If there was any doubt about the many ways "Wildcard" Al Sharpton impacts city and national politics, consider his recent, under-covered foray into the 2005 mayoral campaign. One week before the Voice's wide-ranging expose on the Rev appeared ("On a New High, Sharpton Hits a New Low," December 8-14), he sat down at the Club Havana with El Diario's Gerson Borrero and railed against Democratic front-runner Freddy Ferrer, the near-victorious candidate Sharpton backed in 2001.

Ferrer's crime, Sharpton told Borrero, is that he is still associated with Roberto Ramirez, the former Bronx Democratic Party boss. Ramirez and Sharpton were trigger-happy sidekicks until early 2004, when Ramirez's consulting company was mysteriously jettisoned by Sharpton's presidential campaign. The two were arrested at Vieques protests in Puerto Rico in 2001 and did months in jail together. Ferrer "has to show his independence from the heads of the party, be they Latino, black, or white," says the new reformer Rev.

Ferrer is just the latest in a long line of progressive Sharpton targets. The Rev was a Republican instrument for Al D'Amato in 1986 and 1992, submarining Democrats Mark Green and Bob Abrams, and appeared in Harlem with George Pataki in 1994 on the Sunday before Pataki beat Mario Cuomo. No one least of all Mike Bloomberg will forget what he did to defeat Green again in 2001. And John Kerry just rewarded him for his full-scale assault on Howard Dean in the primary debates by making him a top surrogate in the presidential campaign, subsidized by up to $200,000 in Democratic National Committee expenses and fees. Sharpton's rationale for dumping on Ferrer is so bizarre, he actually told Newsday that he's not even "sure the Bronx machine exists," but that Ferrer must distance himself from it.