It is good to see the media focusing on this race, I do not know either guy running but have published Newells press releases. With Bruno and Spitzer gone it is now time to focus on Silver.

I hate that word “Power Broker” in politicians, to me it just gleams corruption.

David vs. Goliath on Lower East Side: Yiddishist Challenges N.Y. Powerbroker - Forward.com”

This September, residents of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the cradle of Yiddish culture in America, will be able to choose between not one but two Yiddish-speaking candidates for political office.

In one corner is one of the three most powerful politicians in New York state. In the other is a 33-year-old former employee of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The incumbent in the race is Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, who has represented the state’s 64th District for almost as long as his opponent, a political newcomer named Paul Newell, has been alive. Newell and another young contender, Luke Henry, represent the first challenge since 1986 that Silver has faced in the Democratic primary for his seat.

Once an aspiring immigration historian, Newell studied Yiddish after college and, in the late 1990s, worked in the YIVO archives classifying documents that recently had been uncovered in Vilnius (commonly known to Jews as Vilna), Lithuania. He subsequently traveled to Vilna and to Belarus, researching Yiddish dialects.

Newell, who is slight and balding, with glasses and a wonkish manner, does not claim to be a born politician. He is in the race, he says, mainly to beat Silver. Newell says that Silver’s policies on transportation and housing are of particular concern, but his campaign has taken shape around the issue of structural reform in Albany — which he argues is a bastion of corruption, with power disproportionately concentrated in the hands of a few top officials.

“People who are invested in the political power structure in the city of New York are not going to oppose this guy,” he said in a recent interview with the Forward, “so why not me?”

Observers are skeptical about Newell’s chances for victory, not least because Silver has strong roots in the district. According to a spokesman for Silver, his popularity stems from the benefits that have accrued to the district — which also includes Chinatown, the Financial District and Battery Park City — by virtue of it having such a powerful political figure represent its turf.

“Anyone who calls lower Manhattan home feels that Shelly’s gotten results and has been their voice in Albany,” said Jonathan Rosen, a spokesman for Silver’s campaign.

Still, the Newell campaign has attracted a fair share of attention and inspired some juicy speculation — including the rumor that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is supporting it in retaliation for Silver having blocked the mayor’s congestion-pricing proposal. Last month, New York magazine noted that Newell “happened to become Facebook friends with Bloomberg’s political brain, Kevin Sheekey, on the very day congestion pricing died.” Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, would not comment on the subject.