Letter #2 to Steven Richman (un-edited)
General Counsel to The City Board of Elections
Manhattan, New York City

Dear Mr. Richman,

I don’t mean to be nasty with all these, but please understand my concern after a whole year of funding my own campaign.

I might have been a Nihilist or let’s admit a politician of the pruning-hook persuasion – if that works well for you and the city board of election Commissioners, but that is because pruning-hook as an implement is not a product or a weapon of nature. It is a devise made and used by man to check the redundancy, the waste and the harmfulness of nature.

If in doubt, I’ll suggest you go out of New York City today, ask any farmer or a garden enthusiast and they’ll tell you that nature, if left by itself, turns gardens into jungles and choke fruitful soils with unwanted weeds. And a Man with a pruning-hook is like a surgeon with scalpel – taking off unwanted weeds and harmful growths to be excised.

With stop-and-frisk looming over the political landscape, the physical passion of the city is not far from becoming riotous, reckless and even barbarous. So, politically speaking, what is needed is a clean, non-partisan candidate with a utilitarian approach for the city’s problems.

That is where I come in with my pruning-hook, like Henry VIII, applying the most basic physical formulae to the management of human affairs.

But with the stroke of a pen, YOU reverse the process, technically erased my name off the ballot and replaced my party and myself with “men of spirit.” I was flabbergasted. C’mon, what exactly could Rev. Adolfo Carrion and Pastor Erick Salgado be doing on the ballot if the boards intention is not about making a Charlie Brownish mockery of hardworking Latinos and the Afro-Latino communities in general?

To a lot of people, it comes across as the board’s way of saying these two communities in particular cannot ascertain the rudiments of justice or law, of politics, ethics or economics, of logic, language, or literature, or even my nature’s pruning-hook?

Oh! I guess they are following a trend – Al Sharpton and others.

Well, let it be known, I am a Thatcherite and Auntie Maggie taught me well and as far as I am concerned, I cannot wish for a better example of mental confusion when it comes to “men of spirits” acting out in a political sphere.