By Gary Tilzer

Until she left the NY Times Editorial Board in 2014, Dorothy Samuels single-handedly used the Times’ endorsement to elect independent, qualified judicial candidates in NYC who challenged the party bosses’ hand-picked judges. Her 2005 Op-Ed provided a critical analysis of the entrenched political patronage systems in NY’s courts, by examining Senator Robert Kennedy’s 1966 effort to end Democratic Machine control of the Surrogate Court.

In the 1940s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Surrogate’s Court “the most expensive undertaking establishment in the world, that kept corrupt Tammany Hall alive, when he and President Roosevelt denied them government jobs.”  Kennedy’s effort to end politics in the NY courts was cut short by his assassination in 1968, and Samuels’ article on the senator’s court reform attempt was the NY Times’ last effort to illuminate the political bosses’ control over NY courts.

Due to the Times Editorial Board’s decision earlier this year to discontinue local election endorsements, including for judicial candidates, and the limited and unfocused judicial coverage by the remaining city media, Democratic party bosses’ control of the courts remains as strong as Boss Tweed’s dominance over judges during Tammany Hall’s era. Twenty years after Samuels’ Op-Ed noted that “the party bosses’ control of the courts remains entrenched,” the situation remains unchanged in 2024, 20 years after Samuels’ Op-Ed

Despite the significant role that judges appointed by Democratic machine clubhouses play in this year’s federal elections—including the removal of Senator Kennedy’s son, Robert, from the presidential ballot 58 years after his father labeled the NY courts a toll booth for political bosses—the media has not examined the political control of the NY courts. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Robert Kennedy stated, “The DNC got a judge in NY right out of the Democratic machine, who violated the Constitution by removing him from the ballot.” Kennedy is appealing the judge’s ruling in both NYS and federal courts, even though he has suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump.

In Senator Kennedy’s day, New York had two parties controlling the courts; today, it is a one-party state with the Democratic Party in full control. Both the extent of court patronage and political corruption remain largely unreported, uninvestigated, and poorly understood by today’s reporters and public. The NY Daily News hinted at broader corruption in the NYS Supreme Court in a 2019 investigation but did not follow it up:

NY Daily News “Brooklyn lawyers who decide who can get the crucial Democratic ballot line to run for prized judicial seats are getting jobs as legal guardians and referees from the very judges they’re charged with reviewing – and their law firms are appearing before those same judges in active cases.”

In 1966, Kennedy was infuriated by a cross-endorsement judicial candidate deal

between Manhattan Democratic political bosses and the Republican Party. Encouraged by Liberal Party leader Alex Rose, Kennedy spearheaded a campaign to elect Judge Samuel Silverman to eliminate party bosses’ patronage from the NY Surrogate Court. Judge Silverman, Kennedy’s candidate, vowed to eradicate patronage and cronyism in awarding lucrative assignments such as executors, guardians, and estate trustees to party connected lawyers.

A routine race for an obscure local judgeship became a nationally watched media event due to the senator’s involvement. While Mr. Silverman defeated the Party Boss candidate, he lost Kennedy’s political partner in reforming the NY court two years later following the senator’s assassination while running for president. Unable to reform the Surrogate Court, Silverman eventually left the position to accept a judgeship on the NY Supreme Court.

In 1998, NYS Chief Judge Judith Kaye proposed eliminating the Surrogate Court as part of a court reorganization plan but abandoned it after facing objections from party bosses. In 2000, the NY Times reported that Kaye had appointed a Special Inspector General to investigate serious allegations of judicial corruption in the Brooklyn courts, involving two party-connected lawyers who claimed they were not receiving their fair share of judicial patronage. On June 10, 2019, the NY Daily News revealed that “Brooklyn lawyers deciding Democratic ballot lines for judicial seats receive guardian and referee jobs from the judges they review,” but did not pursue it further.

As a result of the lack of media coverage and follow up, political party bosses continue to control the courts, leaving the public unaware of who selects the judges that appear on their election ballots. Even the woke ideologists progress leaders who replaced reformers who were able to defeat a couple of party bosses Surrogate Court candidates in their day, have no understanding about how machine patronage runs the NY Courts

The Brooklyn progressive club New Kings Democrats (NKD), which hosted a panel with machine judge candidates, questioned a Surrogate Court candidate about his support for their progressive no-bail law—an issue unrelated to that court. Former Mayor Fiorello La Guardia had noted that Surrogate Court patronage to party bosses and their connected lawyers kept the Democratic machine alive, the same machine NKD is fighting to replace in Brooklyn. Clearly, the core issue of judicial patronage reform championed by Kennedy, Silverman, and Samuels has long been forgotten. Even the NYU Brennan Center for Justice, where Samuels worked after leaving the NY Times, has abandoned its excellent investigative reports—stopped abruptly a decade ago—that highlighted how party bosses control the NY courts, shifting its focus to national issues.

Clearly, none of the NKD progressives have read Jimmy Breslin’s investigative articles about how the Brooklyn Surrogate Court allowed party-connected lawyers to exploit the widow of Mexican immigrant Eduardo Gutierrez, who died in a construction accident, or how the same court bankrupted with extreme patronage fees one of the first Afro-American NYS Judges, John Phillips, who owned the Bedford-Stuyvesant Civil Rights Themed Slave Theater and many other properties in Central Brooklyn. Today’s Breslin-ism: Dies the Courts, Dies the Constitution, Dies the City and Democracy.