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September 14, 2011

Fuhgeddaboutit! B’klyn Beep Marty retiring from politics

NY Post
by Rich Calder

Ladies and gentleman — your next Forest City Ratner Companies Vice President of Governmental Affairs!

Marty Markowitz -- the powerful, popular Brooklyn borough president who had seriously considered a bid to replace Mayor Bloomberg in 2013 -- is no longer interested in the gig, sources told The Post yesterday.

Jeez, and he had such a good chance of winning.

In fact, the 66-year-old Markowitz, who can’t run for re-election again as borough president because of term limits, has been telling close confidants he’s grown tired of the strains of political life altogether and is not planning to run for any other elected post.

He's not the only one who's grown tired.

...
As borough president, he played a major role in the opening of the Red Hook cruise-ship terminal, attracting new development to Downtown Brooklyn and Coney Island and convincing the owners of the NBA New Jersey Nets to move into a new Prospect Heights arena next year.

But Markowitz has also infuriated his share of constituents, including bicycle activists, over his opposition to a bike lane along Prospect Park West.

Opponents of the controversial Atlantic Yards project, including the new Nets arena, regularly ridicule him for being its biggest booster.

article

Related coverage...

Runnin' Scared, Marty Markowitz Is Retiring

This comes after Markowitz's ethics issue in July, in which the city Conflicts of Interest Board fined him $20,000 for accepting free travel for his wife who accompanied him on business trips to Turkey and the Netherlands, though representatives of Markowitz said this was unrelated to the decision not to run.

No formal announcements have been made yet. The big question, along with who will replace Marty Markowitz? is does Fuhgeddaboutit retire too?

Posted by eric at September 14, 2011 1:03 PM