Pedro Espada may be the second or third most important person in state politics at the moment, but he wasn’t a state senator a mere six months ago.

He won a Democratic primary against Efrain Gonzalez, Jr., the indicted incumbent, with less than 5,000 votes.

Democratic officials who were in the process of deposing party leader Jose Rivera, closed ranks behind Gonzalez, despite clear indications that he was headed to jail.

They overlooked Gonzalez’s pending criminal trial on fraud and corruption charges by telling themselves that Gonzalez would be more loyal than Espada, and that if he went to jail, they’d get to hand pick a candidate who would sail to election. Gonzalez had never flirted with joining the Republican caucus (though he did endorse Rudy Giuliani and Al D’Amato) and wouldn’t stand in the way of hallmark Democratic legislation like vacancy decontrol, their reasoning went.

 “If he were to be convicted, he would be out of office and there would be a special election,” says Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz. “If Pedro Espada got elected, we believed there would be a good chance that he’d sit with Republicans because he had a history of doing that, and it’s not a distant history.”

It would be a decent point if Gonzalez had won.  But he didn’t — probably because few voters were motivated to head to the polls to choose between the indicted Gonzalez and Espada, who was indicted in 1998 for misuse of campaign funds and got caught in 2002 trying to direct $750,000 in member items to his health center before he returned the money.

What if they instead had gotten behind a third candidate? It wouldn’t have had to be a rock star, just someone who could’ve gotten 5,000 votes.  If a party can’t amass that kind of turnout in its favor then it isn’t much of a political organization.

The so-called Rainbow Rebels were able to coordinate a complicated, labor-intensive effort to oust the leadership of their own party. That never happens. So, they did have the skills to find someone to beat Espada and Gonzalez.

For all the change brought by the Rainbow Rebels to borough politics, it seems they still aren’t reluctant to support seemingly corrupt colleagues. 

For example, the party supports the reelection of Council Member Larry Seabrook who is in the news again for hiring family members and misappropriating member items.  The party has supported a challenger to Council Member Maria Baez, but that’s because she was their primary opponent in the leadership fight, not because she racked up thousands of dollars in cell phone expenses or because she had the worst attendance record in the Council.

We’re not naïve. We know that hold-your-nose political alliances are sometimes necessary to accomplish things.

But in evaluating who to support for election and reelection, Bronx Democrats should have standards a little higher than supporting allies who have not yet been convicted. 

If they had considered this a year ago and supported a good candidate in the 33rd Senate District, some landmark legislation may have passed the legislature this week and Pedro Espada’s fig-leaf Bedford Park co-op would be on the market.