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Charlotte, NC – Vito’s running out of friends in high places.
Fed-up Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said yesterday he demanded that disgraced Brooklyn pol Vito Lopez resign during a tense face-to-face meeting several days ago.
“I asked him to resign as a member of the Assembly,” Silver said last night at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. “We have to maintain the respect and dignity for everyone who works in the Assembly. There has to be a professional environment.”
Silver said he spoke to Lopez on Friday and told him it was “best for him personally and for the assembly” to call it quits.
“His response was almost inaudible,” Silver said, adding that Lopez did not seem eager to heed his advice.
If the accused serial groper refuses, Silver said he would be “exploring all legal avenues” to find a way to give him the boot.
Silver said he saw no reason to lessen his role at the Democratic convention because of the Lopez scandal, including calling the roll call for the New York delegation.
“I’ve been doing this for many years. There’s no reason to change,” he said.
Lopez — once one of New York’s top power brokers and a fixture at Democratic conventions — is now officially a political pariah among New York Democrats.
Even before Silver spoke, party leaders in Charlotte yesterday said they are more than ready to give scandal-scarred Lopez the heave-ho following multiple accusations that he sexually harassed his female staffers.
Top state Democrats were not at all pleased that they were forced to address the Lopez problem during the opening day of the Democratic Party convention to renominate Barack Obama as their presidential candidate.
Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, the upstate co-chair of the state Democratic Party, said, “If the allegations are true, he should step down. He has not said the allegations are false.”
New York’s influential union leaders also said it’s time to toss Lopez, who did not attend the convention with the state delegation.
“There is no room for this type of behavior in the Democratic Party,” said Democratic delegate Stuart Appelbaum, head of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
“This is not a vote of confidence,” UFT President Mike Mulgrew said of the growing calls for Lopez to quit elected office. “It does not look good.”
Lopez has already resigned as the Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman, but is contesting sexual-harassment claims to save his Assembly seat.
Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan is conducting a criminal probe of Lopez’s alleged groping of two staffers.
Earlier, Silver censured Lopez and stripped him of his Housing Committee chairmanship and perks.
In New York yesterday, Gov. Cuomo continued to defer his final opinion on Lopez until the criminal probe and a separate investigation by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics are complete.
“I’ve said that if the allegations are true then I think Vito Lopez should step down,” Cuomo said at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn.