Can we at least make believe that being a violent asshole is a disqualification from serving in the New York State Senate?

New York State's 13th Senate District, in northern Queens

"This guy is a violent asshole, and it would be great to send him on his way once and for all."

-- a colleague of ours, about former NYS Sen. Hiram Monserrate

by Ken

Usually when I burden you with breaking news regarding the toxic-waste dump that is our New York State Legislature, it's because I sense that non-New Yorkers may be in need of a harmless chuckle. Lately, however, NYS pols at higher levels have horned in on the laff-whoring, as if they have no goal in life but to provide satirical material for Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!

And today I'm afraid we have to talk seriously about a matter relating to the State Senate. I don't suppose we have a vast horde of readers in the state's 13th Senate District, in northern Queens, which was occupied by Hiram Monserrate until he was expelled by vote of his colleagues. This necessitated a special election, which is being held tomorrow, March 16, and you may be surprised to learn that the asshole is running for his old seat! Not as a Democrat, mind you, but as an independent.

The gentleman at left is Assemblyman José Peralta, who sounds good on the issues, has an outstanding record in the State Assembly, and should provide the 13th SD with excellent representation. And besides, in case I didn't mention it, he's not Hiram Monserrate.

If you jog your memory, you may remember a couple of things about our Hiram:

* He was one of the famous Gang of Four/Three/Two who first threatened not to organize with the Democrats after they took control of the Senate in the November 2008 election (but were presumably bought off, at least temporarily) and then actually defected, with another mangy character named Pedro Espada Jr., to form a "bipartisan" coaltion with the Republicans which deadlocked the Senate and briefly left the parliamentarily savvier Senate GOP leader claming actually to be in control, in the absence of a lieutenant governor to break tie votes.* And oh yes, finally first our Hiram and then his pal Pedro, with much less embarrassment than you would imagine, redefected back to the Dems, possibly having been rebought off.

* At the time our Hiram was already under indictment for slashing his girlfriend with a broken bottle, as captured -- for a jury to see, for example -- on building security tape. He was eventually convicted (even though the girlfriend tried to spin the incident in a Hiram-friendly way, the incident was on videotape, you remember), but by then the charges against him had miraculously lightened to the point where they didn't trigger an automatic resignation or mandatory exclusion, leaving the Senate to finish the job of saying, in effect, "No, there's a line below which our members really can't descend."

And then there's the thing you might remember our Hiram for not doing:

* Back when the NYS Senate took its vote on legalizing same-sex marriage, despite repeated assurances, and despite having won his office in large part thanks to strong LGBT support, the gutless weasel voted against.

Naturally, having alienated many of the supporters who helped get him elected in the first place, he has reinvented himself, according to his perception of his basically conservative district, as a "family values" guy. (I know, isn't that a hoot?) Now he's a stalwart supporter of those old-fashioned virtues thought to be important in relatively conservative Queens. Also (and here again you've got to really work to keep yourself from cracking up), he's portraying himself as some kind of victim!

Now the problem isn't that large numbers of his constituents are fooled, or have any interest in having him back as their state senator. The problem is that this is (a) a special election (and special elections historically draw minuscule turnouts) and (b) a special election for a state Senate seat, for gosh sakes. How poliically involved do you have to be to bestir yourself to vote in a special election to fill a state Senate vacancy?

Since you know that by hook or by crook a slug like our Hiram -- or rather the people who hope to return him to the Senate so he can be useful to them -- will be able to get a certain number of votes. So it becomes a matter of great urgency to make sure that more than that number of sane Democratic voters in the 13th SD show up to vote.

URGENT APPEAL TO ALL VOTERS IN THE 13TH SD

So if you live in the district (the zip codes, I'm told, are 11368, 11372, 11375, 11373, 11374, and 11369), or know anyone who does, or know someone who knows someone, it's imperative to turn out tomorrow to vote for José Peralta. Otherwise, the message is: "While there may indeed be a line below which a New York State senator cannot drop, we still don't know where it is."

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*We didn't have a lieutenant governor then because the old lieutenant governor had to take over as governor on account of the governor's resigning after getting caught overpaying for hookers. And then the new governor, the one who wasn't available to break ties in the State Senate because he wasn't lieutenant governor anymore and we have no mechanism for replacing a lost one, went on to make comedy headlines of his own. Ironically, the one really good thing he's done as governor was to appoint a new lieutentant governor, even though he has no statutory authority to do any such thing except by the most generous possible interpretation of a clause in the State Constitution. Naturally, the Republicans went to court, where successive levels of judges declined to undo it, saying basically, "Now, boys, don't expect us to get you out of these messes you get yourselves into." The upshot is that while we may not have much else going for us here in NYS, we've by gosh got a lieutenant governor! (When you've very little to work with, you learn to be grateful for not much.)

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: IT'S ALL VOTERS, NOT

JUST "REGISTERED DEMS," WHO NEED TO VOTE

Apologies. There's probably still some language in this post that reflects my confusion while I was writing. For some reason my mindset was on primary elections, where (in NYS) only registered members of a party can vote in that primary. But of course this isn't a primary, it's a special election, so everybody is eligible to vote. Which also means that former Senator Monserrate can also recruit support from all voters for his particular brand of government.

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UPDATE: Looks like Ken's Post Worked

Monserrate did better than the Republican, but Democrat José Peralta absolutely crushed him. "Tonight we put an end to dysfunction, to divisiveness, to disappointment. Our nightmare is over. A new day has begun," said Peralta during his victory speech. The NY Times says it was in the bag all along.

The victory was not unexpected given the level of organized Democratic support for Mr. Peralta, an assemblyman from Queens. Mr. Peralta also had a huge financial advantage over Mr. Monserrate, who ran as an independent and tried to persuade voters to give him another chance to represent them in Albany.

Still, the election followed a fierce, if brief, campaign in which a debate over same-sex marriage, which Mr. Peralta favors and Mr. Monserrate opposes, often overshadowed discussions on issues that are vital to many of the largely Hispanic district’s working-class and immigrant residents, like affordable health care and school overcrowding.

With 72 percent of the vote counted, unofficial returns from the overwhelmingly Democratic 13th State Senate District showed Mr. Peralta with 66 percent and Mr. Monserrate with 27 percent. The Republican candidate, Robert Beltrani, an administrative law judge, came in third with 7 percent.