Opinion

The foursaken

Halloran and Ulrich of Queens, and Oddo and Ignizio of Staten Island, stand alone after Koo’s switch. (
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There is a pitifully small group of hapless creatures who subsist obscurely in a wilderness where they suffer from a bitterly inhospitable climate. They cling to a steadily shrinking patch of inhabitable territory. Starved for resources, they have resorted in desperation to using their teeth and claws against fellow members of their dwindling species. This week 20% of their population disappeared. Today only four of them are still alive.

Spare a thought for them before they become extinct: They’re the Republicans on the New York City Council.

That 51-member body, led by Speaker Christine Quinn, now includes 47 Democrats. One of the five Republicans, Hong Kong immigrant and businessman Peter Koo of Queens, last week defected to the Democrats.

So now the entire Republican caucus in New York City government could stand in the same bathtub. Their leader, Jimmy Oddo of Staten Island, sounds like one of those admirable folks you read about who are fighting a very forthright, optimistic, brave battle against an incurable disease.

“It really didn’t come as a surprise,” he said of the Koo defection. “I think from day one there were rumors about the possibility of that.”

Koo, a self-financed owner of a string of pharmacies in Flushing, was elected to the seat on the Republican ticket with just under half of the vote in 2009, but his district is five to one Democratic.

“It gets to be a lonely place sometimes,” Oddo says.

NO RANCOR, NO DEBATE

The key to survival in a climate that is approximately as welcoming to GOPers as the tiger cage is to an asthmatic Chihuahua? Keep your head down. Don’t make any sudden noises.

“We gotta deliver for our district,” Oddo reasons. “If that means ignoring some rhetoric, if that means holding back or pulling your punches, we’re in the trenches. So don’t look for the fights. There are times when dispute and debate is good and we have to stand up for matters of conviction”— and then there is most of the time.

That’s when he joins happily with the majority on the small stuff that famously got Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato labeled “Senator Pothole,” at least for the three terms he managed to survive before getting crushed by Chuck Schumer.

“When you’re talking about road conditions and potholes,” says Oddo, “It’s so easy to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jimmy Vacca,” a liberal Democrat from The Bronx. The pro-pothole voter is not at this moment enjoying representation on the City Council.

Oddo confesses that it can be a taxing environment. “Sometimes the rhetoric from some of my colleagues is beyond the pale, and it’s silly. It’s 2012. If I hear somebody else make another George W. Bush reference my head may explode.”

After Koo’s announcement, his now-fellow Queens Democrat, state Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, said he couldn’t believe Koo ever declared as a Republican in the first place because, “He’s a nice guy, he likes people, he likes the immigrant community.” Zing!

Still, when state politicians come down to visit, Oddo says they’re surprised at the courteousness that obtains between the majority and the minority on the City Council.

“Republicans from Albany were shocked at the level of collegiality in the chamber and that we were allowed to pass bills,” says Oddo. “Water bills, stop-sign bills, streetlights, street conditions. It allows you to transcend partisan and political divides if you want to. We get treated and have been treated by leadership and our colleagues in a very respectful way.”

This is a polite way to spin the news that Democrats don’t even bother hating city Republicans. No fear? No hate. Nobody loathes the Luxembourg army.

“I live in a swing district,” Oddo says. “We elevate each other’s game in a healthy two-party system on Staten Island. In Staten Island they will vote for a qualified Democrat or a qualified Republican. Elsewhere in the city, if you have a D after your name, that person gets elected overwhelmingly regardless of whether he knows where the men’s room is at the City Council.”

We bemoan the “polarized” situation in Washington, but back home in one-party land we see what happens when there is no meaningful debate. Quietly, with no “partisan rancor,” the budget has doubled in a decade. Of course taxes keep marching up; unions demand it. The United Federation of Teachers is even providing office space to a Democratic campaign office at 50 Broadway. Only Republicans call for spending caution, and Democratic voters simply dismiss them for being “heartless.”

KING OF THE GUPPIES

Republicans believe Koo’s move has little to do with New York Times hype about the city councilman’s supposed growing disenchantment with the national Republican party and more about ugly ground-level intraparty warfare in the Queens GOP. Republicans there are much like the Jets and the Sharks, only the jets are paper airplanes and the sharks are minnows.

The borough county chair is a walrus-mustached pol named Phil Ragusa. A rebel alliance led by Bart Haggerty, an aide to Queens City Councilman Eric Ulrich of Ozone Park, last year tried to cast Ragusa out of his miniature throne as Republican king of Queens and replace him with Giuliani-era ex-City Councilman Tom Ognibene. Ulrich and Ognibene are from south of Queens’ own Mason-Dixon Line: The Long Island Expressway. North of it, Ragusa rules.

Ulrich and Co. schemed to hold a separate voting meeting for their Queens Republicans, at which they elected Ognibene, while Ragusa was holding a meeting at which he got himself re-elected as the party’s county chief. “The level of personal destruction that’s happening,” says Oddo, “is irrational.”

But fun.

It was sort of like “I’m Spartacus!” “No, I’m Spartacus.” Except Spartacus at least earned himself the right to be crucified, whereas the Queens Repubs succeeded only in getting themselves nailed to the tree of absurdity. A judge threw out the Ognibene vote and said only Ragusa, being head of the Queens GOP, could authorize a vote of the Queens GOP.

“People like Peter Koo and myself tried to stay as neutral as possible,” says Dan Halloran of Queens, one of the four remaining GOP City Council members.

Still, Koo was faced with the dismal prospect of having to alienate one half or the other.

“All of these things made for a very unstable political organization,” says Halloran. “The same political party is taking snipes at each other. It puts an elected [official] like him in a very awkward position because you can’t come out and cut off friends.

“It becomes very hard to pick sides among warring factions,” he adds. “It doesn’t help the Republican caucus.”

“Peter is a gentleman,” says Oddo. “He’s a good man, he’s a good family man, he’s all about the work ethic. He’s not a political creature. I think the level of the venom and how nasty it got in terms of internal fighting didn’t sit well with him.”

Moreover, Halloran points out that by sheer coincidence, Democrats on the City Council often seem to wind up assigned more discretionary funds by the Democratic speaker. And Koo will never get to chair a committee as a Republican, something he can soon hope to do as a Democrat.

The wonder is that there are even four Republicans left on the weak side of the teeter-totter. Is the Republican label toxic in the city? “I don’t think it’s toxic,” says Halloran, “but the national brand is in the process of shifting right now.”

He says, “People have not viewed the Republican Party as a viable alternative for a lot of reasons. Some of them have to with the social issues. But I think most New Yorkers agree with the fiscal agenda. There’s too much red tape and bureaucracy. Middle class taxes are too high. Water and sewer rates have gone up ridiculously. Small business can’t afford to be here, between the six agencies they report to to get five different licenses.

“There’s a disconnect between social liberty and the mainstream GOP platforms. That’s why when Ron Paul came to Webster Hall, he drew an incredibly large young crowd. It speaks to what I call the liberty movement in the Republican Party, which is a move toward smaller government and less infringement on personal liberties.”

One sign of that was the success last fall of Republican Bob Turner, who won Anthony Weiner’s former congressional seat in a Brooklyn-Queens district.

“To see that momentum blunted because of some infighting is disheartening,” Oddo says. “Go back to election night 2009, the Queens County Republican Party had a huge night — two new members and Eric Ulrich, who is in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, wins. So, for the first time, there was a sign of life for a healthy two-party system outside of Staten Island.”

THE DEMOCRATIC MACHINE

Koo’s flight came the same week in which Mayor Bloomberg scoffed at the GOP’s chances to win the next mayoral election in 2013. “I think it’s very hard to see a Republican coming along,” he told The Post, adding, ”It’s really hard to see the Democratic primary next year not being the real election.”

Oddo bristles at that. “Conventional wisdom says that in a city that’s five to one Democrat, that’s truth. Conventional wisdom had Mark Green as the next mayor in 2001. It was gonna be President Giuliani. It was gonna be Mayor Wiener. Conventional wisdom gets turned on its head more often than not.”

So, who is going to give the lie to Bloomberg’s prediction?

Um, nobody. “I don’t know of any candidate on the horizon who is going to run on our label,” Oddo admits.

“Republican mayors in this town get elected once in a generation, and they get elected in the wake of Democrats who really mess things up and people are so tired of the status quo that they’re willing to take a chance,” Oddo says.

Alas, Bloomberg hasn’t sufficiently messed things up (and isn’t even a Democrat, officially, just an independent former Democrat who believes in regulating the sodium content of your food).

The party’s not-so-secret best hope may be Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. “He’s believed to be a conservative,” Halloran says. But who knows? Kelly keeps saying he isn’t interested and “I take him at his word,” says Oddo.

So it looks like more years on the endangered-species list. The situation is so dire that it takes a triple metaphor to explain what the New York City GOP is up against.

Says Halloran, “If you’re gonna have only one party running, then they’ll take the ball and run it too far and things will eventually come to a screeching halt because there’s no check and balance.”

In the event of disaster, at least we won’t have to quibble about which party is to blame.