NEW YORK (AP) — Hours before an aspiring, gay politician eying a New York City Council seat gunned down the incumbent, he made at least four phone calls to another candidate in an apparent attempt to keep him out of the primary election.

“‘This is the last time we can make something happen,”” Tony Herbert said gunman Othniel Askew told him. Herbert said Askew “was very perturbed.”

The phone calls paint Askew as a man growing desperate in the hours before he killed Councilmember James Davis on July 16 at City Hall; a police officer shot Askew moments later.

Askew also called the FBI the morning of July 23 to claim that Davis had offered him a $45,000 payoff and threatened to expose him as gay if he did not drop his challenge for Davis’ council seat, law enforcement sources said. Those claims have not been corroborated.

A memorial for Davis took place the morning of July 26 during an anti-violence rally. In the evening, a candlelight vigil also was planned for the politician.

Askew’s status in the race seemed ever-changing. He had filed preliminary papers to run against Davis in the Democratic primary, but he did not file signatures to formally enter the race. Yet a day before the shooting, he still called himself a candidate in a television interview.

During another call earlier this summer, Herbert said Askew asked him: ‘“Tony, are you ready to die for this seat?’ I thought that he meant that I was going to go out and lose weight and really work hard. Now that I think about it, he was giving me the signal right there and I thought he was playing.

“He was just more and more obsessed that this was his seat.”

A law enforcement source told The Associated Press that two unsigned letters were found on Askew’s body. Police do not know the author, and it’s possible Askew might have written them himself. In one letter, Davis apparently thanks Askew effusively for deciding not to run.

Davis, a former police officer, had a holstered weapon of his own July 26, but did not draw the weapon.

Court records show Askew was charged with assault in 1996 and accused of beating his domestic partner with a hammer. Askew pleaded guilty to harassment and signed an order agreeing to stay away from the man.

According to published reports, an athletic and attractive young Askew worked as a model in the early 1990s, where he got his start, hanging out in New York’s gay clubs after graduating from C.W. Post College in Long Island.

In a search of Askew’s home in Brooklyn, investigators found Davis campaign posters that appeared to have been torn down, police sources said. They also found HIV and antidepressant medication prescribed to Askew.

David Sasser, who owns a gun dealership in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, said Askew bought a $600 handgun from him in 2001. He said there was nothing unusual about the sale. “He had all the paperwork,” Sasser said.

After the July 26 shooting, Mayor Michael Bloomberg terminated a City Hall policy that allowed elected officials, including the mayor, to bypass the building’s metal detectors.

Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly also ordered officers assigned to City Hall to turn away anyone with firearms except on-duty law enforcement officers. The directive closes an exemption that had allowed retired police officers and others with gun permits to enter the building with their weapons.