Fulani Loses Control of Independence Party

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

ALBANY – The strange drama of Lenora Fulani took another downward twist yesterday at a Best Western motel outside of Albany, as she was kicked off the executive committee of the Independence Party. A roll call vote in a crowded green-carpeted conference room sealed her fate, as the 125 members assembled and the proxy votes they represented decided by a 3-to-1 margin to exile her and five other members of the executive committee associated with the cult-like “social therapy” teachings of their self-described mentor, the ailing Marxist Dr. Fred Newman.


The four-hour process provoked heated debate between the party’s upstate and downstate factions, drawing accusations of racism and anti-Semitism, and political and personal betrayal. As debates dragged on, the communications director of the Monroe County Independence Party, Charlie Eames, muttered, “Oh good lord, let’s just have a duel.”


Since being founded in the extended aftermath of Ross Perot’s 1992 independent candidacy for president, the Independence Party has distinguished itself as the fastest-growing and third largest party in New York, with more than 325,000 members statewide. It has attracted voters alienated from both major parties with a core message of electoral reform, and in the process has proved a valuable vote deliverer, as figures such as Senator Schumer and Governor Pataki sought to run on its line. This reputation was solidified in 2001, when Michael Bloomberg received 59,000 votes on the Independence Party line, providing more than his margin of victory.


Underlying troubles erupted this spring, however, when, in an interview with New York 1’s Dominic Carter, Ms. Fulani was confronted with – and then steadfastly refused to explain or apologize for – comments she made that Jews “function as mass murderers of people of color.”


In the ensuing press storm, Mr. Bloomberg pronounced the statement “phenomenally offensive,” but after a closed-door meeting with party leaders, the mayor agreed to run for re-election on their line. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer – a previous winner of the Independence Party’s “anti-corruption awards” – turned up the heat, however, when he stated that he would not accept the Independence Party’s endorsement for governor in 2006 unless Ms. Fulani was censured by the party. The pony-tailed party chairman, Frank MacKay, soon began to hear from upstate leaders dissatisfied with the baggage of Fulani scandals and the negative impact it was having on the party’s identity. The Jefferson County Independence Party chairman, Jeffrey Graham, who is the mayor of Watertown, stated at yesterday’s meeting that when the party gets “defined by local controversies coming out of New York City, people get tired of that after a while.”


But Ms. Fulani’s forces put up a spirited fight, defending their right to dissent as being the essence of independence. They were encouraged by a group of supporters bused in from downstate who served as a portable amen corner, cheering statements in support of Ms. Fulani and her associates and booing the party leaders who were attempting to oust her. A few psychological tactics quickly became apparent as they attempted to sway the room: the use of “knowing laughter” as a way to deride opposing forces, while speakers used combinations of defiant smiles, vigorous nodding, and indignant anger as a way to emotionally connect with the audience.


For a while, these sentiments seemed to be swaying the undecided members of the crowd. Mr. MacKay had mailed out a packet of newspaper clippings detailing Ms. Fulani’s more outrageous statements to state committee members, but came under some fire when he failed to make a similarly detailed presentation at the meeting, especially as it concerned the other recalled executive committee members: Cathy Stewart, Harry Kresky, Jesse Fields, Gary Sinawski, and Debbie Holland. One testifying party member described the parliamentary procedure as smacking of “pure McCarthyism.”


In her defense, Ms. Fulani repeatedly stated, “I am not an anti-Semite,” while offering evidence that amounted to an extended riff on “some of my best friends are Jewish.”


But in the end, the party leadership had already locked up more than enough votes to push through the recall over the sentiments of many assembled at the Best Western. Chairman MacKay described the vote as a victory for the “90,000 New York City Independence Party members who are not named Lenora Fulani” and a defense of the party’s policy of not taking a position on social issues, while adding “I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I imagine Mayor Bloomberg is not going to cry over this move.”


While the Independence Party struggles for a coherent identity that is not dependent on personalities, the removal of Ms. Fulani from the state committee does solve several immediate problems for the party’s credibility. But Ms. Fulani’s anti-Semitic statements – while stark and stunning – were only part of the problem. The stated positions of Ms. Fulani and her mentor, Dr. Fred Newman, go back decades, and get more deeply bizarre the more one examines them: the enthusiastic embrace of Mao, Marx, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and Muammar Gadhafi; the use of children’s theater to promote a self-described revolutionary and psycho-sexualized “social therapy,” and the collection of millions of dollars in charitable and taxpayer funds to fund their off-the-charts ideological experimentation.


The Independence Party label has been a useful tool for increasing their support and concurrent access to matching funds, but it entirely misrepresents the party’s core beliefs or ultimate agenda, and constitutes a betrayal of the vast majority of party members who thought they were joining an independent political party devoted to electoral reform and fiscal responsibility.


This initial upstate skirmish will now be played out in larger wars, as some on the state party contemplate forming a committee to kick Ms. Fulani out of the Independence Party altogether while her cadre looks at legal recourse, blaming the Democratic Party for the proceedings in order to enforce “political slavery” on the black community. For the time being, at least, another bond of political slavery has been broken for the voters of New York. But in time, the real question we will have to answer is how such a fringe group could functionally take over New York’s third-largest political party for so long and serve as kingmakers in the Empire State.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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