Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is the Rodney Dangerfield of New York City politics: a self-proclaimed “regular guy” who gets no respect.
But that won’t make this lame-duck Beep – who’s better known for handing out proclamations and hosting events than influencing policy – remove his name as a potential mayoral candidate in 2009.
Markowitz, during a recent interview at his Borough Hall office, said he’s still undecided over whether he should officially declare himself a mayoral candidate.
“People look at me and they know I’m not a corporate New Yorker, I’m not a political wonk. I’m just a regular New Yorker who’s experienced poverty, living in public housing and going to college at night nine years to graduate,” he said.
In public, Markowitz appears to be anything but a politician.
He repeatedly boasts about his love for egg creams and Junior’s Cheesecake and almost always jokes about Brooklyn seceding to a grinning Mayor Bloomberg when both appear together before large crowds.
And during the city’s 2003 blackout and 2005 transit strike, Markowitz received roaring applause while standing on the Brooklyn Bridge with a megaphone bellowing, “Welcome home to Brooklyn,” to residents returning from work.
Douglas Muzzio, a public-affairs professor at Baruch College in Manhattan, said Markowitz’s “silliness is appealing” from a borough president but isn’t what most New Yorkers want from a mayor.
Some political operatives say Markowitz is pricklier than his loveable public image.
One former communications director, Regina Weiss, filed a lawsuit last week accusing Markowitz of ordering employees to work on his 2005 re-election and ignoring her claims of having been sexually harassed by the beep’s chief of staff. Markowitz said she was “treated with dignity.”
Another, Eric Demby, wrote a freelance story for The Post two weeks ago about the mayoral race but failed to mention his ex-boss in it. Markowitz was later the topic of a Page Six item alleging he was “seething mad” about the omission.
Demby backed Markowitz’s claim that his ex-boss wasn’t fuming when the two recently met up at Borough Hall, but Markowitz’s voice grew louder when recalling the confrontation.
“All I said,” he recalls in a thick Yiddish/Brooklynese accent, “is: ‘What am I, chopped liver that I’m not mentioned even?’ “