Partying like it’s 2018 at the Bay Ridge Manor

The Bay Ridge Manor was jammed on Monday night, December 18, as Brooklynites flocked the catering hall for State Senator Marty Golden’s annual Holiday Cocktail Party.

The event, coming exactly a week after Golden, a Republican, had a dust-up with a cyclist that had kept him in the headlines for days, had the pol working the crowded room, thanking attendees and posing for photos with supporters.

With the state senator and retired cop assailed by his Democratic challengers as well as numerous activists for allegedly trying to bully the cyclist out of the bike lane, allegedly flashing a parking placard and claiming to be a cop (something Golden has repeatedly denied), the size of the crowd — with invitees from across the 22nd S.D. which spans Bay Ridge to Marine Park, via Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Manhattan Beach and Gerritsen Beach — was clearly gratifying to Golden, who commented on it to this reporter.

But it was Golden’s Chief of Staff, Jerry Kassar, who put the political spin on the event.

Speaking during a brief program, Kassar noted that the size of the turnout at the “community party is a reflection of the fact that the senator can’t be labeled by party. He’s a community senator and serves everybody.”

Golden, Kassar added, “works seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, and in 2018, he will be running for re-election,” an announcement that was greeted by cheers and applause.

Andrew Gounardes, a local activist and counsel to Borough President Eric Adams who ran against Golden in 2012, and Ross Barkan, a journalist, have already declared their candidacy for the 2018 Democratic nomination to challenge Golden, who ran unopposed in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2016, after having won the seat in a race against then-State Senator Vincent Gentile, who subsequently won Golden’s vacated City Council seat from which he is retiring at the end of the year, due to term limits.

The Bay Ridge Manor is located at 476 76th Street.