Forget the pitiful race for mayor of New York. The most cutthroat campaign is taking place in Rockland County, and it is for Clarkstown’s highway superintendent.
County legislator Frank Sparaco yesterday released secret videotapes that he says show local officials trying to bribe him. It’s a complicated case: Sparaco is a Republican, but he’s tight with the Independence Party and Working Families Party in Rockland. The naughty officials on the tapes wanted his help getting their candidate — a Democrat — on third-party ballot lines.
“Political corruption in New York is occurring at every level,” he told The Post. “And I could not stay silent as I saw it unfolding before me.”
Certainly he’s seen plenty: His father is in the witness-protection program after working as a Mafia hitman. Sparaco took bundles of campaign contributions from car dealerships owned by a reputed member of the Colombo family. He’s also the recipient of a patronage job, a part-time gig in the highway office that pays $75,000 a year.
And he has influence in the Rockland Independence Party because his mother-in-law was the head of the county chapter until 2011. That was when she pleaded guilty to perjury and forgery charges related to an effort to get Sparaco the Independence line in his run for the Assembly in 2010.
We’ll confine ourselves to two observations. First, minority-party cross-endorsements in this state are an invitation to corruption. Second, what does it say about New York politics that even the good guys look grimy?