Levine offers experienced rival for Ramapo's St. Lawrence

May 6, 2009 The Journal News reported today that Bruce Levine, "Spring Valley's village attorney and former chairman of the Rockland County Legislature, says he will challenge Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence in the Democratic Primary. It would be the first primary for the Supervisor's Office in 26 years, and one pitting St. Lawrence for the first time against a candidate with broad local government experience."

Bruce Levine has more than two decades of government experience, which includes every level of Rockland government--village, town and county. He served 10 years as a county legislator.

Commenting on St. Lawrence's grip on the bloc vote, Levine told Journal reporter James Walsh, "Certainly the supervisor has an advantage, but the supervisor sometimes mistakes giving developers from Monsey everything they want with doing what the people in the community want."

Along with running for the Democratic line on the ballot, Levine is expected to be the Preserve Ramapo candidate as well. And he expects that St. Lawrence will try to use the Preserve Ramapo affiliation against him, specifically relating to Preserve Ramapo's concerns about overdevelopment.

The Journal reporter tried over several days to contact St. Lawrence, at his office and on his cell, but as we have come to expect from him, the supervisor ducked the situation where he would have to answer direct questions and simply offered a canned statement emailed to a functionary at a town office.

Read the full text of the Journal story here.