Nadler Operatives Nuke Sullivan Petitions

July 26, 2008
By Jim McCabe

Jerry Nadler’s specific objections to Adam Sullivan’s petitions remind me of the Monty Python skit where a particularly persistent buzzing fly elicits increasingly drastic measures by the badgered individual seeking to eliminate it. Not content with a swatter, the pestered person resorts to machine gun fire, then dynamite. And through it all the fly keeps on buzzing.

Those of us working for Adam Sullivan never expected that Congressman Nadler would accept Sullivan’s invitation to debate the issue of impeachment. But one would have thought that the Nadler camp would have relaxed and had a celebratory glass of champagne once they found out that Sullivan had missed by months the deadline from changing his registration from unaffiliated to Democrat, therefore making him ineligible to run. But no. Suzanne Jacobson and Debra Cooper, acting on behalf of Robert Gottheim of Nadler’s district office, apparently went line by line through all 157 pages of Sullivan’s petitions, alleging that 919 signatures were invalid of the 1946 claimed.

In hindsight many of us savored the fact that the Nadler minions invested this energy sweating over each signature, surely their just dessert given the countless hours invested by many of us on the other side writing letters, collecting signatures, urging Mr. Nadler and other Democratic members of Congress to fulfill their Constitutional oath and begin impeachment hearings.

Suffice it to say that before the Sullivan camp learned of the enrollment issue, we had begun the process of verifying the petition signatures against the Board of Elections voter rolls and we were confident that we had secured the 1250 signatures required to get on the ballot. Had the enrollment issue not forced our early withdrawal from the race, we would now be doing battle with the Nadler camp over the petition signatures. I personally collected close to 400 of those signatures and would have welcomed the opportunity to go to bat against Nadler and company.

But it wasn’t enough that Sullivan wasn’t a Democrat, and that they were claiming that we didn’t have enough signatures. Childishly, the Nadler camp claimed that the designating petition volume was not paginated or bound pursuant to law. Section 6215.1 of the election law states that “the sheets of a petition shall be numbered sequentially at the foot of each sheet.” Now math was never my strong suit in grade school but as the person who numbered the sheets I will state affirmatively for the record that I recall that 2 comes after 1, 3 comes after 2 and so on and so forth. Oh, wait, I see what they’re complaining about—we ordered them in descending order, with page 157 on top and page 1 at the bottom. And for good reason, as we were still collecting petition signatures up until the evening of July 10th. I guess they didn’t like that.

As for being “bound,” that same section of the election law states that “any two or more petition sheets shall be securely fastened together by any means which will hold the pages together in numerical order.” Silly us—we made the mistake of being considerate of the overworked civil servants at the BOE. We assumed that the two holes punched into the top of our petition sheets by the printer were there for a reason. We used a hardboard backing and fastened the sheets together with metal rings that could be unfastened if someone needed to make copies of the sheets.

Ironically, the day before we filed, I called the BOE to ask if they had any guidance on the filing since I had not done it before. I was told that they did not give legal advice and to read the election law. I did, and we proceeded on that basis.

We knew that we had succeeded in getting Mr. Nadler’s attention when Robert Gottheim, Micah Lasher and company arrived at the BOE late in the evening of July 10th presumably to review the petitions we had filed that evening. Had someone tipped them off? Apparently, the congressman himself paid a visit to the offices at one point according to the log book. And what of those stories that started to emerge in the press about Sullivan’s enrollment even before the specific objections were filed on the 21st? Were Nadler and his cronies using the media to discredit us?

In sum, Jerry Nadler pulled out all the stops to quash the voices of those who had the temerity to call him on his failure to leverage his position as Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and begin to hold the Bush administration accountable by bucking Pelosi and starting impeachment hearings. Is he the people’s representative or our adversary?

Despite all his efforts, and like the beleaguered combatant in the Monty Python skit, Jerry Nadler still has an impeachment fly buzzing around his head. When will he realize that it can’t be silenced? That it will be there buzzing in his ear next January when he again swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? That it may in fact come back to annoy him again with a future electoral challenge?

Or was that a new Jerry that we observed at yesterday’s hearing? At one point, he seemed almost ready to give impeachment a chance. That’s all we are saying, Jerry. Give impeachment a chance.

Chronology of Nadler's Constituents Urging Him to Initiate Impeachment Hearings

Chronology of Citizen Efforts to Lobby Rep. Nadler to Support Impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney

Please note: This chronology has been drawn from first hand experience of members of the campaign committee for Sullivan For Congress. It is extensive but by no means complete. Eighth CD constituents and Democratic organizations have been calling, emailing, and writing letters to Rep. Nadler for well over a year. Daniel Weisfeld of Rep. Nadler’s Manhattan office confirmed that call volume regarding impeachment has been very heavy, but when asked how many calls and correspondence the Congressman has received, Robert Gottheim, the Manhattan District Director, refused to answer. Copies of the correspondence listed below, including handwritten postcards, are available on request.


Spring 2007
• Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) CD-08 requests a meeting to discuss impeachment. Robert Gottheim (Gottheim) indicates that Rep. Nadler does not support impeachment and refuses to schedule a meeting.
• Democratic clubs Village Independent Democrats (VID), Downtown Independent Democrats (DID), and Coalition for a District Alternative (CoDA) pass club endorsed resolutions and jointly send a letter urging Rep. Nadler to support impeachment.
• Chelsea Reform Democratic Club (CRDC) drafts and sends its own letter urging Rep. Nadler to support impeachment.

Summer 2007
• PDA CD-08 makes a second request for a meeting.
• Independent group of citizen activists collectively sends a letter signed by 24 concerned citizens requesting a meeting.
• Political organization World Can’t Wait (WCW) requests a meeting and stages a sit in at the Manhattan office.
• Informal poll of CD-08 constituents conducted on www.DailyKos.com. Ninety-five percent support impeachment or censure of Bush and Cheney with 92% of that group favoring impeachment.
• Democracy For New York City (DFNYC) conducts a survey re impeachment with results showing 84% support impeachment.
• On August 28, 2007 Rep. Nadler meets with a group of about 20 constituents, including members of the executive boards of three Democratic clubs in the 8th CD. At the meeting Rep. Nadler indicates he is open to changing his mind and agrees to a private meeting with constitutional experts John Nichols, the Nation columnist who authored The Genius of Impeachment and Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan. Rep. Nadler later declines after weeks of follow up calls to arrange a date and time for the meeting.

Fall 2007
• Beginning in September, VID conducts a tabling effort to collect letters regarding impeachment from pedestrians at Union Square on weekends. Letters are forwarded to Congressional representatives. By January nearly 300 letters have been collected and sent to Rep. Nadler with copies to Rep. John Conyers and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
• PDA CD-08 hand delivers 35 personally written letters from constituents.
• In December 2007 a group of constituents commence a leafleting effort to educate constituents and attendees at events where Rep. Nadler is speaking.

Winter 2008
• AskNadler2Impeach.org is formed by a group of concerned citizen activists. Ask Nadler2Impeach.org’s first action is to present a letter signed by 143 citizen activists urging Rep. Nadler to support impeachment. The 143 signatures represent a significant increase from the 24 who signed the July 2007 letter. Additional signatures could easily have been collected had time allowed.
• AskNadler2Impeach.org launches an online petition calling on Rep. Nadler to support impeachment. As of July 20, 2008 there are 2386 signatures.
• AskNadler2Impeach.org organizes the March 9, 2008 Town Hall Meeting “Is Impeachment Necessary to Protect the Constitution?” in an effort to engage Rep. Nadler in a dialogue with Constitutional experts and concerned constituents. Speakers include Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who served in Congress during the Nixon impeachment and co-wrote The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens, Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, and Harper’s columnist and law professor Scott Horton. (Fein and Holtzman are scheduled to testify at hearings in the House Judiciary Committee regarding executive offenses on Friday, July 25, 2008.) Despite having been invited a month in advance, when the meeting was organized, Rep. Nadler declines to participate on the Friday evening before the Sunday event. Roughly 300 people attend hoping to hear Rep. Nadler defend his position on impeachment from a Constitutional perspective.
• March 9, 2008 Town Hall meeting attendees handwrite personal messages on post cards to Rep. Nadler regarding impeachment. It is common knowledge that Congressional staffs consider handwritten correspondence to be a serious indication of constituent concern. Copies of a selection of these post cards are available.
• WCW conducts a sit-in at Rep. Nadler’s Brooklyn office. Four women are arrested at Gottheim’s request and spend the night in jail in deplorable conditions.
• Independent citizens and activists begin leafleting and protesting at Rep. Nadler appearances at events in the 8th CD.
• As more evidence regarding Bush administration impeachable offenses become public, requests are made for a follow-up meeting to the August 28, 2007 meeting. When Rep. Nadler refuses to meet again with constituents, a group begins a weekly picket in front of his Manhattan office. On March 29, 2008 Rep. Nadler’s staff invites the protest group upstairs for a meeting. This group includes 8th CD Congressional candidate Adam Sullivan who thanks Rep. Nadler for his time at the end of the meeting and tells him “We’ll be back”.
• WCW begins a weekly series of sit-ins at Rep. Nadler’s Brooklyn and Manhattan offices and a flyering campaign in the 8th CD.

Spring and Summer 2008
• Members of AskNadler2Impeach.org produce a DVD of the March 9th Town Hall presentations and travel to Washington, DC to meet with members of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee to hand deliver copies of the DVD and discuss impeachment.
• A group forms to field a candidate to run against Rep. Nadler in the September 9, 2008 Democratic Primary. Adam Sullivan becomes the candidate and volunteers collect 1946 signatures supporting his pro-impeachment campaign platform. Sullivan’s ballot petitions are filed with the Board of Elections on July 10, 2008 and he immediately challenges Rep. Nadler to debate the necessity of impeachment to protect the Constitution. Rep. Nadler does not respond, but days later reports surface in the local press quoting sources as questioning Sullivan’s status as a Democrat and discussing issues with his ballot petitions. Two general objections are filed listing Robert Gottheim as the objection contact. On Monday, July 21, 2008, specific objections to Sullivan's petitions are filed.