Espada: I’m Coming Home to DemocratsUnwilling to let David Paterson appear to solve the State Senate stalemate, rebel Democrat Pedro Espada says he’s returning to the fold and solving the problem that he started.
State GOP Tries to Outmaneuver PatersonSenate Majority Leader Dean Skelos tries to kill Paterson’s budget cuts with an early vote, leaving the governor scrambling.
ByChris Rovzar
early and often
Poll Gives Great News to State Senate Dems, Except Leader Malcolm SmithAccording to a poll from the weekend, Democrats are set to take over the State Senate for the first time in 43 years. Unfortunately for current minority leader Smith, some people don’t want him to stick around to see it happen.
Joe Bruno Calls Foul on Paterson for Following His Own LeadBruno and Albany Republicans are protesting Paterson’s command that state agencies recognize out-of-state gay marriages, claiming it circumvents the Legislature. But didn’t Bruno already decline a chance for the State Senate to vote on the issue?
Bruno Unimpressed by Dem State-Senate WinAfter the election of Democrat Darrel Aubertine to the State Senate on Wednesday, lines are already being drawn for a battle royal for control of the body in November. Aubertine won in the 48th District, a territory that has been represented by Republicans for the past 100 years. This reduces the GOP stranglehold on Albany to just one seat, which Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno proclaims the party will maintain. “We lost that battle, but we are going to win the war,” Bruno said, according to the Post. The way the Albany Times-Union sees it, the extremely contentious State Senate race this fall will come down to two tactics: fear and frustration.
Democrats will remind voters decades of Republican rule in the Senate have done little to avert the state’s rising taxes and sluggish economy. That’s the frustration part.
Republicans who backed Barclay have already started warning that, should they lose their majority, New York would be under the control of just one political party, the Democrats. That’s the fear part.
Democrats positioning themselves as a change from a stagnant GOP regime, and Republicans playing upon voters’ fears to get them to the ballot box? There really is only one story in politics, huh?
State of the Senate in Play [Albany Times-Union]
Related: Driving the Steamroller [NYM]
early and often
Eliot Spitzer: Is He or Isn’t He?Today’s Post ran an exclusive story titled “Spitz Vows to Push for Gay Marriages.” Our immediate reaction, of course, was, “Oh, those gays will be so thrilled! We always knew Spitzer was a Big Gay Marriage Advocate.” The Post would have you believe that once Spitz gets a Democrat-controlled State Senate, he’ll push hard for it. But if you read further into the article, the story gets a little sketchier. “Two other witnesses, including an elected government official, said they couldn’t recall Spitzer’s exact language,” writes Post Frederic Dicker (you’ll recall Dicker was the one who so desperately wanted to hear Bloomberg say he’d run for governor). Apparently some guests said Spitzer just referenced the State Assembly’s passage of a gay-marriage act and was greeted with applause. So maybe, despite the headline, Spitzer’s not a Big Gay Marriage Advocate. For him to reveal himself as such would be a risky move for him now, especially after he’s lost so much political capital in recent months. Other blogs would try to make a “coming out of the closet” pun here, but not us. We just picked the gayest picture of Spitzer we could find and left it at that.
Spitz Vows to Push for Gay Marriages [NYP]
in other news
Is the State Senate Now Overstepping Its Own Authority?If you think the State Senate has backed off the Spitzer-Bruno dogfight ever since Roger Stone made an unbelievable idiot out of himself (and spoiled Frost/Nixon for the rest of us), you’re sorely mistaken. Judging from the few recent developments, we suspect the Albany Republicans are just getting started. Senators are expected to vote today to subpoena State Police superintendent Preston Felton, a figure central to the accusations against Spitzer (which, for those of us who prefer not to litter our brains with such trivia, involve the gov’s using state troopers to spy on Joe Bruno’s use of state helicopters). No acting NYS top cop has ever been subpoenaed before. Once they’re done with Felton, the GOP panel is planning to give the same treatment to Richard Baum and Darren Dopp, the two former Spitzer aides who refused to testify under oath earlier.
the morning line
Small Victories
• Nassau County Democrat Craig Johnson was elected to the State Senate, in what everyone sees as Spitzer’s proxy victory over the state’s head Republican Joe Bruno. Us, we’re just mildly annoyed at having to cover an election in February. [NYP]
• Do you own property in New Jersey? Here, have a 20 percent tax credit and remember who loves ya: The Garden State’s senators apparently almost died passing the bill in a marathon, midnight-oil, multi-day session. [NYT]
• A new study chalks up much of New York’s economic growth to the efforts of recent immigrants. New arrivals, it states, open their own businesses at the rate of almost five to one compared to the natives. [amNY]
• Buying phony police badges and dressing up as a cop is very, very lame, not to mention illegal. But doing the above and having the nerve to commandeer a man’s SUV — well, one kind of has to applaud. [Newsday]
• And, we won’t report on the mad-astronaut story, since it doesn’t concern NYC in the least, but we will tally up the headline puns: “Lunar Toon!” and “Astro-Nut” (News) versus “Space Case” and “Astro-Nut” again (Post). Post wins on the alliterative strength of “whacked-out Nowak.” [NYP, NYDN]
