John O'Hara (Brooklyn politician)
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John Kennedy O'Hara (born c. 1961) is an American lawyer (disbarred as of 1997), active in Brooklyn, New York politics as a political reformer opposed to Brooklyn's Democratic machine. He is also the first person convicted of illegal voting in New York State since Susan B. Anthony was convicted for voting (before women had the right to vote) in 1872.
The son of working-class Irish Americans and the first in his family to go to college, O'Hara's interest in politics was clear even in childhood: at the age of seven he wrote to his congressman complaining that he didn't have the right to vote but was still required to pay sales tax on toys. At the age of 11 he worked on George McGovern's campaign in the 1972 presidential election. At 16, his investigative reporting for his school newspaper resulted in the school principal being fired for lacking the appropriate license for his job.
As a teenager and young man, he was involved with Brooklyn's Reform Democrats against the Meade Esposito machine, but became disillusioned by 1984 as he saw them (in his view) turning into an alternative political machine under Jim Brennan. In 1990, after working his way through City University of New York School of Law driving a taxi, he passed the New York bar exam and became a Wall Street attorney.
In the 1990s, he ran for office six times in primary elections against Brennan Democrats, never winning but coming within a few hundred votes in a 1992 election for New York State Assembly. Getting on the ballot so many times despite machine opposition was a feat in New York, a state which "for years produced fifty percent of all election litigation in the United States." [Ketcham, 2004, 53]
In 1996, O'Hara was charged under an almost completely disused law requiring that one's voting registration must be based on one's "fixed permanent and principal home": People v. O'Hara would represent the first-ever conviction under this law. For twelve months in 1992-1993, he lived in two apartments in Brooklyn. The charge was that he had claimed the wrong one for voting purposes. Ironically, Charles Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney who prosecuted him for this offense, at least once registered to vote from his Brooklyn office despite the fact that he lives in Queens.
Refusing any plea deal, after a mistrial and a reversal on appeal, O'Hara was convicted of a felony in July 1999, sentenced to five years probation, an $20,000 fine, and 1,500 hours of community service picking up garbage. The case also resulted in his disbarment.
He has continues to appeal his case, and has continued campaigning on behalf of other anti-machine candidates, especially for judgeships; other candidates he has backed have also been subjected to harassment by the Brennan machine. In particular, as of October 2004, civil rights lawyer Sandra Roper, failed 2001 candidate against District Attorney Hynes is being prosecuted for what Christopher Ketcham says "most observers agree is an unfounded charge of grand larceny" [Ketcham, 2004, 56]. However, O'Hara-backed Peter Sweeney and Eileen Nadelson won judgeships in 2001 and several other insurgent candidates have won Brooklyn judgeships since then.
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[edit] References
- Christopher Ketcham, "Meet the New Boss: Man vs. machine politics in Brooklyn". Harper's Magazine, December 2004, 45-56.
