Pedro Espada Thinks a Daily News Reporter Is Out to Get Him
By Azi Paybarah
Here's Daily News reporter Barbara Ross, who wrote about Pedro Espada's unreported campaign activity today, trying to get some answers after a press conference at City Hall today.
Espada calls it "yellow journalism" and "disrespectful" and walks away.
He then chats with New York Post reporter Carl Campanile about mayoral control for a bit. Then he's approached again by Ross.
When she asked why he can't accurately report his campaign finance activity, Espada said, "You don't want me to get it right."
It gets worse.
"You've been assigned to me to write negative story after negative story after negative story. Right? And that's all you do," he said.
"You try to redefine me in the worst possible way. That is your job. Admit to that. Your job is to write bad stories about Pedro Espada every day of the week. That is your job, isn't it, Barbara Ross?"
Azi Paybarah can be reached via email at azi.paybarah@politickerny.com.
Espada & Lydon LaRouche??!11!What?
ReplyDelete"State Sen. Pedro Espada’s party affiliation is something of an open question these days. He still proclaims himself a Democrat, yet he is the only non-Republican member of the self-styled “reform coalition” which stands in the way of Democrats and their majority.
Yet the affiliation that has some old Bronx watchers talking these days is one Espada held at the outset of his political career, when he was the standard-bearer for a radical fringe group called the New Alliance Party (NAP), which, among other things, drafted therapy patients into working on its political campaigns.
The NAP billed itself in the 1970s and ’80s as a left-wing organization dedicated to helping poor Bronx residents empower themselves through grassroots activism. But the party has since been discredited as a front for a larger, cult-like movement with ties to radical right-wing gadfly Lyndon LaRouche, and the quasi-religious “social therapy” movement of psychotherapists Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani.
The FBI officially labeled the NAP a cult in 1993.
To those who knew him then, Espada’s ties to the organization reveal a glimpse into how the man at the center of a political firestorm built his early career.
“The Lenora Fulani, Fred Newman, Lyndon LaRouche-ies,” said Fernando Ferrer, who served as Bronx Borough President during Espada’s time with the group. “He was involved with them in a big way.”
Espada ran for Council on the New Alliance Party’s ballot line in 1989, but lost despite pulling h 42 percent of the vote. However, that surprising show allowed him to engineer a deal with then-Bronx Democratic boss George Friedman to run with the party’s backing for State Senate in 1992, allowing him his first serious entrée into elected politics. He won, and maintained his ties to the NAP while in office.
In an interview, Espada acknowledged that the NAP was crucial to his early political success, but immediately denied—without prompting—any knowledge of inappropriate or illegal behavior on the part of its leaders.
“They supported me during a critical phase of my early start-up career in politics, in the City Council,” he said. “I never witnessed any of the so-called ‘cult-like’ behaviors that are subscribed to them. But, you know, we had a political engagement, a political partnership, as it were, for the early part of my career.”
But veteran Bronx politicians and former NAP members contend that Espada’s involvement with the party ran much deeper..."
-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wires/2009/07/06/espadas-new-alliance-part_ws_226730.html