing major at York College. His friends and family say it is uncharacteristic for him not to have contacted them. His father, Michael Welsh, said yesterday that police told him they are pursuing leads in a case he calls “a parent’s worst nightmare.”

“They said they’re getting close to finding something,” he said. Michael Welsh returned home to Maryland on Tuesday night after spending four days in New York City looking for his son.

– Associated Press

ALBANY

PATAKI AIDE DENIES REPORT GOVERNOR IS LEAVING STATE POLITICS

A top aide to Governor Pataki denied a report yesterday that the governor has made a decision on whether to run for another term and is already fine-tuning his exit strategy from state politics.

The governor’s director of communications, David Catalfamo, said a NY1 television report late yesterday that Mr. Pataki has developed a timeline for announcing he will not run is not true. “He has not [made a decision],” Mr. Catalfamo said. “There’s nothing new or unusual here.”

According to NY1, Mr. Pataki has met with top advisers, including Mr. Catalfamo, in New York and California in recent weeks to plot a political future focused on obtaining a federal position.

Mr. Pataki has made clear to reporters that he hopes to be part of the national discussion in 2008 and confirmed through aides that he traveled to California last week to meet with a group that is vetting Republican candidates for president.

But Mr. Pataki has repeatedly insisted he has not yet made a final decision on whether to seek another term as governor, despite poll numbers that show him losing by a wide margin in a hypothetical race against the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer.

On Tuesday, Mr. Pataki told reporters at the state Capitol he would make a final announcement by this coming fall.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

BROOKLYN

KINGS COUNTY CONSERVATIVE PARTY LEANING TOWARD OGNIBENE

Mayoral candidate Thomas Ognibene is expected to receive the endorsement of the Kings County Conservative Party tonight, the chairman of the organization, Jerry Kassar, told The New York Sun yesterday.

Mr. Ognibene, a former City Council minority speaker from Queens, is challenging Mayor Bloomberg in September’s Republican primary. He has pledged to remain in the race until November, regardless of the outcome of the Republican contest, and promises to run on the Conservative Party line. The chairman of the state organization, Michael Long, has said Mr. Ognibene is almost certain to become the party’s official candidate within the next few weeks.

Mr. Ognibene received the backing of the Queens County organization two weeks ago, and Mr. Kassar said that he anticipates the Brooklyn party’s executive committee will vote to make Mr. Ognibene their candidate at the committee’s monthly meeting tonight.

The candidate said yesterday that he anticipates the Bronx County endorsement next week. At that point, he will have the backing of three out of the city’s five Conservative Party clubs, securing the support necessary to run on the party’s citywide ticket.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun