NYC NOW - August 24, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Police are investigating a stabbing on a 1 train in the Times Square station early Thursday morning. Also, two legends of the 1986 World Series Champion New York Mets are getting their numbers retired. And finally, WNYC's Nancy Solomon reports on the retirement of New Jersey State Senator Richard Codey and the political fallout it created.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, August 24. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Police are trying to figure out what led to a stabbing on a one train in the Times Square station early this morning. Police say a 52-year-old man was attacked around 2.15 after fighting with another man who has not been identified. The unidentified man stabbed the 52-year-old. multiple times in the head with some sort of sharp object and then ran away. Police say the victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

Two legends of the 1986 World Series champion, New York Mets, are getting their numbers retired. The Mets say they're retired, Dall Strawberries, number 18, and Drock, Dwight Duck, Goodens, number 16 next season. Your forecast now, midday showers, cloudy and 73 for a high. showers and thunderstorm chances tomorrow. Gusty and 77 with the threat of flash flooding. Last week, New Jersey State Senator Richard Cody announced his retirement. In the fallout, machine politics and backroom deals quickly reared their heads. WNYC's Nancy Solomon walks through the messy situation with my colleague, Sean Carlson.

This one's a real doozy. I'm cracking my knuckles here. Dick Cody won the primary in June. Now, this is a district. It's in the suburbs of Essex County, west of Newark. Its boundaries changed with redistricting. It added Montclair. That is where state senator Nia Gill lives. Those two state senators faced off in the primary, Cody won. So what was the response when he announced his retirement just two months later? Surprise and anger. Yeah. Nia Gill is a black woman and women of color are still fighting for representation in the state legislature.

and she has a reputation of being independent and unbossed. So if he is now gone and not on the ballot, can she take his place? No, because New Jersey, like most states, has what's called a sore loser's law. If you lose the primary, you can't run in the general for either party. And if you want to run as an independent, you have to file your signature petitions on the day of the primary before the polls close. So now the Democratic Party committee in the legislative district chooses the replacement for Cody. But what happened next took the situation to a whole other level because now none of the candidates that people chose in the June primary are running for the same seats that they were running for in the primary in the general. And so that's a slate of one state Senate candidate and two assembly candidates all changed.

Okay, so the Senate candidate, Dick Cody, retires. I get why he is no longer on the ballot, but what happened to the two assembly candidates? One longtime assemblyman, John McKeon, has been picked by the party leadership to run in Cody's place. So that opened up McKeon's assembly seat, and here's where it gets really convoluted and involves too many people with the last name, Gill. Bear with me, Sean. In the primary, Cody and McKin ran with Alexin Calazzo's. Gill, who's married to Brendan Gill, a county commissioner, and a close ally of the governor. Those gills are not to be confused with Nia Gill, unrelated, who Cody unseated in the primary. So now the party leadership plans for Brendan to take one of the assembly seats, but his wife is stepping down from her primary victory, the assembly seat she wanted, and she's not going

to run in the general. Instead, they've picked a woman on the town council and living. Rosharo Bagoly, and McKeon is still on the ticket, but for a different seat. Now, why didn't Brendan Gill run in the primary if he wanted that seat anyway? Yeah, I asked him that yesterday. It's a fair question. I mean, I did have interest. At the time, this was also a very kind of last-minute thing in that the vacancy on this legislative district 27 ticket opened up the Thursday.

before the filing deadline. That's a reference to when Assemblyman Tom Giblin announced his resignation before the primary. If Giblin had run for re-election alongside Senator Cody and Assemblyman McKeon, the slate would have been made up of three white men. And if Brendan Gill replaced Giblin, you get the same. But now they're replacing Brendan Gill's wife with a different woman. One of the most significant things for me for the ticket itself was that, you know, it maintained the diversity that it currently had. Okay, I'm probably not alone in saying that this is a level of musical chairs pretty hard to follow.

What has been the response to all of this in the actual district? The Essex County Democratic Committee has to hold a vote of its party committee members who live in that legislative district. Here's one of those members from West Orange, Elizabeth Red Wine. When I read that Brendan Gill was going to take over for his wife, I just made me sick to my stomach. And this is nothing personal against either of them. But I donated to her campaign. And my phone blew up with people who had supported her. It gives credence to the worst suspicions about how politics go in this state.

and I care about that. I got to ask, I grew up in Jersey. I'm very proud of where I grew up. I love it. But I have to ask, what are her worst suspicions of what goes on in New Jersey? That who gets to run for office is decided behind closed doors, ultimately. I spoke with a few political reformers who lists the problems that led to this point. There was redistricting that put Nia Gill seat in peril.

And then there's the county line. That's the process that gives the candidates. with the party endorsement a better position on the ballot because they are grouped with more recognizable names. Dick Cody got the line and won the primary. And now we have a legislative slate that had two retirements at the 11th hour. And you know, you have pro-democracy reformers who just can't even get elected to the state legislature. The pro-democrat, little D and me, wants to ask, Why is that? Because the party is able to confer a huge advantage to the candidates that they endorse. And once those candidates become legislators, they have no incentive to change the system that helps them get reelected.

There's a meeting and a vote and a party committee meeting to be held in West Orange High School tomorrow night at 6. But the reformers I spoke with say they don't expect to have the votes to stop this new slate. That's WNYC's Nancy Solomon talking with my colleague Sean Carlson. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We'll be back this evening.