Former State Sen. Jack Martins.

Former State Sen. Jack Martins. Credit: Howard Schnapp

Daily Point

Martins for — or 4 — Senate?

Checking out a candidate’s website to get a feel for where he or she stands on the issues?

Check that URL first.

Former State Sen. Jack Martins, who is now campaigning to recapture the SD7 seat, has a traditional campaign website at www.martinsforsenate.com, with all you’d expect — the photos, biography, donation button and more.

But head to www.martins4senate.com — and you’ll see something very different — a link to a New York Times editorial from November 2017, headlined, “Willie Horton, Updated for the Trump Era.”

The same link can be found at www.jackmartinsforsenate.com.

The 2017 editorial features a critique of a mailer Martins sent during his campaign for county executive against Laura Curran. The mailer, you may remember, featured three Latino men, covered in tattoos, and screamed “Meet Your New Neighbors! Laura Curran will roll out the welcome mat for violent gangs like MS-13!” The postcard drew criticism when it first arrived in mailboxes five years ago.

A look at the domain registry for the site doesn’t make clear who owns it, or who bought it initially, listing the organization as Domains by Proxy, LLC, a website that keeps domain ownership private, advertising “Your identity is nobody’s business but ours.” What it does say, however, is that both sites were registered on March 8, just days after The Point first reported that Martins was mulling a comeback for his old 7th SD seat.

In response to the Point’s inquiries about the sites, Sean Ross Collins-Sweeney, a spokesman for State Sen. Anna Kaplan, who this week won the Democratic primary that now will pit her against Martins, asked a question of his own.

“Have you asked Jack if he owns the site?” Collins-Sweeney said. “After all, the link does highlight mail he sent out, and which he firmly stood behind, even after being universally condemned as a desperate racist appeal right out of the Trump playbook.”

Martins, for his part, denied owning the sites and suggested Kaplan was responsible for the sites and trying to “avoid talking about the real issues.”

“Hijacking my name to create a phony website is just the same, old, dirty politics as usual,” Martins told The Point. “...Rather than letting her hide in the dark corners of the internet, I invite Ms. Kaplan to a public debate so we can fairly let the people of Nassau County decide who will really fight for them in Albany. I look forward to her response.”

The candidates are expected to participate in a debate held by the League of Women Voters, likely in October.

So far, no one has taken responsibility for the alternative campaign sites.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Talking Point

A congestion pricing speaker traffic jam

The first of six virtual public hearings on the plan to institute congestion pricing — a toll on Manhattan’s central business district — will take place tonight, beginning at 5 — and it’s likely to last… a while.

According to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, a stunning 391 individuals registered to speak as of 7 p.m. Wednesday, when registration closed. Each speaker will have three minutes of speaking time.

That means if everyone were to speak for three minutes, the hearing could last a staggering 19 hours.

And individuals can speak Thursday night without being registered.  Although the hearing is scheduled for three hours, an MTA spokesman said the authority is prepared to allow the hearing to last as long as is needed to get every speaker who’s present when called upon a chance to say something.

Some speakers, however, might choose to pick a different hearing date when they realize just how many have signed up for tonight.

Meanwhile, clearly timed with the start of the hearings process, Uber sent an email to its customers Thursday morning asking them to sign a petition that would oppose congestion pricing for Uber drivers. The email notes that Uber riders already have been paying a congestion surcharge — which amounts to $2.75 for non-shared for-hire trips — and that the larger congestion pricing plan could mean Uber drivers pay the additional fee to drive into the central business district, too. As customers took Uber rides Thursday, a large black box proclaiming “Say no to new fees” accompanied the maps of their trips on the app, and a link to the petition showed up upon a ride’s completion.

Uber’s email and petition indicate the company doesn’t oppose congestion pricing broadly — but wants all drivers to pay.

“It’s time for the MTA to hold other drivers accountable, and not double tax those of us who have already been doing their part,” the petition reads. “Riders like me have been paying a congestion fee for years, and now it’s time for personal car owners, tour buses, and delivery trucks to pay their fair share.”

Whether or not many of Thursday’s speakers will be Uber drivers or riders remains to be seen. For now, they, along with local, state and federal officials and anyone else interested in congestion pricing, might want to get a caffeine IV drip ready.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Vote with interest

Credit: Creators.com/Gary Varvel

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

Governors up close

Now that we’re past another election, New York political pros might have a second to dig into Lis Smith’s new memoir, “Any Given Tuesday.” There’s a lot for locals to chew over.

The communications pro famously dated former Gov. Eliot Spitzer — she found him “more amiable and humble than his public persona” — and was among the kitchen cabinet advising former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo not long before he resigned. But the most evocative sections of the book are about Bill de Blasio.

She calls him “childish, intellectually lazy, overconfident in his own abilities, and annoyingly condescending.” She says he showed up thirty minute late to interview her for a job, at an Italian place “down the block from his Park Slope townhouse.”

Things didn’t get better while she worked on his mayoral campaign.

She details how her old boss got his clips read to him out loud by a staffer. She says he expounded on his spiritual journey and Buddhism. When his coffee was found not to be sufficiently hot, he declared “We have an espresso situation.” Early on she deemed him not able to “handle a 9/11.”

It’s a lot of fun, but worth taking with some grains of salt (or espresso sugar) given how Smith freely describes her bitterness at the incoming mayor rescinding his offer to work with him longer term, as she deals with tabloid frenzies over her relationship with Spitzer. Smith says de Blasio “humiliated” her.

Kicking a guy when he’s down, or at least done seeking elective office for at least a cycle or two, is not all that hard. Don’t expect similar juicy details about Smith’s time working on the presidential campaign of another former mayor (of South Bend, Indiana) — Pete Buttigieg, whose time on the national scene is not over. Readers may be surprised to hear that she was enamored of the current cabinet secretary’s language skills. A representative line: “He reminded me of why I got involved in politics in the first place.”

More interesting are Smith’s critiques about the media system she has long been a part of: the way pundits’ response to Howard Dean’s famous scream was a harbinger of media addiction to “gaffe” coverage. The fact that harried newspapers sending green reporters to cover national campaigns made it less likely they’d do deep coverage — and, implicitly, more likely that they could be spun. The way technological changes have demolished “thoughtfulness” even as they bring politicians right to voters.

Underneath the bravado she paints a sometimes-haggard picture of modern political life. She notes somewhat sadly that she can still remember lines from then-U.S. ambassador Susan Rice’s Sunday show appearances (“disastrous”) during the Obama reelection campaign, but little about a family wedding: “I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what song my twin brother and his wife chose for their first dance.”

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

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