Hate report shines a spotlight on Suffolk's Levy

Sounding national alarms about hate crimes has long been the bread and butter of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Founded in 1971 by Alabama lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin, the nonprofit center issues a "Year in Hate" paper, which bolsters its fundraising appeals. The most recent edition reported, as before, that the number of "hate groups" nationwide rose last year, "fueled by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama."

So it was unsurprising that in its report Wednesday on a "climate of fear" facing Latino immigrants in Suffolk, the center would highlight horrid, widely publicized instances of violence and lurid abuse - while adding stark first-person accounts and framing it all in vivid prose.

That is in keeping with the group's agenda. Suffolk Executive Steve Levy, whose own agenda has included sometimes-controversial legal measures targeting illegal immigration, comes in for a special drubbing in the report as an "enabler."

The report says Levy "isn't the only public official engaging in the verbal immigrant-bashing, or the most extreme. But he is the highest-ranking . . . acting like the enabler-in-chief."

Based in Montgomery, the center is no ad-hoc coalition like some of those Levy may have confronted in the past and dismissed. Whatever your view of the center's role, it has a substantial operation with the capacity to have its reports heard in political circles well beyond the region.

For the yearlong period ending last Oct. 31, direct public contributions to SPLC totaled $32.4 million, according to its IRS filings, with annual expenses of $30.7 million - including a payroll of more than $12 million.

Going back several years, the group's targeted rap on Levy ranges from Suffolk's zoning-violation raids to police-reporting policies on illegal immigrants, to Levy's statements about border-crossers having "anchor babies," to his strident denunciations of those who assail his policies.

SPLC staffers even held their news conference in Levy's domain, the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge.

As many of his constituents already know, Levy does not need the SPLC's help to get himself embroiled with fellow Democrats - especially Latino legislators with whom he has clashed in public.

Given a national Internet and media audience, the new SPLC report reinforces familiar criticisms of Levy, from foes and even some fans, that he can be tone-deaf or worse.

Politically, this report might pose no threat to him in Suffolk. It does mean more people outside the county will hear Levy's name, in a negative light, for the first time.

And politically, it is a flip side to the praise that Levy has won in nationally broadcast commentaries calling for crackdowns on illegal immigration.

For now, Levy is restraining his proven instinct for firing up debate.

"While we can continue to disagree about policies related to the economic and social impacts of illegal immigration," said his noncombative statement, "we can all agree that any violence against a fellow human being cannot and will not be tolerated."

--Click here to read the full report