Will former City Court Judge Robert Restaino finally run for the 138th District state Assembly seat this November and spare Niagara Falls the ugly specter of another candidacy by disgraced former assemblywoman Francine Del Monte?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Two years ago, Del Monte handed the district to Republican John Ceretto after losing the primary election to John Accardo. Continuing to campaign on the lunatic fringe Working Families Party line, she pulled just enough votes away from Accardo to make the election another disaster for the Democrats.
In return for her treachery, Del Monte received no offers for the sort of cushy public-sector jobs that are routinely handed out to loyal former Assembly members. She has been unemployed for two years, sticking her nose into Niagara Falls city politics and supporting herself on a fat pension of more than $50,000 a year.
If she gets re-elected, she can still keep collecting the pension, and also the roughly $80,000 salary handed out to freshman Assembly members these days.
Ceretto will have a tough time getting re-elected. The redistricting that resulted from the 2010 census will eliminate Hartland and other outlying towns where he drew considerable Republican support in the past.
On top of that, President Barack Obama will be running for re-election, ensuring a heavy turnout of Democratic, and especially black Democratic voters.
Del Monte's undistinguished, decade-long tenure as an assemblywoman veered wildly, caroming from the comically inept to the savagely mean-spirited.
During the 2011 election cycle, Del Monte saw to it that the only black candidate for city Council, eight-year incumbent Bob Anderson, did not get the endorsement of the party. This opened the door for the crafty Republicans, who endorsed him enthusiastically.
Anderson went on to humiliate the former assemblywoman and the ineffectual Democratic City Committee by garnering more votes than any candidate running for any office in the city -- including Mayor Paul Dyster.
Del Monte's close associations with known criminals such as Vincenzo V. Anello and Butch Quarcini, along with her slavish devotion to New York City Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, made her finally a political pariah, salving her own shattered ego with a vanity campaign she had no hope of winning.
As delusional as she is incompetent, Del Monte still lists herself as a state Assembly member on her Facebook page, where she snipes at longtime political foes like state Sen. George Maziarz, much to the delight of the paltry 593 lost souls who count themselves as her Facebook "friends."
One of those is Jeremy Schnurr, the interim head of the county Democratic Committee, who will remain in office until the old-line party members throw him out sometime this spring. Schnurr currently presides over Dem goings-on from a $500-a-month Main Street office in Niagara Falls rented from Del Monte crony and fellow Lewiston resident Craig Avery.
Avery, astute readers will remember, received $355,000 in city and state grants and low-interest loans to fix up a Third Street building he paid $180,000 for a few months earlier, which is now the home of Third Street Liquor. The loans and grants were graciously expedited by Del Monte and Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster, who were as inseparable as Siamese twins prior to her sudden defeat.
Democratic Party insiders told the Niagara Falls Reporter this week that the mayor and the former assemblywoman have remained as thick as thieves over the past 15 months, and that Dyster would likely support a Del Monte candidacy this fall.
Such a development would be bad news for Niagara Falls, which has seen more than its fair share of crooked, lying, do-nothing politicians throughout its history. A Restaino candidacy would be like a breath of fresh air in a town where civilized political discourse seems to have broken down completely.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 7 2012 |