By Connor Adams Sheets
State Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Whitestone) may have a Captain Ahab on her trail.
A mysterious website, The Stavisky Report, has been slamming the longtime legislator for several months with a slew of insults and allegations.
From charges of corruption to repeated references to her as “The Moby,” an allusion to Herman Mellville’s classic novel “Moby-Dick,” the site has been filled since March with vitriol against the senator, who is running to keep her seat in this year’s election.
“From classic literature we have come to understand that a white whale is an elusive and obscure creature. Exactly, like Senator Toby Stavisky!” a June post reads. “We can find a strange similarity between Captain Ahab’s obsession with killing the white whale and the voters of the 16th Senatorial district obsession in voting out Senator Moby Stavisky.”
No one seems to know who runs the site, which also features a post praising Isaac Sasson and John Messer for challenging Stavisky in this year’s Democratic primary, and two posts in support of Messer, who has been vocal in his opposition to Stavisky.
Messer and his political consultant, Lois Marbach, did not return calls for comment on the website.
Another vocal Stavisky critic, Michael Chimenti, a constituent of hers who got into trouble after mailing a tea bag to her Albany office, said he has no idea who runs the website, which he said he had never heard of.
Stavisky said she does not lose sleep over the site and that she does not know who runs it.
“Quite frankly, I don’t pay any attention to it,” she said. “[The newest posting] was posted at 4:15 a.m. I think it was Bill Cosby who said nothing good ever happens after 3 a.m. Obviously I was asleep and this person had nothing better to do at 4:15 a.m. than post that. Maybe the bars had just let out. Look at the time it was posted, that should tell you a little bit about the individual.”
Alex Christodoulides, a spokeswoman for Stavisky, said she and her co-workers have a little more interest in unmasking the person or people who are behind the site.
“We would love to know who writes that. We have our suspicions, but we would love to know who it is,” she said. “For however long the site has been around, we’ve been getting Google Alerts about it.”
The Stavisky Report’s Web address is staviskyforsenate.com.
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
