An Appeal To Alec Brook-Krasny And Ari Kagan

Early in the campaign, an astute observer of the Russian political scene said to me, “It’s going to be a hell of an election campaign, but I’m afraid that Alec and Ari will end up eating each other.”

At that point, I took my friend’s words to mean that the two Russian candidates would split the Russian vote in half and end up electing a non-Russian candidate, presumably the incumbent, Adele Cohen, who despises the organized Russian community as fervently as it despises her back. Now that Adele has dropped out and Brook-Krasny has become the favorite in the race, that scenario seems less likely, although still possible, given the probable presence of Marty Levine and Cole Ettman in the race (Levine seems more likely to stay in at this juncture than does Ettman). But even if Brook-Krasny ultimately prevails in the primary, as many political observers now expect; or conversely, if Kagan somehow manages to pull off an upset and win the race, Brook-Krasny and Kagan may still end up eating each other if they run a scorched earth, no-holds-barred race against the other replete with smear tactics that end up soiling their reputations and leaving lasting bitterness in the community.

I fear that may already be happening. Each of the candidates is presently being dragged through the mud by supporters of the other. I understand a leaflet has been circulating through Brighton Beach, which Kagan said did not come from his campaign, excoriating Brook-Krasny for manifold sins, including supposedly being a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the other side, Brook-Krasny’s supporters tell me Kagan is simply “crazy” for staying in the race, even though Brook-Krasny has been anointed by the Russian power structure and American political bigshots like Nadler, Kruger and Recchia, and that Kagan is nothing but a hack journalist who has no qualifications for the job.

The intensity of the mutual smear-fest is accelerating and likely to get worse in the coming weeks. For one thing there is widespread expectation in the community that the two campaigns may challenge each other’s nominating petitions before the Board of Elections next month. If that were to happen, it would be a very cynical display indeed, considering that in the six years since Brook-Krasny first challenged Adele Cohen, who promptly got him kicked off the ballot on a technicality, nearly every Russian candidate has had his or her petitions challenged by an American incumbent. Petition challenges may be one of the ‘rules of the game’ in Brooklyn politics, but it is a patently anti-democratic brand of politics that is full of abuses and reminds many Russians more than a little of the old Soviet Union. Brook-Krasny’s own credibility was shaken in 2001 when he himself challenged the petitions of another Russian candidate, Inna Stavitsky. So if Brook-Krasny and Kagan claim to represent a new and more open form of politics in 2006, they should avoid participating in the ugly game of petition challenges.

In general, Ari and Alec should take a deep breath or two, and resolve to take the high road in their competition before things spin out of control. Ari and Alec may not realize it amidst the heat of the campaign, but they have a great deal in common. Both are immensely charming natural-born politicians who have mastered the American techniques of glad-handing, baby-kissing and spinning the media as well as American-born politicians with decades more experience. Intriguingly, in a nominally Democratic community that voted over 75 percent for George W. Bush in 2004, both Brook-Krasny and Kagan are political progressives who have used their influence to get better housing, social benefits and police protection for large numbers of poor and elderly Russian-speakers. Both genuinely seek to build political alliances between the Russian-speaking community and African-Americans and other constituencies in the area.

Beyond that, both are quality candidates and quality human beings, and engaging in personal nastiness is really below either of them. Either would make a first-rate representative for the 46th District and would do the Russian-speaking community proud as its first representative in government.

As to the above charges, it is true that Alec chose to work together with a former Soviet diplomat and United Nations official named Vadim Perfilyev last year to improve relations between Russia and the Russian Jewish community here, and made an ill-advised statement to me in an earlier Jewish Week piece that “Russia is moving toward becoming part of the global family of democratic countries.” The full text of this article can be found here.

Yet, in recent months, Brook-Krasny has done some adroit damage control on the issue; acknowledging he was “mistaken” in asserting that Russia is moving toward democracy, adding that the government of President Vladimir Putin is “crazy” for selling nuclear material to Iran and providing diplomatic support to that country. Stating emphatically that “It is now clear that Russia is moving in the wrong direction,” Brook-Krasny pointedly stayed away from a meeting of Russian “compatriots” held at the Russian Embassy in Washington in early May at which he been scheduled to speak, even though some of his most prominent supporters were organizers of the affair.

Whatever one thinks of Brook-Krasny’s past outreach efforts toward the Russian government, which appears to have been impelled in part by his natural propensity for coalition-building and in part by a somewhat grandiose desire to mix in the world of international diplomacy, it is simply outrageous to smear Brook-Krasny as a “fifth columnist” for Putin, as some supporters of Kagan have been heard to mutter. Like Kagan, Brook-Krasny is a proud American and a staunch supporter of Israel; his desire to engage the Russian government and keep it from slipping again into anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism springs from those moral imperatives. To suggest he is a Russian agent somehow embedded into the bosom of the Russian-Jewish community of Brooklyn is an outrageous slander that is simply beneath contempt.

As for partisans of Brook-Krasny calling me to deride Ari Kagan as “nothing but a journalist,” it is always a mistake to tell one journalist that another journalist isn’t qualified to run for political office because he is nothing but a lowly scribbler. Besides, Kagan has been as much of a community activist as he has been a journalist for years now. In fact, my own complaint about Ari on this point, which I shared with him on more than one occasion is that he had become too much of a community activist, to the point where he sometimes forgot that a reporter is supposed to be an objective observer, not an advocate for a particular cause.

Still, like many other journalists before him, Ari came to the point where he wanted not only to observe the political fray, but to jump in and fight for his own vision. He deserves nothing but respect for that. To claim that he has done nothing for the community simply because he does not have a position of power like Alec did at COJECO is to dismiss his many efforts to improve conditions in the district for poor and middle class people alike. At a time when many politicians see their main role as comforting the comfortable, Ari Kagan makes his stand as a voice of the little people and all power to him for that.

So here is my appeal to my friends, Ari and Alec: Rebyta, davaite jit druzna.

Please don’t eat each other or cut each others’ throats. The truth is that the Russian community needs both of you, the Jewish community needs both of you, and New York needs the talents and political passion that both of you bring to the table. If one or the other of you wins this election, there ought to be space for the other to run for another political position a year or two down the road with the support of the community leadership. The Russian-speaking community can be proud to have placed two such quality candidates in the field. God forbid you should destroy each other and hurt the entire community.