Brother Bloomberg
posted: 7:23 PM, November 9, 2005 by Tom Robbins
It's good to know that corrections union chief Norman Seabrook, who personally drove ex-Senator (GOP Senator sentence to prison for accepting bribes) Guy Velella out of Rikers when he won early release from jail last year, is out of the Bloomberg dog house. Not that he was ever really in it.

At a pre-election labor rally on Monday evening, the mayor singled out Seabrook for an extra special helping of praise, assuring all his new-found union allies that Seabrook, who alone endorsed Bloomberg in his first race, would always be first in his book.

The scene was the hotel workers' hall on West 44th Street, packed with union business agents in suits, rank and filers in tee-shirts and sweats, and some three dozen labor leaders jammed together in the sweltering hall.

Bloomberg, whose own union experience consisted of avoiding the use of trade union labor in the installation of his financial data computers, addressed the crowd as "Brothers and Sisters." He then went on to single out his friend Seabrook.

"Four years ago I didn't have a lot of labor support," said the mayor to chuckles on the stage. "In fact, I had one union guy. And if I've done a good job you owe him a debt of gratitude - Norman Seabrook."

This won cheers for the corrections union leader, but did it also mean that the mayor had never complained to him about serving as Velella's personal chauffeur? Velella's early release was an embarrassing episode for Bloomy, one that he corrected by firing the panel that released the ex-senator and empanelling a new one that made him serve six more months in jail.

"I'm not about to reveal personal conversations I've had with the mayor," Seabrook said at Bloomberg's Tuesday night post-election extravaganza at the Sheraton.

Actually, Bloomberg told Newsday's Bryan Virasami and Dan Janison a couple of weeks back that the Velella escort service by his key union endorser was just fine with him. "Mr. Seabrook can drive anyone he wants," said the mayor.

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theres more - from the nytimes

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Velella Got Ride to Freedom From Guards' Union Chief
By KEVIN FLYNN and PAUL VON ZIELBAUER

Published: October 7, 2004

Most released inmates have to ride the city bus off Rikers Island, but former Senator Guy J. Velella was driven from the jail last week by the president of the correction officers' union, who took him to meet his family at a favorite Bronx restaurant.

Norman Seabrook, the president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, said he extended the courtesy because Mr. Velella, a Bronx Republican, had been a loyal friend to the union.

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But the ride was another instance in which the treatment of Mr. Velella appeared to be at odds with that afforded the average inmate. Ordinarily, prisoners must take a city bus or licensed van service over the bridge to the mainland, because private cars are not allowed on the island.

Last week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered an investigation into the circumstances under which Mr. Velella received one of the few early releases from prison granted each year by an obscure panel of mayoral appointees. The panel, known as the Local Conditional Release Commission, serves as a local parole board. It released Mr. Velella on Sept. 28, just three months into a yearlong sentence for conspiracy to accept bribes.

The panel reviewed 32 letters of support for Mr. Velella, including one from a representative of the Archdiocese of New York and another from former Mayor Edward I. Koch. The commission's chairman has said the panel acted out of compassion after deciding that Mr. Velella, a first-time offender, had been shattered by his fall from public office, the loss of his law license and by his time in jail.

Though about 7,000 cases were eligible for review this year by the panel, Mr. Velella and two other men convicted with him were three of only five people who have been released.

Mr. Seabrook said that Mr. Velella, 60, had called him several times from prison, complaining that he could not sleep, and the union president offered to give him a ride home to the Bronx. "That man has carried a lot of pieces of legislation in Albany for us," Mr. Seabrook said.

He said he drove in the pouring rain to the island, where only people with special passes are allowed, picked up Mr. Velella at the visitors center, where released inmates are left, and then drove him to the Pine Tavern in the Bronx. Mr. Velella's wife and son were waiting there, Mr. Seabrook said, and they chatted for 10 minutes before Mr. Seabrook left. Mr. Velella said he was looking forward to a shower in his home.

City officials had been quoted in initial news reports as saying that Mr. Velella had departed the prison by bus shortly before 3 p.m. A Correction Department spokesman, Thomas Antenen, said that most released inmates do take the bus but that the agency had not specifically monitored how Mr. Velella left.

"We dropped him at the visitor control center," he said. "We don't track his movements after that. And Mr. Seabrook, of course, has access to that as president of the union."

in your "experience," primary opponents play nice with each other and unions trash talk about other unions.  which contrasts sharply with my own experience, where primary opponents are actually competitive and wage hard fought campaigns, and unions are actually respectful of each other -- even the unions where the leaders don't agree with each other!

so my question is, on what world do you live?  i reside on planet earth, in the united states of america -- how about you?

standard tactic for people who are full of shit.  i'd love to know who suggested that a national union was vouching for him...

you keep running around in circles, chasing your tail.  i said what i said -- i heard about this endorsement from a leader in a national union!  and they didn't trash it, like you said they would!  you were wrong...