Debate Over Hate Heats Up Following Swastika Ad

The ongoing battle between a Northeast Queens Senator and proponents of a Statewide hate crimes bill has heated up once again in the wake of the publication of an ad printed in a local weekly newspaper.
Senator Frank Padavan said he was shocked to discover the ad last week which he has since claimed is outrageously false and misleading.
The controversial advertisement, which was paid for by the Hate Crimes Coalition of the Anti-Defamation League and run in a recent edition of The Bayside Times, depicts a spray painted swastika next to a graffitied flower underlined by the statement "No, I don’t see any difference."
The quote is attributed to David Markey, the counsel to Senator Frank Padavan who reportedly met with members of the Coalition late last month in Albany to discuss the hate crimes issue.
"The whole thing is fabricated," said Ed DeCosmo a spokesperson for Senator Padavan who argued "we never saw the pictures or the quote until the ads."
DeCosmo told The Queens Courier that the ad is an attack on the character and achievements of the Senator.
"We did not single out Padavan," contested Howie Katz, acting director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New York Regional Office and longtime advocate of a hate crimes bill.
"I have been involved with the Hate Crimes Coalition for ten years and we have never taken out an ad like this," Katz added saying that although he was not in the room at the time, Markey’s remarks virtually stunned everyone at the May 25 meeting.
Phyllis Barell, the Long Island Director of the ADL who was in attendance at the meeting, claimed that when Markey was asked "if there was a daisy and a swastika spray-painted on the wall of the synagogue, would it be the same?," he replied that both instances would be considered the same crime.
"In the context of what the punishment should be, he did not see a difference," Barell said.
On March 25 of this year, protestors at a Bayside LIRR station demonstration called upon Padavan to support a state hate crimes bill.
The Bellerose Republican, who has in the past co-sponsored a bias related gang assualt bill in addition to legislation which holds parents accountable when children vandalize houses of worship has claimed in recent weeks that he was "slanderously villified" at the Bayside demonstration.