Staten Island’s Donovan plays the race card

In what is perhaps a little taste of what the House Republican caucus can expect if Daniel Donovan wins a special election for New York’s 11th Congressional District, the Staten Island District Attorney’s campaign has sent out an email with the subject line: “Al Sharpton is coming after Dan, we need your help!”

Donovan, of course, rose to prominence after a grand jury convened under his auspices failed to return an indictment in the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed African-American who died from being placed in a chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. On Thursday, New York Supreme Court Judge William Garrett sided with Donovan and ruled that transcripts of that grand jury proceeding would remain sealed because plaintiffs had failed to show a “compelling and particular need” for the public to see the contents.

And now, a fundraising email, delivered only hours after the judge’s ruling, underlines questions already raised by Donovan standing for election so soon after sitting before the Garner grand jury.

“[T]he radical Left is now attacking Dan, and we need your help,” the email read. “Just the other day Occupy Wall Street woke up to Dan’s momentum and started a social media attack telling their followers to ‘get him.’”

The email, which was reprinted in the New York Observer, continued: “At the same time, a recent news article revealed Al Sharpton’s National Action Network is working under the radar and doing their best to hurt Dan’s campaign. They were quoted saying they have to ‘tread delicately’ because they know how divisively they are perceived on Staten Island and in Brooklyn.”

The reference to Occupy Wall Street appears to be related to a January tweet from @OccupyWallStreetNYC, where it calls Donovan “#EricGarner’s murderer” while linking to a New York Post story about a Super PAC started to help the Staten Island DA.

In August, the New York City medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide.

The “tread delicately” line is drawn from a Capital New York piece where a regional director of the National Action Network (NAN) actually discussed de-emphasizing the organization’s participation in the Congressional election because of how NAN is perceived in the district.

Sharpton did issue a statement Thursday, after Judge Garrett’s decision, saying “the public is left to speculate as to why” the grand jury did not return an indictment; he then went on to imply Donovan didn’t present all “available evidence” in the case.

Part of the speculation revolves around the confluence of Donovan’s known political ambitions and the all-but-certain chance of an open House seat at the time of the Garner grand jury. Rep. Michael Grimm had represented NY-11, but the Republican was indicted last April on multiple counts of felony tax evasion. Grimm won re-election in November 2014, but resigned the seat in January of this year, shortly after admitting to the charges.

The Congressional district Donovan now hopes to represent is over two-thirds white and showed much higher levels of public support for the police than the rest of NYC in the wake of Garner’s death.

Donovan’s opponent in the May 5 election is Democrat Vincent Gentile, a New York City councilman. The Donovan campaign email accuses Gentile of being too close to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who, in the wake of the Garner grand jury decision, had a high-profile disagreement with the head of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union.

Gentile’s campaign issued a statement in response to Donovan’s email saying Donovan “should really be ashamed of himself for using this cowardly tactic.”

“This is race baiting at its worst,” the Gentile campaign said, accusing Donovan of “purposely driving a racial wedge between voters.”

As opinion polling done after Garner’s death details, that wedge might have predated the Donovan email. But seeing the local GOP candidate attempt to exploit it while the national party tries to position itself as more open to a diverse electorate is what one State Republican official called “a complete and utter circus.”

It’s a circus that could still benefit Donovan in May, but it is probably not the show the party leadership wanted while promoting their big tent.