« What Do BP, New York Multifamily & Atlantic Yards Have In Common? | Main | In Progress: Beekman Tower / Frank Gehry »
June 21, 2010
Carl Andrews Goes From Clownish Antics to More Serious Trouble
Runnin' Scared
by Wayne Barrett
Sleazeballs of a feather flock together.
I remember when Carl Andrews was an innocent. The focus of scorching New York Post stories the last two days, Andrews is now a target of a probe that threatens the brief Democratic reign in the New York State Senate. It's the culmination of a life of clownish crime, though the usually ebullient Andrews has never been convicted of one.
The Post reported this morning that Senator John Sampson, whose leadership of the narrow Democratic majority has restored at least some semblance of sanity to the chamber in recent months, actually gave Andrews an internal Senate document summarizing the details of the six bids received by the state for one of its most lucrative contracts ever, the operation of 4,500 electronic slot machines at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Andrews, a former state senator with close political ties to Sampson, was the lobbyist for Aqueduct Entertainment Group, the eventual winning bidder whose contract is so engulfed in scandal it was subsequently cancelled.
The State Inspector General and the United States Attorney are probing the award to A.E.G., which revised its bid after seeing the Senate summary of their competitors' offers.
...To me, it is all Brooklyn chickens coming home to roost in Albany.
Sampson and Andrews joined forces under onetime Brooklyn Democratic boss and ex-Assemblyman Clarence Norman, who wound up convicted in a series of corruption cases in recent years and doing up to nine years in state prison.
...You'd think a dossier like that might make [Andrews] a hard sell as a lobbyist, but in Albany, he was flooded with paying customers the minute he hung a shingle, everything from builders like Forest City Ratner and the McKissack Group, which have giant Brooklyn projects, to eBay and Brooklyn Philharmonic. A.E.G. knew it was buying access, and they didn't care whether it was the seediest kind.
Posted by eric at June 21, 2010 10:44 AM