This is really unbelievable. And people wonder why I call Lopez the Darth Vader of Brooklyn politics. The article,With Three Spirited Primaries: Competitive Democracy is Breaking Out, is by Michael Powell is in today’s NY Times. District Leader Joanne Simon put it on Facebook (that’s where I saw it). What an interview. The portrait to the left is by Jerry Miller and it’s from City Hall Magazine.

Mind you: there’s a primary on June 26th. That’s next Tuesday. Don’t forget to vote in the congressional primary.

Vito J. Lopez, assemblyman and chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, is trying to help me understand why he longs to electorally decapitate his borough’s senior Democratic congresswoman, Nydia M. Velázquez.

She doesn’t call him, she doesn’t talk to him, Mr. Lopez says. It’s rude.

“I get a lot of agita as leader,” explains Mr. Lopez, a hulking fellow who is perhaps the city’s foremost practitioner of tomahawk-in-the-forehead politics.

“Why not say to me” — Mr. Lopez offers his closest possible approximation of a cheery tone — “ ‘Hi Vito’; ‘How are you, Vito?’; ‘Are you well, Mr. Democratic Leader?’