Somewhere, Eliot Spitzer may be chuckling as Dems succeed in taking control of the New York State Senate -- more or less

The 2007-8 New York State Senate in all its, er, glory

by Ken

As Howie noted yesterday ("Democrats Kicked Ass In the State Legislative Races Around The Country Last Night"), the New York State Senate flipped Tuesday to Democratic control, for only the second time since before World War II -- and not often before then. (Contrary to Howie's recollection, though, it's not the first time in his lifetime. But that's another story, which we'll come back to.)

I guess this is big news.

It's certainly something that was a high priority for former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who saw gaining a Democratic majority in the Senate as a crucial element in his plan to overhaul state government and enact his ambitious legislative program. Alas, Governor Spitzer has departed the halls of government in Albany, taking with him both his overhaul and his program. If Gov. David Paterson has plans of either kind, I haven't heard about them. I'm guessing the governor is going to have his hands full scraping together enough money to pay for whatever remains of state government in the wake of the Wall Street "misfortunes."

(Both New York City and New York State are dangerously dependent on tax revenues generated by a healthy financial sector. Even now NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- fresh from bullying the City Council, for his and their benefit, into relaxing our term-limits law, which had been approved twice by city voters -- is sharpening his budget ax.)

And everyone around me keeps assuring me what big news this is. On The Albany Project, my esteemed colleague Phillip Anderson has a "State Senate Reaction Roundup," of which this from the Long Island newspaper Newsday is representative:

With the loss of the Senate, Republicans no longer have a seat at the power table where deals are struck between the governor and lawmakers. With Democratic control, the Island also lost its second majority leader ever, Dean Skelos of Rockville Centre.

Skelos attributed the state Senate loss to "a large landslide by Obama."

"We'll be back," he said. "In two years, the dynamics of the city and the state will be different, and once that is out of the way we'll be able to come back."

To which Phillip comments, "Not likely, Dean."

In part the hopes of the hopeful are based on the legislature's historical near-total dysfunction. Why, the New York State Legislature would need a total sweeping remake and upgrade to raise it to the level of "dysfunctional." Basically, our 62 senators and 150 assemblymen spend all that time hanging around Albany -- which they probably consider hardship enough to entitle them to the gigantic sums it costs us taxpayers for their upkeep -- simply waiting to be told by their leaders how to vote.

New York State is governed by our famous "three men in a room": the governor, the Senate majority leader, and the Assembly speaker. Meaning that, as long as the parties in power maintain control, there's not a lot for the "opposition" to do. Okay, there's nothing for the minorities (currently the Senate Democrats and the Assembly Republicans) to do. Head counts come into play only when the majority leaders can't command their caucuses, as has been happening more often in recent years.

Well, "control" in general may be the wrong word to apply to the legislature's heaving and thrashing, which has increasingly amounted to total breakdown, except as regards the lining of members' personal pockets. Most notably, for years the legislature was ritually unable to perform its basic function of adopting a budget anywhere near the April 1 statutory deadline.

During these decades of the legislature's de facto split between the parties, it has obviously always been the case that the governor -- of whichever party -- has one house controlled by his own party and one controlled by the opposition. Worse, their independent power dynamics have meant that governors often found it easier to deal with the opposition legislative leader. Governor Spitzer, for example, didn't last in office long enough to find out whether he could find a way to coexist with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, who has been in the job since 1994 and doesn't yield easily to mere governors.

NOW, HOWEVER, ALL OF THAT HAS CHANGED!

Come January, thanks to Tuesday's voting, just as Governor Spitzer dared to dream, the three men in the famous room will be of the same party, and voters will finally be in a position to demand results. Or so the theory goes, anyway.

As of now, the Democrats will have only a 32-30 majority. An additional Republican seat, that of Queens Sen. Frank Padavan, is, surprisingly, in jeopardy. We may not know that outcome for weeks, but already there's a bloc of four conservative New York City Democrats declaring itself "independent," and threatening not to vote to elevate current Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith of Queens to be the new majority leader, apparently to prevent being railroaded into supporting Commie crap like marriage equality. [By the way, if you would like to know the "meaning" of those numbered elements in the New York State Senate Seal, visit here.]

There's a possibility that the rebels may vote with the Republicans to keep Majority Leader Skelos on the job. Even assuming Senator Smith succeeds in getting the Senate organized and himself installed as majority leader, it seems clear that he's not going to have an easy time holding his caucus together. Would it be unkind to suggest that all those years of minority-status futility haven't necessarily uniformly improved the quality of the Democratic members? Okay, forget "unkind." Would it be unfair?

As if that wasn't messy enough, the current legislature is actually being called into session again, later this month, to deal with the financial crisis. It all sounds to me like a recipe for confusion, if not chaos.

UPDATE: "GANG OF FOUR" HUDDLE WITH GOP SENATE LEADERS

The AP's Michael Gormley reports that the so-called "Gang of Four" met yesterday with leaders of the outgoing Senate GOP majority "to discuss how the four might serve the GOP and what’s in it for them should they defect, according to [Republican and Democratic] officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because leaders wouldn’t confirm the talks."

The four independent-minded Democrats -- often called the “Gang of Four” -- historically have not been afraid to break ranks and support Republicans. They also have clashed at times with Sen. Malcolm Smith of Queens, the presumptive next majority leader, and reportedly refused to attend a Democratic conference Wednesday called by Smith.

The senators are Ruben Diaz Sr. and Pedro Espada Jr., both of the Bronx; Carl Kruger of Brooklyn; and Hiram Monserrate of Queens. . . .

On the table at Wednesday’s meeting was a possible power-sharing agreement by Democrats and Republicans or a kind of hostile takeover of the Senate by Republicans using the swing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate when a majority leader is elected in January.

If Republicans kept majority power, they could then reward the four Democratic defectors with lucrative committee chairmanships.

Republicans said no deals were struck in the meetings. . . .

Meanwhile, Democrats privately said that Democratic Gov. David Paterson has intervened. They say he struck at least a tentative deal with enough of the so-called "Gang of Four" Democrats to preserve the Democratic majority for at least a year under Smith. The Democratic mavericks, however, would be free to vote their conscience on specific bills even if that is contrary to the Democratic line.

NOW, ABOUT THAT LAST TIME THAT
THE DEMS CONTROLLED THE NYS SENATE

I'm shocked that Howie doesn't remember it, because it happened during our senior year at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

In the LBJ landslide election of 1964, the Democrats captured control of both the Assembly and the Senate, but promptly split down the middle between factions loyal to NYC Mayor Robert Wagner and to Sen. Robert Kennedy. The struggle continued for more than a month, and was resolved only through pressure from Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, whose legislative plans were thwarted by the absence of a functioning legislature. (In those years, the way the legislature worked was, basically, that it was eventually strong-armed into giving Governor Rockefeller what he wanted.) A peeved Governor Rockefeller -- and the governor was not a person whom the people around him enjoyed seeing peeved -- prevailed on the Republican leaders in both houses to vote with the Wagner factions for the Democrats who had been minority leaders in the two houses, Sen. Joseph Zaretzki of Manhattan (the last Democratic Senate majority leader until, presumably, Senate Smith takes over in January) and Assemblyman Anthony Travia of Brooklyn. [Sorry, but I couldn't find a picture of Senator Zaretzki.]

Assembly Speaker Travia lasted only a few years in the job before slipping into a judgeship. Senate Majority Leader Zaretzki's reign was even shorter, not quite 11 months. Because of federal voting-rights concerns over reapportionment of the legislature, the 1964 elections covered only one year. And when new elections were held in 1965, for another one-year term, the Republicans regained control of the Senate.

That redistricting squabble, which as noted had required judicial intervention, actually laid the groundwork for the Republicans' subsequent four-decade control of the State Senate and the Democrats' simultaneous monopoly control of the Assembly. When it came time to redistrict again following the 1970 census, given that any plan required the approval of both houses, rather than cede control to the courts again the legislative leaders agreed in effect to split the place down the middle. District lines would be redrawn to more or less ensure Republican control of the Senate and Democratic control of the Assembly.

The agreement held through the reapportionments following the censuses of 1980, 1990, and 2000, and even included an unofficial agreement that the parties wouldn't challenge each other's incumbents. It didn't begin to fray until the state Republican Party itself did. Democrats saw Republican seats that looked ripe for the plucking, and Governor Spitzer used strategic government appointments to open up additional GOP seats, in addition to making clear that he planned to contest any seats he thought could be captured.

PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT

I confess that I depended heavily on reference sources to refresh my memory of details of the 1964-65 struggle for control of the legislature. But I well remember the intoxicating craziness of the time. We were in the thick of it, in fact, the day I schlepped into Manhattan from Brooklyn in a near-blizzard for my alum interview at the Harvard Club, required for my Harvard application.

Even back in those prehistoric times it was common to have one's college interview during a visit to the campus. However, I had a very strict senior English teacher who sternly disapproved of our taking school time off for frivolities like campus visits, and on-campus interviews couldn't be arranged on weekends. So I had to do the alum interview, and I lucked into the near-blizzard, tracking snow and slush into the sacred confines of the Harvard Club.

And I wound up having a grand time. I yammered on about the delicious crisis of our state government, and my interviewer seemed quite charmed. Before I headed back out into the snowstorm, he confided that while of course he couldn't speak officially, he thought my admission chances were excellent.

For the record, he was wrong.

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