Carl Kruger Is a Fallen Politician Sympathetic Unto Himself Save for the fact that he pitied himself far more than you could hope to match, Carl Kruger almost presented a sympathetic portrait of a man consumed with remorse. Short and stooped with a pug's face, he was one of the most powerful state senators in New York and a South Brooklyn Democratic power. He gloried, often profanely, in his power. He also took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, and steered or squashed legislation according to the dictates of his corrupt conspirators. Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court conceded that Mr. Kruger was a complicated figure who had done genuine good and spent the elicit money on close friends rather than on himself. But, the judge said, the former state senator had plunged "daggers in the heart of honest government." He sentenced Mr. Kruger, who had pleaded guilty, to seven years. "My prison sentence has not yet started," Mr. Kruger, 62, told the judge, peering warily from beneath heavy lids. But my punishment is well under way. It's hard to begrudge an aging and broken man his moment of sorrow. Still, an irresistible tickle of irritation rises as you read the memorandum that Mr. Kruger's lawyer filed with the court, pleading for less time. City politicians have strolled off to prison in serried rows in recent years, and so Mr. Kruger's self-regarding defense is revealing of his political class. He was, in the telling of the memo, "highly regarded and oft-decorated," that last a term usually reserved for police officers and firefighters who risk their lives. His memo describes a public service of unrelenting sacrifice. Mr. Kruger's "criminal conduct was but the smallest part in the life of one who was a devoted public servant." And this: "He believed anything was possible with enough effort - a belief he maintained through his career." This is the felonious pol rendered as Horatio Alger. That Mr. Kruger came from mean circumstances is not questioned. And he found succor in the bosom of the South Brooklyn Democratic Party and the Thomas Jefferson club, then one of the most powerful clubs in the nation. Short of a college degree, he took a job as chief of staff to Councilman Herbert E. Berman in 1974, making - the memo says - $12,000 a year. This is meant to hint again at the depth of his sacrifice. But the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator indicates that this salary is $55,835 in current dollars, which is not such a meager sum for a young man getting a pensioned foothold. Mr. Kruger, too, makes much of his help for the Turano family, the mother and two adult sons for whom, by his telling, he acted as de facto family patriarch. Federal papers have hinted at deeper currents, noting that Mr. Kruger was an intimate companion of Dr. Michael Turano, who was also sentenced on Thursday. The memorandum complains of "ceaseless vilification" of himself and the family in the news media. But Mr. Kruger's assistance to this, in fact, wealthy family resembled that of an old-fashioned political patron. He helped the brothers, when they were both young doctors, get prison and union contracts, and later helped them obtain real estate licenses. He got the mother a job as district manager of the local community board. That the Turano family gained richly from its friendship with Mr. Kruger is indisputable. The halo that comes with that is perhaps optional. Many letters attest that Mr. Kruger was a hard-working representative who did some good works. But a federal wiretap revealed a less high-minded side. In 2010, he was Finance Committee chairman of the State Senate and he was overheard debating whether to channel hundreds of thousands of state dollars to Bruce Bender, a Thomas Jefferson Club member and a vice president for the developer Bruce Ratner's company. Mr. Bender needed the money for one project or another. I could give it to you, he explained to Mr. Bender on this tape. Or, he said, I could give it to a Jewish charity in my own political backyard. The Jewish group would take just $10,000, Mr. Kruger explained with a profanity, and give me slavish thanks. There were laughs all around. Mr. Kruger takes pains to say he cannot explain his fall into corruption. There was never a distinct moment, his sentencing memo says, when he "decided to sacrifice all that he had worked for" for acts of corruption. Such a moment is undoubtedly difficult to locate. Although in Mr. Kruger's case, his sorrow seemed to arrive only at the moment of his arrest.