Stealth Campaign

Four years ago there were five contestants for the seat left open by Tish James in Brooklyn's 35th Council District -- Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, parts of Crown Heights and Bed Stuy.

Of the five, only three, the women, had any chance of winning so it was hard to figure why Ede Fox and Olanike Alabi didn't team up to "convince" the two men, both novices, to drop out.

The presence of the novices was hurting Fox and Alabi and helping Laurie Cumbo, who, though also a first-timer, was moving in the fast lane. She was backed by the Democratic party and the New York real estate lobby. And by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Cumbo won with 35%; Fox and Alabi got 25+% each; Jelani Mashariki and Frank Hurley split 13%. It's not idle conjecture that Fox or Alabi would have won had Mashariki and Hurley not been around.

Cumbo has been a bright light in the City Council. She's a natural politician. She knows how to handle a crowd and a mic, how to get attention, how to give the press the words and pictures that make the news.

She's articulate and telegenic, exuberant, charismatic, and appears to thrive on the meet and greet of public life even if she's put her office behind a moat. (While James Davis and Tish James had kept an open door, CM Cumbo cut constituent access to eight hours a week, otherwise by appointment only.)

She's considered a lock for re-election.

Yet here comes Ede Fox looking to knock her off this time.

Formidable as the incumbent is, she has emotional weaknesses, and a series of blunders on the record that a fearless, well prepared opponent could exploit to win. That doesn't describe Fox, who's been running for a couple of months only no one knows it. She has an "exploratory" committee who may be testing to see if the electorate is so turned off to politics these days that they'll gratefully vote for someone they didn't know was on the ballot.

Those who have heard Fox is running don't understand why she didn't call the press to announce it and frame it as the grudge match it most certainly is:

After Fox lost to Cumbo, she landed a high-up position in Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito's office. When Cumbo heard Fox was planning to run again, she demanded the Speaker fire her. The Speaker did.

A resourceful challenger would make Cumbo's vengefulness into campaign talking points, "See what kind of a person Laurie Cumbo really is?" After all, Cumbo has a winner-take-all history of bullying.

She tried hard to keep the Speaker from employing Fox on the grounds that having to see her rival at City Hall would be unfair, cruel. The Speaker went ahead and made the hire but told her to stay away from Cumbo.

A true grudge match is just the thing to breathe life into the low energy long blah campaign summer. What a waste to keep it tucked away, untold, unshocking.

What does Ede Fox think she's doing? Does she really think she can keep her powder dry and beat someone down and dirty as Laurie Cumbo?