ACQUITTAL IN POLICE BRAWL CASE: The acquittal of Jose Acosta on January 31 marked the end of the criminal case against the Acosta family of Sunset Park stemming from a melee with 72nd Precinct police on July 4, 2003.

            Police had arrested four family members after the brawl, which we described in detail last April. Nobody was convicted of anything.

            The outcome seems to justify Councilman Charles Barron’s alliance with the family and against the police in a case set far from his Canarsie/East New York district.

            “Charles Barron deserves a lot of credit for coming to this family’s assistance,” said David Galarza, a former Community Board 7 member close to the Acosta family. “Unfortunately, the local elected officials, including the city council member in this district, wouldn’t touch this case.”

            That was a knock on Councilwoman Sara Gonzales, whom Galarza despises.

            Gonzales told us last year she didn’t take a side because she wasn’t sure what happened on that Independence Day.

            Jose Acosta’s trial was a wrenching experience for the family, particularly when the family matriarch, grandmother Margarita Acosta, was called to testify.

            “The way the ADA handled Margarita, the grandmother, on the witness stand was just despicable. Truly despicable. Made her cry. He was really menacing, really intimidating,” said Galarza, who attended some of the trial.

***

            YASSKY PULLOUT BOOSTS HYNES: One analyst of the race for Brooklyn district attorney told us, “The only beneficiary of [Councilman] David Yassky not running is [incumbent] Charles Hynes, and the only victim is [State Senator] John Sampson. Sampson had a chance to squeak by with Yassky in the race, but it’s hard to see how he does that now.”

            Implicit in this assessment is that of the votes that would have gone to Yassky, more will now go to Hynes than to Sampson. That’s reasonable, given that skin color figures to influence more votes than does anti-Hynes sentiment.

            Also, Yassky figured to do well with the ultra-Orthodox he represents in Williamsburg, an important voting bloc. Most of those votes will probably now go to Hynes.

            “If I had to guess, I’d guess they’d go with Hynes,” said one politico close to the Orthodox community. “They tend to go with the incumbent. They’re familiar with him, and there’s no reason for them to be with any of the other candidates.”

            Our initial reaction to Yassky’s departure was that Mark Peters would pick up a plurality of the Yassky (anti-Hynes) votes. That assumes most Brooklynites have already decided whether or not to vote for Hynes, since 15 years is plenty of time to make a decision about his effectiveness as a DA. In retrospect, that is not a reasonable assumption.

            Most voters (readers of this column excluded) probably know very little about Joe Hynes, including why we call him Joe when his first name is Charles. (Answer: colloquially, he uses his middle name.)

            They know even less about Park Slope candidate Peters, the former public integrity chief for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. It won’t be easy for Peters to win even his supposed base, the brownstone neighborhoods, where you’ll find some stridently anti-Hynes voters but far more who think the incumbent is doing a decent job. (That’s the assumption insiders made when Yassky, the only candidate who’d done any polling, dropped out.

            As for our source’s predictions that Sampson could have eked out a victory but only if Yassky were splitting the white vote with Hynes, it is a bit early to forecast the election so specifically. It remains to be seen if the two black candidates who might split the black vote with Sampson, attorneys Paul Wooten and Sandra Roper, will even stay in the race.

            Nor do we know if white candidate Arnie Kriss will remain. His biggest supporter is former Mayor Ed Koch, who is far less influential now than he was in 1989 when, through an alliance with the late Assemblyman Tony Genovesi, he backed then-Assemblyman Dan Feldman for D.A. Even with Koch, Feldman lost to Hynes.

            Of course, Hynes had a powerful backer in 1989 who can’t help him much any more: former Governor Mario Cuomo.

            There are other reasons Hynes won’t do as well this year as in 1989.

            In his initial election, Hynes enjoyed broad support among blacks. Just three years earlier Hynes had won convictions against racist whites as the special prosecutor in the Howard Beach case. And in 1989, blacks—motivated by the racially motivated Yusuf Hawkins murder in Bensonhurst and David Dinkins’s first run for mayor—flocked to the polls. Hawkins was killed about three weeks before the primary.

            It was a great combination for Hynes, who earned 51 percent of the vote against two opponents. But those factors are long gone, which is why many folks don’t take Hynes seriously when he continues to call the black community a big part of his base.

            Hynes also includes Jews in his base, but in his only competitive race for D.A., he lost the 39th, 45th, 47th, and 48th Assembly Districts, all of which had substantial Jewish populations.

            In the 2001 race, an unknown Roper actually beat Hynes in the heavily black 56th Assembly District. Countywide, Roper drew 37 percent.

            Another unknown factor is Hynes’s prosecution of Assemblyman Clarence Norman, the Democratic county leader and first African-American to hold that post.

            A conviction before the election could help Hynes in white areas but hurt him in black ones where voters think Norman’s being railroaded. An acquittal could hurt Hynes everywhere, which is why some folks (present company excluded) think Hynes will try to postpone the trial until after the September primary.

***

            ENDORSEMENT RECALLS LOBSTER HOUSE MEETING: Councilman Al Vann, who endorsed Freddy Ferrer for mayor in 2001, is backing Council Speaker Gifford Miller this time. But State Senator Carl Kruger and Councilman Lew Fidler are backing Ferrer.

            Astute newspaper readers noticed that Fidler’s endorsement (leaked by the Ferrer campaign) showed up on page 2 of the New York Post while Kruger’s was buried on page 22. As someone cleverly noted, it’s not the first time Fidler and Kruger weren’t on the same page.

            Kruger’s endorsement reminded us of his 2001 endorsement of Ferrer, which came after Kruger attended a controversial strategy session of the Mark Green campaign at Nick’s Lobster House in Sheepshead Bay. Though Kruger denies this, numerous sources have told us that it was Kruger who animatedly advised Green’s people to tie Ferrer to Al Sharpton in order to hurt Ferrer among white voters.

            At that meeting, sources said, Green’s people rejected Kruger’s advice, prompting the senator to walk out and endorse Ferrer shortly thereafter. The irony is that the Green campaign ultimately took Kruger’s advice a step too far, anonymously producing an allegedly racist flier that included a Post cartoon of Ferrer kissing Sharpton’s behind.

            Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes investigated, but never brought charges. The campaign may have broken campaign finance laws by not disclosing the expenditure for printing the flier or thousands of phone calls to white Brooklyn voters.

            Kruger maintains it was Green’s people who suggested the Sharpton strategy. Kruger says he advised against it and left the meeting when Green’s people refused to drop the idea.

***

            TISH WONDERS, WHAT’S MY LINE? Councilwoman Tish James, who joined the Working Families Party after being elected on the WFP line in 2003, didn’t switch her party registration back to Democrat in time for the September primary.

            A Daily News column by Errol Louis (who once ran for the same Council seat) suggested James could be beaten in November if Democrats don’t grant her a Wilson-Pakula to run in September’s Democratic primary.

            That prompted Councilman Bill de Blasio to lobby fellow Democrats on James’s behalf, sources said, no doubt hoping that James will in turn support him for City Council speaker.

            But James hardly needs de Blasio’s help. She broached the subject months ago to Councilman Lew Fidler, who has far more influence than de Blasio among the Democratic insiders who would grant James the Wilson-Pakula, i.e., the Democratic line. Fidler told James it would be no problem.

            Incidentally, Fidler also would like James’s vote for speaker.

            This is all bad news for Hakeem Jeffries, the Prospect Heights attorney and two-time Assembly candidate, who would be the Democratic primary favorite only if James isn’t in it. Jeffries hasn’t decided whether to run for the Council seat, though he is expected to run for State Senate if Carl Andrews abandons his seat to run for Congress in 2006.

***

            MARTY LOOKS MARVELOUS: During the 2001 race for borough president, then-State Senator Marty Markowitz was seen as the best cheerleader for Brooklyn, then-Councilman Ken Fisher the best on substantive issues, and then-Deputy Borough President Jeannette Gadson the best on…well, we’re not sure what she was supposed to be the best on.

            But the point, according to Councilman Lew Fidler, is that “Marty’s turned into the best of all three.”

            Fidler said Markowitz had more than lived up to expectations on the boosterism front, becoming “the single most popular elected official people know” in Brooklyn.

            But at the same time, Fidler said, Markowitz has done a great deal on economic development, housing, and other substantive issues.

            One who surely takes exception to that is Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who considers Markowitz a clown and (as first reported by Crain’s) is looking for a candidate to run against him.

            But Markowitz is unbeatable this year. If Lopez finds an opponent, it would only be to annoy Markowitz and perhaps dampen any hopes Markowitz has of running for mayor in 2009, when term limits bar him from seeking reelection.

***

            HELENE GOES HALFWAY: Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein has sponsored a package of reforms that include public campaign financing for Supreme Court candidates approved by an independent screening panel.

            But, as the Albany Times Union noted in a critical editorial, the reforms would not affect the unfair system in which candidates must be blessed by political party bosses to become Supreme Court judges.

            In Brooklyn, a highly qualified candidate would still have to be championed by a powerful Democratic club and endure months of glad-handing Democratic district leaders on the rubber-chicken circuit to have any chance of being voted onto the slate of candidates that is rubber-stamped by judicial delegates who meet annually at a lunchtime judicial convention.

            If that sounds like a lousy way to choose judges, it is.

            Which is not to say open primaries, as exist for Civil Court, or an appointment system, as exists for Housing Court, the Court of Claims, the Appellate Division, and the Court of Appeals, would be much better.

            But as one observer likes to say, the current system combines the worst of the two systems with the benefits of neither.

***

            TIDBITS: State Senator Diane Savino still hopes criminal charges will be filed against someone for drafting and distributing the infamous “lesbian letter” just before her election last November, the Staten Island Advance reported. The Brooklyn D.A. is investigating…

            …Newsday cheered Councilman Vinny Gentile’s bill for a feasibility study on creating job centers for day laborers, but said he needs to work harder to move the legislation. It’s been idling for 14 months…

            …From the category of How to Apologize When You’re Not Really Sorry, here’s Cobble Hill resident Howard Graubard after complaining that Community Board 6 Chairman Jerry Armer didn’t appoint him to the CB 6 committees of his choice: “Pardon me for being dubious, but under the circumstances, I owe him an apology, since it was wrong to attribute motives to his arbitrary and capricious behavior without being able to prove them.”

            …Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz was appointed to the Assembly’s Insurance Committee, a good perch for any representative of Brooklyn, which has the nation’s highest car insurance rates…

            …Councilman Simcha Felder said he listened to “a very detailed presentation” by Rep. Jerry Nadler about the cross-harbor rail tunnel at a Community Board 12 Transportation Committee meeting. “I listened to what he had to say, very patiently,” Felder said. “I respect him greatly. I think he’s a very fine person. But every once in a while there are going to be issues we disagree upon. And this is one of them.”

            Nadler has campaigned for a tunnel connecting New Jersey and Brooklyn for 25 years. But Felder said, “I think the arguments that Jerry was making were really not that compelling to me and to some of the people around us.”

            But Nadler considers the tunnel inevitable because the road network can’t handle the projected increase in freight to the city and Long Island. If he quit office tomorrow, the tunnel might be set back 10 years, but it would still be built, Nadler told us.