"He’s switched, in the anticlerical, Italian-American tradition of his neighborhood, between soft loyalties to both Democrats and Republicans just for the chance to realize his ambitions for his home. He built an unlikely political empire out of the casual acquaintances made in the surprisingly stately, somewhat macabre parlor of the Scotto Funeral Home and carried by the weight of Italian-American neighborhood loyalty.And so as Carroll Gardens becomes home to one of Brooklyn’s yuppiest Restaurant Rows, a sort-of Division II Manhattan for recent college graduates and a single-family brownstone dream for magazine editors and downtown types, it’s perhaps unsurprising that this power-base is thinning out.
“Buddy’s influence is definitely waning,” said the young neighborhood activist and blogger Katia Kelly. “One simply has to look at the results of the November Council election, where his candidate, John Heyer, lost terribly in Carroll Gardens, though Buddy introduced him to everyone in the neighborhood.”"
The debate about Buddy's influence in the neighborhood is silly; he is who he is, and much like the rest of the neighborhood, he has changed and so has his influence. It's like trying to point out the dying influence of the Catholic Church. Yes, that sector can not rally the troops like they used to be able to, but then again, neither can anyone else.
I do disagree, however, with Katia, that John's candidacy was harmed by his association with Buddy. Buddy helped him immeasurably, but the reason John lost was all on John, as well as the strength of the other candidate, who had a bigger population base in his "home" district.
What is happening is the population on which he influences is older, moving away, and slowly becoming crowded out by the monied, the young, the transplants, and, yes, the educated. No longer are funeral directors seen as persons of power, influence and education as they used to be.
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