Westchester Candidate Has Pedophile Convictions
By Oliver W. Prichard
Originally published in The Journal News, October 18, 2001
NEW ROCHELLE — A street performer-turned-Right to Life political candidate who makes balloon animals for children has been convicted twice as a pedophile.
Richard Hobbs, 47, is challenging Legislator Jim Maisano, R-New Rochelle, in the District 11 race for the Westchester County Board of Legislators.
Hobbs pleaded guilty in 1978 to second-degree sexual abuse after city police charged him with luring an 11-year-old boy into his office and fondling him.
Four years later, a Pennsylvania judge sentenced Hobbs to nine months in jail for molesting a 14-year-old boy while driving him to a Lewisburg church, where Hobbs performed a show for children as a clown. He also touched the boy while the two played piano in the church, according to court transcripts.
Court papers also said Hobbs, who performed in Pennsylvania churches as "Saturday the Clown," repeatedly told the boy he loved him and ordered him not to tell his parents.
Hobbs said yesterday that his convictions for abusing children were not relevant to the campaign.
"Regardless of the fact of whether I'm guilty or unguilty, there are no children at the county legislature," said Hobbs, who also had contact with children during the 1970s while playing Santa Claus in the New Rochelle Mall.
"That's from years in the past," he said. "I think that shouldn't be an issue."
The burly, thick-bearded street artist, who often speaks against governmental corruption at legislative meetings of the county and New Rochelle, blames the legal system for his past problems.
"It's a danger for me to be alone around a child or any other person who could make a false accusation, so I have to be careful where I go and what I do," he said.
"I'm telling you, it's not hard to get accused," Hobbs added. "And if you're accused, there's not a lot of opportunity to prove you didn't do anything like that, especially if you're poor."
Thomas Byrne, chairman of the the Right to Life Party in Westchester, said the party was unaware of Hobbs' criminal background.
"He was active in the party in the early '80s, and then he came out of nowhere and approached us because he wanted to run on the line," Byrne said. "Since we knew him from before, we let him run on the line."
Hobbs collected signatures from 5 percent of the district's registered Right to Life voters, which is necessary to get on the ballot. In 2000, there were 130 Right to Life voters in that district.
Byrne said Hobbs made a vague reference to something from his past that political opponents might "try to use against him, but he wouldn't specify, even though I asked him a couple of times, 'What do you mean?' But he wouldn't come out and say it."
"We're a little bit too small to hire someone to investigate our potential candidates, so he slipped by," Byrne said.
Hobbs has taken his message to the streets and distributed fliers to promote his candidacy.
Byrne said he would urge Hobbs to cease campaigning, and said Right to Life voters should not cast votes for him. It is probably too late to have him removed from the ballot, Byrne said.
"I believe that these crimes deserve the highest penalties in our society, and I'm surprised that he's on the street at all," Byrne said.
Hobbs is not on the state's registry of convicted sex offenders because his crimes were committed long before 1996, when New York's version of Megan's Law was enacted. Nonetheless, Legislator Maisano said he had heard rumors about his opponent's criminal history.
"Ugh, gross. It's sick and disgusting, and certainly someone with this type of criminal record should not be running for public office," Maisano said. "I have a son, and he won't be receiving any balloons from Mr. Hobbs."
Hobbs made headlines last year when he criticized Playland officials for banning his performances from the county-owned park in Rye.
Playland officials said Hobbs violated a local ordinance against solicitation. The self-described "busker" filed suit, claiming his First Amendment rights had been violated.
"I use my balloons as part of a comical act that is for adults as well as children," he said. "It's a mockery of governmental authority and the misuse of governmental authority to mistreat people."
Hobbs is campaigning on the platform of free bus service to improve traffic, reducing the welfare rolls by giving people skilled government jobs for a few years and forging government policies that help the people, not the politicians.
"The fact of the matter is that I have been accused and convicted of crimes involving pedophilia," Hobbs said. "Do you think that makes me unqualified for public office?"
