Term Limits On Ballot Tuesday
Move to Overrule City Council,
Which Thwarted Two Referenda
We participated in a City Hall press conference Monday with Ronald Lauder, the term limits advocate and Michael Long, the state Conservative Party chair.
The purpose of the event was to express support for Question 1, which will be on the ballot Tuesday. The Charter Revision Commission was formed, in part, to revisit the issue of term limits after the City Council unilaterally extended the eligibility of city elected officials, primarily themselves, from two to three four-year terms.
This decision by the Council, made after intense lobbying by Mayor Bloomberg, eliminated a section of the Charter that had been added in 1993 as the result of a referendum largely funded by Mr. Lauder. Nonetheless, an election is no less valid because one side has spent more than the other, nor does a contest necessarily go the biggest spender.
In the Republican mayoral primary in 1989, Mr. Lauder had competed with Rudy Giuliani for the Republican nomination to succeed Mayor Koch, who had lost his bid for a fourth term in a primary with David Dinkins. Giuliani won by a margin of 67-33, slightly better than two to one. Lauder spent $13 million on the race, the largest amount ever spent on a mayoral contest up until that time. Lauder ran a series of commercials attacking Giuliani which, while they did not benefit him, weakened Giuliani for the November contest against Dinkins, who won the mayoralty by a 47,080 vote margin (52%-48%).
Lauder's attacks on Giuliani were said to have been inspired by US Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who had a beef with Giuliani because after the Senator had approved Giuliani's appointment as U.S. Attorney by President Reagan in 1983, Giuliani proceeded to go after D'Amato and succeeded in sending his younger brother, Armand, to jail. Since anything Armand did was likely to have been in his brother’s interest, one can see that the prosecution was more than a shot across the bow.
Back to term limits.
With the 1993 referendum slated to take effect in 2001, the City Council Democrats put the term limits issue on the ballot again in 1996, seeking to extend the limit from two terms to three. This proposal, basically a compromise between a two-term limit and no limit at all, was rejected by the public by a 54-46 margin, a much closer contest than the 59-41 vote by which term limits had been adopted in 1993. At the time, it was suggested to Council Speaker Peter Vallone that the Council had the legal authority to change term limits on its own, but the Speaker decided that since the original limit had been imposed after a referendum, it was more appropriate for any change to be submitted to the people for approval.
Five years later, the original referendum took effect for the 2001 election, and thirty-six out of the fifty-one Councilmembers then sitting were ineligible to seek re-election. Among the departing members was Speaker Vallone, who ran for mayor instead. Vallone lost to Mark Green in the Democratic primary and Green lost to Mayor Bloomberg in the general election.
Vallone was succeeded in his Council seat by his son, Peter Vallone, Jr. The younger Vallone was re-elected in 2005, but would have been ineligible to seek a third term in 2009 if the Council had not overruled the referenda and extended term limits for all 59 elected city officials: 3 citywide, 5 borough presidents and 51 councilmembers.
Others newly elected in 2001 included Joel Rivera of the Bronx, who succeeded his father, Assemblyman Jose Rivera. Joel was elected majority leader of the Council at the age of 22 as part of the deal that made Gifford Miller the Speaker at 32. Helen Diane Foster (Bronx) followed her father, Rev. Wendell Foster, into the Council; Erik Martin Dilan (Brooklyn), followed his father, Martin Malave Dilan; and Yvette Clarke (Brooklyn) (elected to Congress in 2006) succeeded her mother, Councilmember Una S. T. Clarke.
Term limits do not override patrilineal or matrilineal descent. It is the voters who choose whether to ratify the accession of the heir. Because of gerrymandering, name recognition, obstacles to ballot access, the role of local political clubs in which the parent is usually influential, and years of mailings paid for by the city, the heir has an enormous advantage over his or her rival. The voters decide the outcome in the Democratic primary. No children of retiring incumbents have been defeated while trying to succeed a parent in the City Council.
At Monday's news conference, Ronald Lauder announced his support for the charter change submitted by the Charter Revision Commission, under which the limit would revert to two terms in 2021. While many, including Mayor Bloomberg, found the eleven-year delay to be ridiculous, it is still the only proposition before the voters that would nullify the Council's self-serving action in 2008.
If Question 1 is approved by the voters, efforts are likely to be made by good government forces to advance the effective date of the two-term limit to 2013, which means that no incumbents will be able to profit from the extension they gave themselves any more than they already have.
The proposal to be voted on next week is supported by Mayor Bloomberg, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Conservative leaders, liberals and reformers of many stripes. It is likely to receive editorial support, although one never knows.
It is opposed by those who feel there should be a longer limit, or no limit, on the number of times that public officials can stand for re-election. They argue that elections provide term limits imposed by the people. That claim is countered by the political reality that Council candidates are so unknown, so down-ballot and so underpublicized that the voters are deprived of an effective choice of candidates. Most New Yorkers do not know who their own Councilmember is.
Term limits are advocated to sweep out incumbents, remove career politicians, and give more people the chance to be elected to public office. Term limits are often opposed by incumbents, career public servants, and people who have already been elected to public office and want to retain their positions, salaries, pension eligibility, lulus, expense accounts, staffers and other perquisites of office.
The vote Tuesday is likely to be reduced somewhat by the fact that the Charter amendments will be printed on the back of the ballots (in small type), so voters will have to know enough to turn the ballot over to find the questions being asked. The dismissal yesterday of the executive director of the Board of Elections for alleged "insubordination" is not likely to speed the voting process next week.
Most newspapers have not yet made their recommendations, and people who are undecided will probably make up their minds in the next week, if they vote at all on the questions. There is another conflict because seven separate issues have been combined into a single Yes-No vote on Question 2.
The Charter Revision Commissioners say the Board of Elections told them this merger of issues was required for mechanical reasons in preparing the ballot so they had no choice. The Board of Elections denies this account, and now claims that they could accommodate a larger number of separate issues on the ballot.
The executive director of the Charter Commission, Lorna Goodman, is the former County Attorney of Nassau County and chief of the affirmative litigation division of the New York City Corporation Counsel's office. Her reputation for intelligence and integrity is high. She has been a lawyer in public service since 1976.
The 2010 Charter Commission, perhaps pressed for time, has taken halting steps toward reform. Their recommendations come nowhere near Mayor Bloomberg's aspiration to reorganize city government. Just as the Yankees have to wait until next year, so do our hopes for substantive change in the City Charter.
It could be desirable to support the minor improvements offered - although hardly anyone understands most of them - rather than end up with nothing to show for seven months' work by a generally praiseworthy Commission and its diligent chair, CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein, who told the story that when Mayor Bloomberg first asked him to chair the Commission, he thought to himself that he needed that like a lochenkopf. Later he relented, and took the unpaid job.
A thought: voters should not take out their justified anger and frustration with government by opposing, on principle, the legitimate, but limited, proposals that are being put before them, anachronistic as Question 1 may be.
Rule 29-P: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." So wrote Voltaire in 1764.
Showing posts with label Peter Vallone Sr.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Vallone Sr.. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Betrayal of the Public Trust
Disgraced Hevesi
Is Plea Bargaining,
Cuomo Gets His Man
Election Day is 34 days away, and people are slowly beginning to pay attention to the contests. We do not endorse candidates or predict the outcome of elections. We do make observations as to what is happening.
The lead story in today's Times, HEVESI IS POISED TO PLEAD GUILTY IN PENSION CASE, indicates a possible conclusion to an investigation which has been under way for over three years. We believe Hevesi is guilty of much of what he has been accused of, even though it is unclear just what crimes, if any, he has admitted. However, we do find the timing of the proposed plea bargain to be less than perfect.
On the one hand, the Attorney General could be wrapping up matters, clearing the docket before he leaves office in December. On the other hand, as the Times reported this morning on page 1.
"The deal comes as Mr. Cuomo, the Democratic nominee for governor, is seeking to burnish his credentials as a reformer who can clean up state government, and his office has been in plea negotiations with Mr. Hevesi’s lawyer."
It is true that some damaging evidence came to light relatively late in the protracted investigation. The Times' story gets to the heart of this change in its sixth paragraph:
"Last December, a California money manager, Elliott Broidy, admitted paying nearly $1 million in gifts in exchange for a $250 million investment from the pension fund. Mr. Broidy, according to the attorney general's office, paid at least $75,000 to send a 'very high-ranking' official in the comptroller's office and the official's relatives on five trips to Israel, including first-class airfare, luxury hotel accommodations and a security detail. The high-ranking official was Mr. Hevesi, people with knowledge of the investigation have said."
Another troubling fact is that this information came to public attention, not in an announcement of the agreement, but in a leak, presumably from a law enforcement agency, since Mr. Hevesi and his lawyers are highly unlikely to be the sources. It may be that there were difficulties in reaching the agreement, and the calculated leak was intended as a way to increase the pressure on the defendant to settle the matter. This was the Spitzer technique of shaming individuals and corporations.
A powerful inducement for Mr. Hevesi to plead guilty is revealed in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of the story. We quote:
"But the activities of Mr. Hevesi's sons have also drawn scrutiny: investigators have questioned why an obscure firm operated by Daniel Hevesi was paid more than $1 million in fees for deals with pension funds in New York City and New Mexico, and whether any legitimate work was done for the payments.
"Andrew Hevesi had more limited exposure in the case: prosecutors say a former Liberal Party boss in the state, Raymond B. Harding, maneuvered to force a vacancy in an Assembly seat in Queens so that Andrew Hevesi could assume the position. Mr. Harding pleadead guilty last year after accepting more than $800,000 for doing political favors, prosecutors said, including a private job for Andrew Hevesi’s Assembly predecessor, Michael Cohen."
It is a well-known tool prosecutorial tool to threaten to bring cases against a defendant's family members in order to induce a plea bargain. It usually only works if the family members have themselves committed crimes. In this case, although Daniel Hevesi received substantial sums, there is no evidence that he did legitimate work to earn them. He is vulnerable.
Andrew Hevesi is not accused of wrongdoing. It is not a crime to run for a vacant Assembly seat, and it is not a crime for someone to create a vacancy, unless he shoots or threatens the incumbent. Finding a man another job is conventional political behavior, not noble but not criminal.
If the $800,000 fees that Harding received were the direct result of Harding's finding a job for Cohen, that would be a problem. I do not know if that linkage can be proven, but my guess is the fee was the result of a number of actions that Harding took, over a period of years, which were favorable to Hevesi.
One such action was the decision in 2001 by Harding, who controlled the Liberal Party at the time, to support then-City Comptroller Hevesi for Mayor, rejecting the candidacy of Michael Bloomberg, the Republican candidate. The Liberals were allied with Republican Rudy Giuliani in three previous mayoral races, 1989 (when he lost) and 1993 and 1997 (when he won). Bloomberg was the logical person to support, if only because he was certain to be on the ballot in November. Hevesi was one of the four major candidates in the Democratic primary (the others were Mark Green, who won, Fernando Ferrer, and Peter Vallone, Sr.).
Hevesi did not, place, or show. He ran fourth in the primary, with only 12 per cent of the vote. A rough look at the results showed Green strong in Manhattan and with left-wingers (progressives) in other boroughs. Ferrer carried the Bronx and won Latino votes elsewhere. Queens supplied two middle-class candidates (Vallone and Hevesi), who divided the more conservative vote, Vallone winning Staten Island. Hevesi did not carry any of the five boroughs.
After the primary, Hevesi remained on the Liberal Party line. We do not know what arrangement was made between Harding and Hank Morris, who was Hevesi's political adviser, but the custom had been that the loser in a Democratic primary would campaign on the Liberal line. John Lindsey, who lost the Republican mayoral primary in 1969, was reelected that year on the Liberal Party line. Mario Cuomo also continued on the Liberal line in 1977 after he lost to Ed Koch in the Democratic runoff, and he won 41 per cent of the vote in the general election, an excellent showing for a third party candidate.
Mario Cuomo received more votes (587,913), losing on the Liberal line 33 years ago than Michael Bloomberg did in winning in 2009. Running on the Republican and Independence lines, he received 585,466 votes. The cost of his campaign was $109.2 million, setting a record for a self-funded state or local campaign.
That record lasted just one year. As of September 2010, Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for governor of California, had spent $119 million from the fortune she received as president of eBay, and the campaign is far from over. Well, records are made to be broken. If one examines expenditures per capita, however, California has nearly 37 million residents and New York City 8.3 million.
Although Mario Cuomo kept his word to the Liberal Party, Alan Hevesi apparently did not. He not only pulled out of the race and endorsed the Democrat, Mark Green, but he made robocalls on Green's behalf, telling voters that he was not really the Liberal candidate, and they should not vote for him. As a result, he received only 8,027 votes on the Liberal line (and 2,034 votes on the ineffectual Better Schools line) while the Liberal candidate for City Comptroller, Councilman Herb Berman, won 63,343 votes, almost eight times as many as Hevesi got on the Liberal line.
When he was embarrassed, and eventually pleaded guilty to a felony count, for using a state car to transport his ailing wife and a state employee to care for her, we defended Hevesi, saying those misdeeds did not justify his removal from office, but if further wrongdoing were to be proven, he should forfeit his position. Now we know that he was guilty of serious wrongdoing, far beyond his misuse of the car and driver.
Alan Hevesi is a very intelligent man, a Ph.D, a college professor, the beneficiary of multiple pensions (from the Legislature and the City University) while he was earning an unduly modest $150,000 state salary as Comptroller. He was also respected in Jewish and community circles. He claimed to be a descendant of the chief rabbi of Hungary, but was in fact just related to the chief Reform rabbi, which is a relatively tiny portion of Hungarian Jews.
Since his downfall, other stories about him have emerged, which we will not repeat. Rule 18-S: "Don't spread the stain."
It is remarkable, but not unprecedented, that a person of such ability and political astuteness should turn out to be so unethical. It was different with Donald Manes, the late Queens Borough President, who always seemed to be a rascal, although he was not known as a thief. Hevesi is the man who first won the City Comptroller's office in 1993, in a campaign run by Hank Morris, who ran television commercials denouncing Elizabeth Holtzman’s ethics over accepting a bank loan which was later repaid.
If those who are considered in the top tier of politicians turn out to be crooks, what does that indicate about the rest of them? That is one reason for the loss of confidence in government, and the rise of demagogues who feed on the low regard for public officials that many New Yorkers feel, with some degree of justification.
Oliver Goldsmith, in his poem, The Deserted Village (1770), wrote:
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay"
Two hundred forty years later, Goldsmith’s words make sense.
CONTEST WINNERS
In our September 15th article, THE PEOPLE SPEAK, we asked you to identify the origin of Rule 9-I: "I'll be back". Many of our readers correctly identified the line as spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator movie (and in various permutations in the Terminator sequels). To refresh your recollection, you should watch the scene at the police station in which Arnold speaks the iconic line here.
In the order in which we received your entries, the contest winners are: Ed Burns, Andrew Lukmann, Jonathan Leaf, Erik Axelson, Anne-Katrin Titze, Richard Gottfried, Rey Olsen, Christopher Beal, Ralph Dannheisser, Adam Wildavsky, Allen Bortnick, Jeff Zupan, David Yassky, Allan Steinfeld, George Avgerakis, Kim Ohanian, Charles O’Shea, Jay Schoenfeld, C. Peter Goslett, Ernst Heilbrunn, Leonard Glassberg, and Father Richard F. Gorman.
Some of our readers attributed "I'll be back" to General Douglas MacArthur, but MacArthur's actual quote, in reference to his failed effort to keep the Phillipines out of Japanese hands, was "I shall return". According to Wikipedia: "[MacArthur's] famous speech, in which he said, 'I came out of Bataan and I shall return', was first made at Terowie, a small railway township in South Australia on March 20 [1942]. Upon his arrival in Adelaide, MacArthur abbreviated this to the now-famous, 'I came through and I shall return' that made headlines. Washington asked MacArthur to amend his promise to, 'We shall return'. He ignored the request."
Two other readers attributed "I'll be back" to outgoing State Senator Pedro Espada from his concession speech, following his loss to Gustavo Rivera in the Democratic Primary on September 14. We do not know whether Espada actually spoke those words, but we hope it doesn’t happen.
Is Plea Bargaining,
Cuomo Gets His Man
Election Day is 34 days away, and people are slowly beginning to pay attention to the contests. We do not endorse candidates or predict the outcome of elections. We do make observations as to what is happening.
The lead story in today's Times, HEVESI IS POISED TO PLEAD GUILTY IN PENSION CASE, indicates a possible conclusion to an investigation which has been under way for over three years. We believe Hevesi is guilty of much of what he has been accused of, even though it is unclear just what crimes, if any, he has admitted. However, we do find the timing of the proposed plea bargain to be less than perfect.
On the one hand, the Attorney General could be wrapping up matters, clearing the docket before he leaves office in December. On the other hand, as the Times reported this morning on page 1.
"The deal comes as Mr. Cuomo, the Democratic nominee for governor, is seeking to burnish his credentials as a reformer who can clean up state government, and his office has been in plea negotiations with Mr. Hevesi’s lawyer."
It is true that some damaging evidence came to light relatively late in the protracted investigation. The Times' story gets to the heart of this change in its sixth paragraph:
"Last December, a California money manager, Elliott Broidy, admitted paying nearly $1 million in gifts in exchange for a $250 million investment from the pension fund. Mr. Broidy, according to the attorney general's office, paid at least $75,000 to send a 'very high-ranking' official in the comptroller's office and the official's relatives on five trips to Israel, including first-class airfare, luxury hotel accommodations and a security detail. The high-ranking official was Mr. Hevesi, people with knowledge of the investigation have said."
Another troubling fact is that this information came to public attention, not in an announcement of the agreement, but in a leak, presumably from a law enforcement agency, since Mr. Hevesi and his lawyers are highly unlikely to be the sources. It may be that there were difficulties in reaching the agreement, and the calculated leak was intended as a way to increase the pressure on the defendant to settle the matter. This was the Spitzer technique of shaming individuals and corporations.
A powerful inducement for Mr. Hevesi to plead guilty is revealed in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of the story. We quote:
"But the activities of Mr. Hevesi's sons have also drawn scrutiny: investigators have questioned why an obscure firm operated by Daniel Hevesi was paid more than $1 million in fees for deals with pension funds in New York City and New Mexico, and whether any legitimate work was done for the payments.
"Andrew Hevesi had more limited exposure in the case: prosecutors say a former Liberal Party boss in the state, Raymond B. Harding, maneuvered to force a vacancy in an Assembly seat in Queens so that Andrew Hevesi could assume the position. Mr. Harding pleadead guilty last year after accepting more than $800,000 for doing political favors, prosecutors said, including a private job for Andrew Hevesi’s Assembly predecessor, Michael Cohen."
It is a well-known tool prosecutorial tool to threaten to bring cases against a defendant's family members in order to induce a plea bargain. It usually only works if the family members have themselves committed crimes. In this case, although Daniel Hevesi received substantial sums, there is no evidence that he did legitimate work to earn them. He is vulnerable.
Andrew Hevesi is not accused of wrongdoing. It is not a crime to run for a vacant Assembly seat, and it is not a crime for someone to create a vacancy, unless he shoots or threatens the incumbent. Finding a man another job is conventional political behavior, not noble but not criminal.
If the $800,000 fees that Harding received were the direct result of Harding's finding a job for Cohen, that would be a problem. I do not know if that linkage can be proven, but my guess is the fee was the result of a number of actions that Harding took, over a period of years, which were favorable to Hevesi.
One such action was the decision in 2001 by Harding, who controlled the Liberal Party at the time, to support then-City Comptroller Hevesi for Mayor, rejecting the candidacy of Michael Bloomberg, the Republican candidate. The Liberals were allied with Republican Rudy Giuliani in three previous mayoral races, 1989 (when he lost) and 1993 and 1997 (when he won). Bloomberg was the logical person to support, if only because he was certain to be on the ballot in November. Hevesi was one of the four major candidates in the Democratic primary (the others were Mark Green, who won, Fernando Ferrer, and Peter Vallone, Sr.).
Hevesi did not, place, or show. He ran fourth in the primary, with only 12 per cent of the vote. A rough look at the results showed Green strong in Manhattan and with left-wingers (progressives) in other boroughs. Ferrer carried the Bronx and won Latino votes elsewhere. Queens supplied two middle-class candidates (Vallone and Hevesi), who divided the more conservative vote, Vallone winning Staten Island. Hevesi did not carry any of the five boroughs.
After the primary, Hevesi remained on the Liberal Party line. We do not know what arrangement was made between Harding and Hank Morris, who was Hevesi's political adviser, but the custom had been that the loser in a Democratic primary would campaign on the Liberal line. John Lindsey, who lost the Republican mayoral primary in 1969, was reelected that year on the Liberal Party line. Mario Cuomo also continued on the Liberal line in 1977 after he lost to Ed Koch in the Democratic runoff, and he won 41 per cent of the vote in the general election, an excellent showing for a third party candidate.
Mario Cuomo received more votes (587,913), losing on the Liberal line 33 years ago than Michael Bloomberg did in winning in 2009. Running on the Republican and Independence lines, he received 585,466 votes. The cost of his campaign was $109.2 million, setting a record for a self-funded state or local campaign.
That record lasted just one year. As of September 2010, Meg Whitman, Republican candidate for governor of California, had spent $119 million from the fortune she received as president of eBay, and the campaign is far from over. Well, records are made to be broken. If one examines expenditures per capita, however, California has nearly 37 million residents and New York City 8.3 million.
Although Mario Cuomo kept his word to the Liberal Party, Alan Hevesi apparently did not. He not only pulled out of the race and endorsed the Democrat, Mark Green, but he made robocalls on Green's behalf, telling voters that he was not really the Liberal candidate, and they should not vote for him. As a result, he received only 8,027 votes on the Liberal line (and 2,034 votes on the ineffectual Better Schools line) while the Liberal candidate for City Comptroller, Councilman Herb Berman, won 63,343 votes, almost eight times as many as Hevesi got on the Liberal line.
When he was embarrassed, and eventually pleaded guilty to a felony count, for using a state car to transport his ailing wife and a state employee to care for her, we defended Hevesi, saying those misdeeds did not justify his removal from office, but if further wrongdoing were to be proven, he should forfeit his position. Now we know that he was guilty of serious wrongdoing, far beyond his misuse of the car and driver.
Alan Hevesi is a very intelligent man, a Ph.D, a college professor, the beneficiary of multiple pensions (from the Legislature and the City University) while he was earning an unduly modest $150,000 state salary as Comptroller. He was also respected in Jewish and community circles. He claimed to be a descendant of the chief rabbi of Hungary, but was in fact just related to the chief Reform rabbi, which is a relatively tiny portion of Hungarian Jews.
Since his downfall, other stories about him have emerged, which we will not repeat. Rule 18-S: "Don't spread the stain."
It is remarkable, but not unprecedented, that a person of such ability and political astuteness should turn out to be so unethical. It was different with Donald Manes, the late Queens Borough President, who always seemed to be a rascal, although he was not known as a thief. Hevesi is the man who first won the City Comptroller's office in 1993, in a campaign run by Hank Morris, who ran television commercials denouncing Elizabeth Holtzman’s ethics over accepting a bank loan which was later repaid.
If those who are considered in the top tier of politicians turn out to be crooks, what does that indicate about the rest of them? That is one reason for the loss of confidence in government, and the rise of demagogues who feed on the low regard for public officials that many New Yorkers feel, with some degree of justification.
Oliver Goldsmith, in his poem, The Deserted Village (1770), wrote:
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay"
Two hundred forty years later, Goldsmith’s words make sense.
CONTEST WINNERS
In our September 15th article, THE PEOPLE SPEAK, we asked you to identify the origin of Rule 9-I: "I'll be back". Many of our readers correctly identified the line as spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Terminator movie (and in various permutations in the Terminator sequels). To refresh your recollection, you should watch the scene at the police station in which Arnold speaks the iconic line here.
In the order in which we received your entries, the contest winners are: Ed Burns, Andrew Lukmann, Jonathan Leaf, Erik Axelson, Anne-Katrin Titze, Richard Gottfried, Rey Olsen, Christopher Beal, Ralph Dannheisser, Adam Wildavsky, Allen Bortnick, Jeff Zupan, David Yassky, Allan Steinfeld, George Avgerakis, Kim Ohanian, Charles O’Shea, Jay Schoenfeld, C. Peter Goslett, Ernst Heilbrunn, Leonard Glassberg, and Father Richard F. Gorman.
Some of our readers attributed "I'll be back" to General Douglas MacArthur, but MacArthur's actual quote, in reference to his failed effort to keep the Phillipines out of Japanese hands, was "I shall return". According to Wikipedia: "[MacArthur's] famous speech, in which he said, 'I came out of Bataan and I shall return', was first made at Terowie, a small railway township in South Australia on March 20 [1942]. Upon his arrival in Adelaide, MacArthur abbreviated this to the now-famous, 'I came through and I shall return' that made headlines. Washington asked MacArthur to amend his promise to, 'We shall return'. He ignored the request."
Two other readers attributed "I'll be back" to outgoing State Senator Pedro Espada from his concession speech, following his loss to Gustavo Rivera in the Democratic Primary on September 14. We do not know whether Espada actually spoke those words, but we hope it doesn’t happen.
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