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After twenty years in public office, Senator Marty Golden is well known in the community. His cheerful appearances at parades, street fairs, and other events, make him seem available to constituents, but Golden is much less accessible than his public image implies. The Block Party Barron, it turns out, is also the Archduke of Avoidance.
I should know: I’ve been attempting to organize a meeting with him for 200 days. In that time, Golden’s office has cancelled appointments, refused to reschedule, hung up when I call, given me the runaround, and flat-out ignored my requests.
I first reached out to Senator Golden’s office on February 27th, in response to a leaflet campaign put together by members of the Alliance for Quality Education and Fight Back Bay Ridge; I’m a founding member of the latter organization. I wanted to meet with Golden so I could ask him to advocate for the release of more than $62 million in Foundation Aid owed to schools in our school district. As a ten-year educator, I’ve long been passionate about equitable funding. As the issue is complicated—dealing with multiple figures and timetables—an in-person meeting would be most efficient.
Calling Golden’s office, however, presented obstacle after obstacle. Once, I reached an intern, left alone, who wasn’t at liberty to answer questions; other times, I was informed the office was closed, despite having called during business hours. I encountered full voicemail boxes and staffers who didn’t pass my messages along. Despite being promised calls back many times, I never received one, and would have to call again.
Eventually, I reached Golden’s Albany scheduler, Meg Brown, who offered me two meeting dates: April 11th and April 13th. Both, however, were eventually cancelled without being rescheduled, and Meg Brown has not returned my calls or emails since April 12th. The only explanation she offered is that the Senator is busy meeting with constituents, but I’m also a constituent. A similar pattern ensued with Arlene Rutuelo, who is Golden’s local scheduler.
I documented my attempts on Twitter, tagging the Senator’s account each time, so he would be aware of my yet-again-ignored requests. I’ve also tweeted the accounts of John Quaglione and Jerry Kassar, Golden’s senior staffers, who never replied. One brief email exchange with Quaglione yielded no meeting, as he only redirected me to Meg and Arlene, who gave me the cold shoulder yet again.
This all makes one wonder, if I’m having this much trouble with a simple meeting request, what other constituents are also being ignored by Senator Golden? Though I’ve spent 200 days in this struggle, most people would have given up long ago. This is Senator Golden’s strategy: to silence voices of dissent by ignoring them until they give up and go away.
Golden hides from anyone who might challenge how he conducts business in Albany. Full voicemail boxes and ignored messages demonstrate that the Senator has decided the concerns of the neighborhood don’t matter. Once, in a meeting with constituents who asked him to hold a Town Hall, Golden replied, “That won’t benefit me.” And there’s the truth about Marty Golden: he’s a coward. He can’t handle disagreement, and feels safe enough in his gerrymandered district that he thinks he doesn’t have to. Knowing that even his most vociferous opponent won’t make a scene at a festival or parade, he’s largely been able to keep up the charade – until now.
It’s clear that either Golden’s staff is so inept they cannot handle a simple meeting request effectively, or someone at the top has instructed them to keep me on ice. Both are unacceptable, but the latter is especially egregious. If Senator Golden can’t handle the sticky, sometimes uncomfortable act of sitting in a meeting with someone who disagrees with him for half an hour, can he really be trusted to advocate for his constituents in Albany?
Mallory McMahon is a writer and organizer from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, Necessary Fiction, the Tupelo Quarterly, Athena Talks, the EEEL, and several local papers through op-eds and letters to the editor. She is one of the founding members of Fight Back Bay Ridge, a local collaborative action group that seeks to activate community organizing and civic engagement through non-hierarchical, democratic processes. On Twitter @mallorytmcmahon
