Former politicians really never stop serving their constituents.
Ex-State Senator Serf Maltese wanted to serve again. This time around he was running not for just one seat in city or state government, but to run all the elections in the city as executive director of the Board of Elections (BOE).
In a letter to George Gonzalez, deputy executive director of the Board of Elections in the City of New York, Maltese said that he had the confidence and backing of his Queens County Republican Chair, the Honorable Phil Ragusa, and the Queens County Republican Commissioner, the Honorable Judith Stupp, as well as Senator Marty Golden.
But ironically, he lost to Gonzalez on Tuesday August 10, when the Board of Elections, which consists of one Democrat and one Republican commissioner from each borough, gave him a majority of six votes.
The Bronx Republican commissioner, J. C. Polanco, defected from the GOP ranks and cast his vote to promote Gonzalez, the Democrat commissioner from the Bronx, to executive director. The commissioners then named Dawn Sandow to the vacant deputy executive director’s post.
Polanco had tried to block Gonzalez from getting the top spot by offering himself as a candidate. Politics does make strange bedfellows, and after months of deadlock, Polanco cut a deal and jumped ship to put Gonzalez over the top.
Maltese was nominated for the job but that motion was defeated by a split vote. Four Republicans voted yes but two Democrats voted no and three other Democrats plus Polanco abstained.
Apparently, party defection is quite common in the process of selecting Board of Elections honchos. The last time Democrats sided with the Republicans to help them name Republican directors.
Maltese was first elected to the New York State Senate in November of 1988, representing the 320,000 people of the 15th Senatorial District and was re-elected for 10 terms.
He has won awards and recognitions — almost too numerous to mention — and is well versed in election law and a former chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Elections.
We don’t think there could have been a more qualified candidate for executive director of the Board of Elections than Serphin R. Maltese. Apparently Serf Maltese had no chance at this job for which he is eminently qualified. He was robbed!
