HYNES CRITIC WONDERS: Sources tell us that freelance writer Chris Ketcham, who suggested in Harper’s that Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes falsely registered to vote at his office address, was unnerved by this sentence in Hynes’s rebuttal:

            “It is legally irrelevant if your voting residence is a Catskills cabin, a Manhattan pied-à-terre, or a cold water walkup in Brooklyn—it must be an actual residence.”

            Ketcham has a Catskills cabin and previously lived in a Manhattan pied-à-terre and a cold-water walkup in Brooklyn.

            Naturally, the writer assumed that Hynes had investigated him and was making a veiled threat, since during his time at those three residences Ketcham remained registered to vote at his parents’ house in Park Slope.

            Is Ketcham paranoid? Perhaps. But as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean no one is out to get you.

***

            ONE ANGRY MAN: Last summer, responding to allegations that he’s prone to violent rage, State Senator Kevin Parker said if they were true, the police would arrest him.

            Last week, they did.

            Police said they collared Parker after he slugged a traffic agent in the face during a dispute over a $55 double-parking ticket. That prompted articles about two previously unreported blowups by Parker, whose anger problem has become obvious to everyone but himself.

            You might expect that after the assault charge, Parker would have immediately apologized to the agent and to his constituents. You would be wrong.

            Instead, Parker told the New York Post, “Nothing happened. This was a mountain out of a molehill. I was involved in a minor accident. People have traffic accidents.”

            But people do not punch traffic agents in the face. Maniacs do.

            Parker had a legitimate gripe about the ticket. He had double-parked his rented Nissan because he’d just had a fender-bender, which the agent hadn’t noticed.

            However, Parker is surely familiar enough with summonses (he has two suspensions and four convictions on his license, the Post reported) to know that next to the check-boxes for pleading “Guilty” or “Not Guilty” is not a third choice, “Punch traffic agent in face.”

            Yet there he was—fresh from a narrow election victory and criticism that he attended community meetings as often as John Ashcroft did ACLU conventions—reaching inside the agent’s car, snatching the ticket, crumpling it up, and throwing it in the man’s face. And then, when the agent exited his car, allegedly punching the ticket-writer.

            The authorities said Parker later shoved the agent when the man stood in front of Parker’s car to keep the senator from driving off. Someone called 911 and the police came and arrested Parker, who was charged with a misdemeanor.

            A day after the January 21 incident, having had time to reflect, Parker held a press conference—not to issue an apology, but to demand one. “I will be expecting an apology from all people involved,” he said, flanked by supporters but not by the public relations guru he so desperately needs.

            “I am the victim in this case,” added Parker, blaming “an overzealous traffic agent eager to cover up his own mistakes.”

            The press conference, at which Parker took no questions, only made things worse. The next day, the Daily News called him a “knucklehead” and “the newest perp in Albany’s wave of crimes and misbehavior.”

            The paper also reported a female NYPD detective’s recollection that on December 12, 2003, Parker cut off another car, nearly killing the elderly couple inside. At the next red light, the old man exited his car and berated Parker, who flipped his middle finger at the man.

            Detective Marybeth Meyers, noticing Parker’s NY Senate 62 tags, then chimed in, “Hey, you’re a senator. You almost killed those people.”

            Meyers said Parker responded with a string of profanities on the order of, “I don’t give a damn! There’s nothing you can do about it, bitch! Go f--- yourself!”

            The detective called the Senate Ethics Committee, which refused to take a report because no money had been stolen. (Talk about low standards.)

            The Post reported that former Parker aide Neysha Williams accused Parker of placing her in a headlock during a May 2003 argument and shoved her out of his office. The aide declined to file charges, but she did tell Senate Minority Leader David Paterson’s office, which did nothing other than talk to Parker. He denied any physical contact with Williams.

            It’s worth asking if the aide would have complained to Paterson’s office if Parker had merely yelled at her.

            By the way, the campaign team of Parker’s 2004 opponent Noach Dear knew of the matter but didn’t go public with it. But Dear may well mention it when he challenges Parker again in 2006, which is likely.

            The headlock, road rage, and punching incidents lend credibility to Wellington Sharpe’s accounts of two Parker explosions last year.

            In the first, upset that Sharpe was running against him, a foamy-mouthed, bulging-eyed Parker chest-bumped him and blocked him from stepping away. This was in May at the Haitian Flag Day parade on Eastern Parkway.

            In the second, said Sharpe, on October 9 at Councilman Kendall Stewart’s birthday party, a raging Parker slammed legal papers into Sharpe’s back, asked him to step outside, and threatened to break him in half. Parker has just been served the papers because Sharpe had sued him for slander.

***

            IN RETROSPECT: It’s easy to trust the endorsements of so-called “good government” organizations. But often these organizations have limited information about the candidates. Often all they know of them comes from a single interview. Did Citizens Union, for example, have a good feel for Assemblyman Roger Green when it supported him in 2000, calling him “an able and conscientious legislator”?

            At the time Green was keeping taxpayer-reimbursed travel expenses that were actually being picked up by a state contractor with business before him. He ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and resigned from office, though he was elected again in 2004.

            Also in 2000, Citizens Union named Assemblyman Clarence Norman its preferred candidate over James Davis. The organization praised Norman’s “effective and conciliatory leadership”. Norman, like Green, also ended up indicted. Citizens Union changed its mind about Norman in 2004, calling him an obstacle to much-needed reform in Albany.

            Citizens Union also named Robert DiCarlo its preferred Republican State Senate candidate in 2000 over Charles Capetanakis, though DiCarlo had been a divisive figure who helped fracture his own party, which helped Vinny Gentile win the seat.

            We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Citizens Union’s endorsement of State Senator Kevin Parker last year.

***

            STICK TO THE SCRIPT, JOE: Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes, dogged by innuendo that he uses his position to punish political opponents, in advertently added gas to the embers when he told reporters on January 18, “I fully expect to make it very painful for the people who run against me.”

            His competitors salivated faster then Pavlov’s dog and tore into the fresh meat when the Daily News called for comment.

            Mark Peters: “That is outrageous, and no professional prosecutor…would ever make a statement like that.”

            Councilman David Yassky: “For a sitting prosecutor to threaten political opponents with pain is conduct unbecoming a D.A.”

            State Senator John Sampson: “We as Brooklynites must ask ourselves, Can’t we do better?”

            Sandra Roper: “It sounds like the wild, wild West.”

            Brooklyn Democratic Party spokesman Bob Liff: “Running against a sitting district attorney should not be an indictable offense, even in Brooklyn.”

            In stark contrast was attorney Paul Wooten’s response. He told the News he was “surprised” but didn’t know the context of the comment.

            You’ll be shocked to learn that Wooten is the only one of Hynes’s opponents not to have run for office before. He is clearly new to the art of politically expedient quote-making.

            Wooten was probably right that, as foolish as Hynes’s quote was, the D.A. surely didn’t mean he’d sic his office on his opponents. But by saying nothing, Wooten relegated himself to an afterthought at the bottom of the News story.

            Dear Paul: Next time, you might say something like, “If a ham sandwich ran against Joe Hynes, it’d be slapped with indictments faster than it would mayonnaise at a New York deli.”

***

            POTTY TIME FOR YVETTE: Councilwoman Yvette Clarke’s fascination with urination surfaced again at a hearing about the Fire Department’s paucity of minorities and women.

            Clarke once wrote a bill demanding two women’s toilets for every urinal built. Despite the gratuitous ridicule that so predictably resulted, the Flatbush pol skipped to the loo again at the January 20 hearing, complaining that separate women’s bathrooms hadn’t been built at two firehouses where women have worked since 2003.

            Question for Clarke: Does your house have a separate bathroom for women?

            We don’t quite understand why male and female firefighters can’t use the same bathroom, especially with all we hear about the FDNY “family.” Remember, a family that relieves together, believes together.

***

            MAYOR MALIGNS BOARD OF ELECTIONS: Add Mayor Mike Bloomberg to the list of mayors outraged by the partisan fiefdom that is the New York City Board of Elections, which is run not by City Hall but by the Democratic and Republican parties.

            The result, he said, is an incompetently managed agency.

            “State law…allows party leaders to dictate hiring decisions based on party connections or family connections, not merit. This makes it very hard to fire incompetent workers, or to recruit qualified ones. That’s a recipe for ineptitude,” Bloomberg said.

            “The structure of the Board [of Elections], like our method of selecting judges, is a remnant of the days when Tammany Hall ruled New York. Together, the board and the courts are the city’s last bastions of political patronage...and it shows.”

            Bloomberg made similar complaints about the Board of Education in persuading the state government to turn it into a department under his control. But don’t expect the same to happen with the Board of Elections, at least not until after the mayoral election next fall.

***

            TIDBITS: At a four-minute press conference announcing her candidacy for Brooklyn district attorney, Sandra “Broken Record” Roper referred no fewer than five times to her “personal hardship.” Translation: her indictment for allegedly bilking a client. We should note that eight of the 12 jurors in her first trial felt she was not guilty. A second trial is likely…

            …The Albany Times-Union reported that Councilman Bill de Blasio has agreed to be a founding partner of an anti-death penalty Web site put together by the League of Women Voters and possible state attorney general candidate Andrew Cuomo, whose aborted 2002 run for governor was backed by de Blasio…

            …Helping to generate opposition in Borough Park to the proposed cross-harbor rail tunnel was a two-page spread in a free Orthodox Jewish newspaper that claimed, among other things, that a train would come thundering through the neighborhood every five minutes. The actual plan is for a train every 90 minutes…

            …Developer Alex Forkosh of Marine Park, whose plans for two hotels in Bergen Beach and a college dormitory on Strickland Avenue in Mill Basin are being opposed by Councilman Lew Fidler, likely knew long ago that he’d have trouble with Fidler. That might explain why he gave $750 in 2001 to Abe Levy, who ran against Fidler that year…

            …Steven Roth, the chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, which operates Kings Plaza Mall, gave $50,000 to Democrat Eliot Spitzer’s 2006 campaign. Spitzer is running for governor. Before the 2002 election, Roth gave Republican George Pataki $30,700 and the NYS Senate Republican Campaign Committee $25,000…

            …We recently pedaled down to the new Target store in Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Terminal mall but were initially unable to locate a bicycle rack outside the store. Ratner’s people later notified us of two racks beside the new mall, on Fort Greene Place.