DAVIS EYES JAMES: After supporters of Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards proposal protested at Councilwoman Tish James’s office, Geoffrey Davis, the man she trounced to win the 2003 election, dispatched an e-mail message that read, “As far back as I can remember, no Council member in the 35th district has ever been protested against, particularly in front of his or her own office…If this type of malfeasance continues, I’ll have no choice but to re-submit my resume for the City Council seat EARLIER than expected and let the people rethink their position.”

            Something tells us James is not quaking in her boots. Davis’s 2003 campaign—hastily launched following the murder of his brother—was, by his own admission, a disaster. Even if he were to totally remake himself, chances are slim he could defeat an incumbent. Even a masterful campaigner like his late brother was unable to do that.

            However, a strong candidate against James could attract some of the powerful forces that helped her win the last time, namely unions, the reform organization ACORN, and the Working Families Party, all of whom support Ratner’s project.

            There’s also the mercurial James Caldwell, who in 2003 supported James Davis, then Geoffrey Davis, and finally Tish James, only to split with James after the election because she opposed Ratner. Caldwell seems to have a constituency he could rally for an opponent of James. Or perhaps Caldwell will run himself.

            CHARLES OVER CUCKOO’S NEST: In an interview with the New York Sun, Councilman Charles Barron, a mayoral candidate, said, “If you look at the polls when the Democrats run against themselves, Fernando Ferrer gets 38 percent and 24 percent of those surveyed are undecided. I am at 4 percent…If you take that 24 percent of undecideds and add 4 percent, well, that’s 28 percent, and that puts me in the runoff.”

            No, that puts him in the nuthouse. Never have all the undecided votes gone to a single candidate, particularly the one in last place.

            The Sun also mentioned the suspicion among insiders that Barron is only running for mayor to increase his chances of going to Congress when Rep. Ed Towns retires.

            Barron would surely do better in Towns’s district than in a citywide election. But he’d still have to overcome the congressman’s son, Assemblyman Darryl Towns, and probably other candidates as well.

            The feeling here is Barron will withdraw from the mayoral race if the courts rule he can’t run for reelection to the Council simultaneously. But Barron has proven people wrong before. Many people didn’t think he’d beat former Knick Greg Jackson to win his seat in 2001.

            MUG ME, PLEASE: We read in Jewish Week where Rep. Jerry Nadler stuck a $225,000 pork chop into a federal appropriations bill to pay for a security camera system at the Haber House apartment complex where “nearly 20” elderly Russian Jews have been mugged “in recent years.”

            Combined with the $100,000 already allocated by Councilman Domenic Recchia and Borough President Marty Markowitz, the government is spending about $17,000 per person mugged at the Coney Island development.

            A cost-saving approach might have been to forget the cameras and instead give each mugged person $1,000. At the current rate of mugging (assuming “nearly 20” means 18 or 19 and “recent years” means three years), that’s about six victims per year. So the cost to the government would be $6,000 per year, which means the $325,000 would last 54 years.

            You think those security cameras will last 54 years?

            Of course, there is a big problem with this scenario. First, with $1,000 payouts, people would be lining up to get mugged. The number of victims would surely increase beyond six per year. But on the plus side, the cash would make them feel a little better about the whole thing.

            MUG ME, PART II: We hope you realized that the above item was not intended to be taken seriously. To those people who wrote angry letters before proceeding to this item, we apologize profusely. To those who realized we were joking but don’t think crime victims are an appropriate target for yuks, we also apologize (less profusely).

            But let’s not forget that so long as Coney Island remains poor, people will get mugged there. No doubt many neighborhood housing complexes would be thrilled to have just six muggings and no homicides each year.

            Still, as the police like to say, if you’re the person mugged, even one crime is too many. (Police are required to deliver that line every time they meet with the public; the punishment for cops who forget is mandatory attendance at five consecutive 60th Precinct Community Council meetings.)

            So, were Haber House residents happy about the response of local politicians? According to Jewish Week, some were, some weren’t.

            The article noted, “Several Haber House residents contended that the cameras, while an improvement over their current situation, do not fully address their needs. They said a large-scale closed-circuit system with police personnel monitoring the cameras around the clock and able to interrupt an attack in progress, or 24-hour-a-day security guards would be more effective.”

            Well, obviously! And while we’re at it, why not assign each resident a full-time bodyguard?

             The political question here is whether the $325,000 to make Haber House safer will change any Russians’ opinions about their community being ignored by local politicians. Will it dampen the enmity heaped by some Russians on Councilman Recchia in 2002 when Brighton Beach was divided into two Council districts?

            Will some Russians come to believe that a freshman Russian-American congressman could not have secured the $225,000 that the veteran Nadler did? Will others insist that a Russian representative would have done more?

            The one thing we know for sure is the victim mentality offered up by Russian candidates in recent years—which may be justified—will be repeated the next time one runs.

            CBI-DEAD: Some members of the reform club Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats would like to turn back the clock to the days when CBID could actually flex its muscles during election season. But to do so, they first need to convince the membership that the club, at present, is nearly inconsequential.

            As club leader Marty Bernstein put it in the December CBID newsletter, “Reformers running for office seek our support because we have a good reputation, but that’s it. Except for our stalwarts, [Assemblyman] Jim Brennan, [Rep.] Major Owens, [Civil Court Judge] Bernie Graham, and a few others, we don’t help to get people elected. Therefore, how much change do we affect? Not much.

            “Why is this so? My humble opinion is that there are too few of us doing much of the political grunt work that we all should be doing. Yes, we get the faithful out to participate in demonstrations, but demonstrations don’t elect legislators, judges, mayors, governors, etc.

            “‘What CBID Must Do’ is to get you, its membership, to participate in all its local activities and beyond. Right now, there are about a dozen really active members who are doing everything. Many of our executive board members don’t even attend [executive committee] meetings! How can anything get done when members don’t attend meetings, plan events or discuss how we can have outreach to our communities?”

            Bernstein urged club members “to prevent our slide into obscurity” and added, “We must go deep into the hinterlands of Brooklyn and let people know that we exist!”

            Those who didn’t get the point were further exhorted by club leader Jack Carroll, who lamented the club’s weakness in the redrawn 44th Assembly District, which is supposed to be its base. As you read Carroll’s exhortation, note his trashing of the Flatbush Democratic clubs run separately by district leaders Jake Gold and Lori Knipel.

            “The results from the 44th A.D. on Election Day were shocking. Of course [John] Kerry and Brennan won overwhelmingly. What was a shock was the low number of total votes cast,” Carroll wrote.

            “As a result of reapportionment there are huge new areas of the 44th A.D. where we have never worked and where voter registration and turnout is low. There are also sections of our district which CBID has ceded to the care of our sister clubs in Flatbush which unfortunately are moribund.

            “Both circumstances should be seen as an opportunity but it will require us to move out of comfortable Park Slope and practice the nitty gritty of politics (voter registration, community outreach, recruiting club members, holding club meeting and forums, etc.) east of Church Avenue in Kensington, Flatbush and Borough Park.”

            Another CBID member said bluntly of Gold and Knipel, “I’m fed up with the two of them. They don’t do anything.”

            Gold, after looking up “moribund” in the dictionary (English is his third language), sidled up to CBID President David Wynyard at the holiday party of Gold’s club, New Independent Democrats, gestured to the 150 guests, and said, “How does it look for a moribund club?”

            Knipel, as you might expect, also didn’t take kindly to Carroll calling her club “moribund.”

            “On this past election day we ran a full GOTV (get-out-the-vote) operation for John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, Major Owens and our full slate of judicial candidates. The Flatbush homeowner area which we primarily represent came out in great numbers and voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry,” Knipel e-mailed.

             “The newer part of the 44th Assembly District includes larger portions of Boro Park and Kensington, where voter turnout is historically low and traditionally conservative. The vote from that part of the district for George Bush was something not I, nor Jake, nor CBID could have prevented. This is just a demographic fact of life.”

            Knipel added that in 2004 her club, the Brooklyn Independent Democrats, hosted a variety of community forums, one of which Jack Carroll himself moderated, and that in June, club members “collected an overwhelming number of signatures that qualified our slate for the ballot. We have actively endorsed and worked for our candidates in every election.”

            Knipel noted that her amendment calling for universal pre-kindergarten made it into the national Democratic Party platform.

            Gold said his club collected thousands signatures last summer to get candidates on the ballot.

            THE INCURABLE SAM SLOAN: The unusual Sam Sloan is continuing his one-sided legal battle with the Brooklyn Republican Party, which initially embraced and then snubbed his attempt to run against Rep. Ed Towns in 2004. Sloan’s petition has finally been accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, though the likelihood of the court hearing his case is slim.

            Sloan does realize that it is too late for him to get on the ballot for the November election, but says he is pursuing the case for reasons of principle and precedent (we would add vengeance and obsessiveness as well). Don’t expect the Republicans to bother responding to his petition before the January 12 deadline.

            So obsessed was Sloan with making the November 2 ballot that he sent his petitions to the Supreme Court without attaching the lower court’s decision, of which he didn’t yet have a copy. Predictably, the high court returned his petitions and asked Sloan to resubmit them with the missing documents.

            But the court accidentally mailed Sloan another petition it had rejected, that of a Virginia inmate serving 262 months on weapons possession charges. Sloan, being the kind of person who takes every path he sees until its bitter end, quickly became a pen pal of the inmate and expressed sympathy that the man had received such a long sentence despite not having hurt anyone.

            Never mind that the guy was caught with an arsenal that put Dylan Klebold’s to shame.

            It’s not like a Republican to complain about long prison sentences. But Sloan is not a Republican at heart; he’s a Libertarian. However, the Libertarians have no ballot line in New York, which is why Sloan had to get Republican officials’ approval to run against Towns. (He didn’t get it; hence, the lawsuit.)

            Next year could be different, though, as Sloan just registered as a Republican.

            TIDBITS: About a month after our item about Councilman Lew Fidler asking school principles to distribute letter to children’s cubbies, which prompted a rebuke from the chancellor’s office, the story was written up in the Daily News. Must have been the “late” edition of the paper…

            …Speaking of Fidler, he’s still expected to contend for speaker of the Council when Gifford Miller’s term expires in 2005. The other Brooklynite likely to run is Bill de Blasio. A vote of all 51 members decides the speakership. Fidler’s first task is to win back the Brooklyn councilmembers who sided with de Blasio and Al Vann to replace Fidler as chairman of the borough delegation.

            Expect Councilman Mike Nelson to return to the Fidler camp. Nelson had earned Fidler’s wrath when he defected to de Blasio and Vann, but he and Fidler seem to have worked things out. The upcoming speaker vacancy no doubt facilitated their reunification. Postscript: Councilmembers who support the winner are often rewarded with committee chairmanships…

            …Councilmembers David Yassky, Kendall Stewart, and Yvette Clarke have a bill pending that would allow noncitizens to become police officers and firefighters.

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