{"id":936,"date":"2006-04-06T08:25:05","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T16:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/04\/the_bobby_knight_of_the_state_assembly.html"},"modified":"2006-04-06T08:25:05","modified_gmt":"2006-04-06T16:25:05","slug":"the_bobby_knigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/the_bobby_knigh.html","title":{"rendered":"The Bobby Knight Of The State Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worst boss ever represents part of Queens in the State Assembly<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You think your boss is a nightmare? Try working for state Sen. Ada Smith, aka the Wild Woman of Albany.<\/p>\n

The Queens legislator has a history of bizarre, allegedly abusive behavior that dates back nearly 20 years.<\/p>\n

Just ask any of the 200-plus staffers whom Smith — who is due in Albany City Court today to face charges that she allegedly threw a cup of hot coffee in an aide’s face — has hired and fired during her 17 years in the Senate.<\/p>\n

“I have dealt with difficult people,” said Philip Mahlke, who was Smith’s chief of staff for eight months in 2003. “But never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined what it was like to work for Sen. Smith.”<\/p>\n

Mahlke, who is openly gay, said he was fired after complaining about Smith’s abusive, homophobic remarks.<\/p>\n

“She called me ‘white trash,’ she called me ‘a fag,'” Mahlke recounted last week. “When I called her on it, her response was, ‘I’m a senator, I can do what I want!'”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

The latest charge — that she threw coffee into the eyes of aide Jennifer Jackson after the assistant made a comment about Smith’s weight — has been brushed off as election-year politics.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

But interviews with former staffers paint a portrait of a boss who could becharming one moment — and an enraged, abusive fountain of expletives the next.<\/p>\n

Coffee is just one of her favorite projectiles, staffers said. Over the years, Smith has been accused of throwing a trash can, a desk organizer, stacks of paper, a melted ice cream bar — whatever’s handy.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

For LaSone Garland-Bryan, 45, the blowup took an even more frightening turn.<\/p>\n

She was in Smith’s office alone in 1996 when the senator, who happened to be cutting a bagel, allegedly decided that Garland-Bryan had told members of Garland-Bryan’s family that Smith sometimes forgot to take her medication.<\/p>\n

“The senator pointed the knife at my neck and said, ‘You do understand, don’t you?'” Garland-Bryan wrote in a letter to then-Senate Minority Leader Martin Connor (D-Brooklyn), who claimed he had no authority to punish Smith.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The worst boss ever represents part of Queens in the State Assembly: You think your boss is a nightmare? Try working for state Sen. Ada Smith, aka the Wild Woman of Albany. The Queens legislator has a history of bizarre, allegedly abusive behavior that dates back nearly 20 years. Just ask any of the 200-plus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jerk_move"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}