August 22, 2008 What do you do when you’re running behind and time is running short. Well, Isaac Lebovits was in a position where he could not squeeze another drop out of the stone—the objections were exhausted and the machine Democrats were more than a dozen down a few weeks before their Sept. 9 Primary contest with the Ramapo Democrats for Change. As the saying goes, desperate times require desperate measures, so Mr. Lebovits took a trip to political "deadland" to look for an opportunity among the mummified remains of election districts done in by recent redistricting.
 

You might recognize Isaac Lebovits’s name because of his connection with Scenic Development (formerly of Brooklyn, NY). The Lebovits family includes major builders in Ramapo associated with some of the more controversial projects such as Patrick Farm, the Adult Student Housing project brokered by Supervisor St. Lawrence and his board.

Why would Isaac Lebovits show up at the Board of Elections to launch a legal fight to scrape together a few last Democratic Committee candidates for the St. Lawrence machine? Or is that what you call a rhetorical question?

Well, anyway, earlier this week, Isaac Lebovits showed up at the Board of Elections in New City with a demand. He wanted the Board to recertify a dead election district in Spring Valley. And he wanted his signatures for two candidates in that district accepted as "unopposed candidates." That would mean that they had no opponents and would be the winners in that district. He had previously filed what is called an opportunity to ballot.

Now you might think an election district in a town the size of Ramapo would be a wide area made up of scores of streets and hundreds of homes. And, actually, most are. But the dusty, still deceased district that Lebovits brought in is just a short side street that’s maybe a few hundred square feet, with a total of four houses. In the four houses are 10 registered voters, 7 of whom are registered Democrats. This little, moribund ward is in the place where District 52 had died. Lebovits demanded two Democratic Committee positions for the seven voters living on this stub of a street, Widman Court.

Election District 52 expired in a recent redistricting effort with the locals keeping their representation by being absorbed into Election District 74. But a peculiarity of Rockland law keeps the numbers of dead districts and this was the technicality Lebovits used while attempting CPR on the expired 52. The four houses were built on what was assumed to be "dead land," but if there’s one thing we’ve learned watching Ramapo planners it’s that builders will be allowed to plunk down structures anywhere that isn’t under water. The Supervisor is currently fascinated by a developer’s "creative idea" of building on top of a Superfund Cleanup Site (the builder, just coincidentally, is a major donor to St. Lawrence’s political committee).

Not happy with the Board of Elections response, Lebovits next went to the county attorney, and they went to the state. It was there that an echo of Colin Clive’s ecstatic "It’s Alive!" might have been heard echoing in the halls. Rushing back to the Board of Elections, Isaac Lebovits had what he wanted—two more committee members for the machine. Yet, despite Lebovits’s almost supernatural efforts, the St. Lawrence slate of candidates for Ramapo Democratic Committee still is more than a dozen down with less than three weeks to go.