Ratner Ally Sharpton to Walk with Hakeem in Final Weekend

In a NY Times Empire Zone blog post by Jonthan Hicks about Councilwoman Letitia James' endorsement of Assembly candidate Bill Batson, Reverend Al Sharpton states that he'll be walking the district wiht Jeffries this weekend in his final push.

Councilwoman Letitia James is the leading and most outspoken political opponent of "Atlantic Yards." On the other hand Reverend Sharpton admits to receiving funding year after year from Bruce Ratner anf fully supports "Atlantic Yards" (though the Reverend says that the money doesn't impact his support of the project.) From the Daily News:

...Not included in Sharpton’s statement or the newspaper articles, however, was one significant fact: Forest City Ratner has contributed thousands of dollars to Sharpton’s National Action Network. Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco acknowledged Ratner’s development company provided financial support last year and this year but declined to say how much money FCR has contributed to the National Action Network’s coffers.

Sharpton, too, would not specify a dollar amount, but he did tell The Score that FCR has been a corporate sponsor of his organization’s annual fund-raising dinner and convention for the past three years.

That money, Sharpton adds, has nothing to do with his support for the $3.5 billion [sic] project. He points out that he only jumped aboard in July. “If donations to the Network meant anything,” Sharpton says, “then I would have supported it long before that.”

So, Ratner seemingly is getting closer and closer to the Hakeem Jeffries campaign. Sharpton could be spending the final weekend push with any candidate of his choosing (like someone in the 11th CD), so how did he come to choose Mr. Jeffries?

As we wrote yesterday, in pure speculation, perhaps Hakeem Jeffries has not reported his 11 day pre-primary filing yet because there is money in there that he may not want to publicize. We don't know. But that campaign finance law breaking oddity, combined with Ratner's ally, Reverend Sharpton, should only raise more eyebrows.

Additionally the Empire Zone blog says that Newark Mayor Corey Booker has endorsed Hakeem. Why Booker's endorsement should matter to Brooklynites is an open question that you can answer yourself. But it is an odd endorsement. Why? Well, during the Sharpe James regime Newark's city planning department was abolished. Booker has made it a top priorty to rebuild that city planning department to put an end to one-off city deals with developers as a planning "process." From Booker's Newark budget press release:

We will create a City Planning Division, which will include neighborhood planners, an urban designer, and a historic preservation officer. We will also focus on updating the City’s antiquated Master Plan. We will work with experts to establish criteria and a process for how City owned land is transferred.

It's exactly the absence of a city planning (or city council) role in the "Atlantic Yards" project that has angered so many people and led to the flawed urban planning "Atlantic Yards" symbolizes. Why would Booker endorse a candidate, Hakeem Jeffries, who has yet to raise a fuss about New York's own developer-first planning practices?

What we can see, though, is that all but one of Jeffries' endorsements have come from solid supporters of "Atlantic Yards" (including Ratner-funded city Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr.), while Batson's have come from the leading opponents of the project.