The doors were locked and the curtains drawn at former Assembly Member Diane Gordon’s (D-Brooklyn) district office in East New York. The lone office staffer who answered the door said all questions were being referred to the legislative office in Albany.
“We don’t handle business here,” he said, before promptly closing and locking the door.
Minutes later, a woman in a tan sweat suit entered the office.
Both staffers continue to collect a state salary, according to a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), though they refer all calls to Silver’s office.
The catch is, they lack a boss, just as the 90,000 residents of East New York will lack a voice in the Assembly until the beginning of next year.   
Gordon was found guilty of corruption in mid-April, which automatically expelled her from the Assembly. This came after the April 1 special election cut-off, leaving Gov. David Paterson (D) unable to call a vote to replace Gordon before the November election.
Roughly 330 miles north, constituents face a similar situation.
State Sen. Darrel Aubertine’s (D-Oswego/Jefferson/St. Lawrence) victory in the well-publicized February special election also left his old Assembly seat open. In the turmoil of Eliot Spitzer’s resignation and Paterson’s transition, no special election was called.
The difference is Aubertine’s Senate district includes his old Assembly district, allowing him to continue to meet constituent needs with fewer hassles, an Aubertine aide said.
Gordon’s conviction, on the other hand, has left a slight power vacuum in her district, which City Council Member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) has indicated he is happy to fill.
“We have increased our input for constituent services,” Barron said. “And we’ve been talking to other people in the community and to reach out more and to do what they can.”
Barron said the transition has been mostly seamless because even before Gordon’s conviction, residents were more inclined to take their questions and concerns to his office rather than hers.
“For us, the volume is always what it is, it’s always up,” he said. “We stay open every day and sometimes on the weekends and sometimes late at night, and we’ve been doing that ever since I’ve been in there.”
With his wife, Inez, now running for Gordon’s former seat, Barron predicted that constituents will continue to come to his office up until January.
“People have been coming to us,” he insisted, “not to the congressman, not to the Assembly person.”
His district office sits three blocks south of Gordon’s office in East New York. Melinda Perkins, Barron’s district office manager, said that there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of calls and walk-ins since Gordon left office.
“The people that were familiar with going there will definitely take the councilman as the second-best,” Perkins said.
Over the coming months, Barron also plans to create groups of like-minded constituents to address community issues.
“With constituents who come in to get services, it’s not just a matter of feeding them something, it’s teaching them how to go out and get it,” Perkins said. “So they can empower each other.”
Community groups in East New York are quickly adapting to life without an Assembly member. Winchester Key, the president and CEO of the East New York Urban Youth Corps, said he will deal with problems he normally would have referred to Gordon’s office.
“I don’t think there’s a confusion,” said Key, whose group has offered an array of social services in the neighborhood since 1987. “I’ll handle it myself now.”
Up in the North Country, one of Aubertine’s old Assembly district offices in Watertown has been converted into his Senate office. His other former Assembly office, nestled in the Adirondack foothills in a town called Canton, is 60 miles from the senator’s Watertown office.
The Canton office will be closed until the Assembly seat is filled in January.
The bottom line, said Silver spokesman Dan Weiller, is making sure constituents get the help they need during this transitional period. Calls made to the Canton office are transferred directly to Silver’s office in Albany.
“If you call the number, it comes to our central office and we handle the problem from there or figure out how to address it from there,” Weiller said. “The bottom line is ensuring that the constituents of that given Assembly district are able to receive service.”
Assembly Member Dede Scozzafava (R-St. Lawrence) said her office has also moved in to assist the Aubertine district. Her office has seen an increase in calls from the vacant district, which she represented parts of before the 2002 redistricting. Scozzafava, who had been mulling a challenge to Aubertine before opting to run for re-election, said she will assist with any local legislation for the district.
With Aubertine still able to handle constituents’ queries from the Senate, an aide who works in the Watertown office said the switch from Assembly to Senate has been smooth.
“It’s ho-hum I’d say,” the aide said. “It’s really a simple situation.”
With his district now significantly larger, Aubertine has more staff and more resources to handle any rise in constituent calls. Assembly members are allotted three staffers for their district offices, while senators, with larger districts and more constituents, are allowed six, as well as greater control over member item funding.  
As a result, there is excitement in Aubertine’s district office that has energized staffers and eased the burden of the increased workload.
“We even have a different brand of phone,” the aide said excitedly.
The situations in Oswego and East New York are not particularly unique. Assembly Member Sandra Lee Wirth’s (R-Erie/Niagara) death from lung cancer in 2006 left her seat empty for several months until then-Gov. George Pataki (R) called for a special election, which was won by Assembly Member Mike Cole (R).
That same year, following the resignations of Scott Stringer (D-Manhattan) and Steve Sanders (D-Manhattan), Silver appointed the departed Assembly member’s top aides to temporarily run the offices.
Each vacancy is handled on a case-by-case basis, Weiller said.
In the North Country, the decision to skip a special election comes as a relief, said Watertown Mayor Jeff Graham (I). Even as candidates begin to come forward for the Assembly seat, Graham said the region was still grappling with campaign fatigue from the intense race between Aubertine and Assembly Member Will Barclay (R-Onondaga/
Oswego).
But he said for now, Aubertine’s former Assembly district is doing just fine.
“The world doesn’t come to an end when you don’t have an Assembly member,” Graham said.
Back at Gordon’s district office in Brooklyn, the glass doors she reportedly had installed as part of the bribe that expelled her from office were glinting in the morning sun. Taped to them was a single sheet of paper, a simple reminder that life goes on after a political scandal.
“U.S. Post Office, Please Knock,” it reads. “We’re Here!”    
—with additional reporting
by John Celock