http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/nyregion/frank-barbaro-dead.html 2016-09-15 05:46:01 Frank J. Barbaro, Liberal New York Lawmaker, Dies at 88 Mr. Barbaro, who won election 12 times as a legislator, challenged Edward I. Koch for re-election to a second term as mayor of New York in 1981. === Frank J. Barbaro, a former longshoreman and liberal state assemblyman from Brooklyn who was Mr. Barbaro (pronounced BAR-ba-roe) was a progressive Democrat who won election as a legislator 12 times. But he also shattered some of the lances he wielded while championing sometimes quixotic causes during nearly 50 years as a candidate. He first ran, unsuccessfully, on an antiwar platform for the Assembly in 1968; last spring, he was elected as a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention from upstate New York. (He had moved to Watervliet, in Albany County, a decade ago.) In between, he lost elections for Brooklyn borough president, mayor and Congress. In the Legislature, Mr. Barbaro was a fierce advocate for organized labor, tenants and minority groups. He later served for six years as a State Supreme Court justice. Two years ago, he testified in court on behalf of a white man he had sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, seeking to set aside the guilty verdict he had reached in a juryless bench trial in 1999, in the fatal shooting of a black man. Conscience stricken, Mr. Barbaro said he himself had been guilty of reverse racism in rejecting the defendant’s claim of self-defense. (The motion to set aside the verdict was denied.) Mr. Barbaro took on Mr. Koch in the 1981 Democratic primary when New York’s political establishment was embracing the mayor’s re-election bid after he had restored the city to fiscal stability. Mr. Koch was all but assured of the Republican nomination, too. Outspent by a margin of nearly 10 to 1, Mr. Barbaro nonetheless ran a spirited campaign, vowing to “liberate the legend of Fiorello La Guardia from an impostor.” Far from being an heir to the progressive Mayor La Guardia, Mr. Koch, he said, was a union buster, an apologist for President Ronald Reagan, a racial polarizer and a “pipsqueak.” He derided him as “shifty Ed.” Mr. Barbaro lost the primary with 36 percent of the vote. He continued his campaign in the general election through his independent Unity Party, but he got only 13 percent to Mr. Koch’s 75 percent. Francesco Joseph Barbaro was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 18, 1927. His father was an Italian immigrant fisherman who became a master butcher. His mother was from Sicily. They lived in what became known as Carroll Gardens, then fell on hard times and moved to Red Hook and then to Bensonhurst. He attended Boys High School, served in the Navy and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from New York University in 1952. He got a job as a longshoreman to pay for a master’s program in psychiatric social work but wound up working on the docks for 15 years. In the meantime, he enrolled at Brooklyn Law School at night and graduated in 1966 as class president. He attributed his political radicalization to the Vietnam War. After leading neighborhood rent strikes, he was elected in 1972 to the Assembly, where he was chairman of the labor committee and served through 1996. In addition to his wife, the former Mary Patricia Borysewicz, he is survived by three daughters, Gail Cosseboom, Jayne Shalhoub and Elizabeth Borysewicz; four grandchildren; and a sister, Mary Vena.