No New Tammany Hall

The new political machine, begat by term limits, relies on nepotism:

For New Yorkers who voted to impose term limits on the City Council, the promise was to sweep clean a moldering institution and fill it with “citizen legislators” who would bring energy and fresh ideas from the private sector, where they would return after their eight-year allotments.

But as the first class of councilors elected under the term limits law in 2001 prepares to leave office next year, the very opposite is becoming reality: With lawmakers seeking new elective offices and career politicians looking to join, or rejoin, the body, the Council may well become a political revolving door.

Already, 20 of the 35 Council members who are being forced from office have filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board to run for another position. And at least a dozen of those planning to compete for open Council seats have budding or established political careers, including state officials, relatives of Council members and even a few former councilors who collectively have decades of service under their belts.

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Paul Vallone, whose father, Peter F. Vallone, represented a district in Astoria, Queens, for 27 years until his brother Peter F. Vallone Jr. took it over in 2002, is running to represent the Bayside area. Paul Washington, a former chief of staff for Councilman Charles Barron, is running for the councilor’s East New York, Brooklyn, slot, while Evan Thies, a former spokesman for Councilman David Yassky, is competing to represent Mr. Yassky’s Brooklyn district, which stretches from Park Slope to Williamsburg.

And then there is Thomas V. Ognibene, who represented Middle Village, Queens, for 10 years before leaving office in 2001 because of term limits. He recently lost a bid to replace Dennis P. Gallagher, his former chief of staff, who resigned from the Council this year after admitting to a sexual assault.

“The person who runs for the office is a relative, a chief of staff, a protégé of the person that was in there in the first place,” Mr. Ognibene said. “Insurgency is virtually impossible. You cannot generate the money or the support,” he said, adding, “So you don’t get the people in there that had been contemplated, the people with the fresh start, the new view.”