I told you weeks ago that this whole coup by the GOP+Espada "reform coalition" was about nothing more than power and patronage.
It was always transparently ridiculous that the very people who fought against any reform at all for 40 years had had a sudden change of heart and did so while adopting and elevating probably the single most ethically challenged person in the entire chamber. Did anyone really believe any of this stuff? It was always about power, perks and greed.
It seemed obvious at the time and now everyone else can see it as well. A whopping 84% of New Yorkers (really, when was the last time 84% of us agreed on anything?) believe that the current sideshow in Albany is more about a "political power play" than a "serious effort to bring reform to Albany."
76% of registered voters statewide have heard, at least, a good amount about the current chaos in the Senate. This includes 31% of voters who have heard a great deal about the situation. And, voters say they just don't think their elected officials have their best interests at heart. A whopping 84% of registered voters report that, from what they have heard, the situation is nothing more than a political power play. In fact, just 12% view the wrangling as a serious effort to bring reform to Albany. The sentiment that the Senate dispute is for political gain transcends party lines with 88% of Democrats, 80% of Republicans, and 82% of non-enrolled voters echoing this argument.
No one is buying the "we did this for reform" nonsense. That was always a ridiculous argument. This was a raw power play.
In these accounts, the fact that there are hugely important stakes for everyday New Yorkers in the outcome of the Senate fight is barely mentioned. Nor is the embarrassing truth that what transpired in Albany in the past month is the local version of a banana republic coup. In this case, the conspiring generals were lobbyists and one very power-hungry billionaire, Tom Golisano. Their goal was no different from that of those democracy-fearing Iranian mullahs: to overturn the results of a popular election.
The threat to power here was the slim Democratic majority that won control of the Senate last fall for the first time in more than 40 years. Consider the timeline: The plotters launched their coup on June 8, the day before the Senate's housing committee was due to consider legislation-given a good chance of passage-that would curb rent hikes on hundreds of thousands of city apartments. Worse, it was even possible that the new majority might vote to give control over New York City housing policies to the city itself. Imagine that? Home rule! For the real estate and landlord lobby, which had long held full sway in the Senate, this was an impossible state of affairs. A pair of renegade Democrats were recruited at a still undisclosed price. The rebels stepped across the aisle to vote the Republicans back into power, thus ensuring that there would be no further incursions into the business of real estate profit or any other sacred Albany cows.
Despite its often clumsy and muddled performance during its short-lived reign, the Senate's new Democratic majority became a target of fear and loathing for the state's traditional powerbrokers. That's because on the occasions that they did get their act together, the Democrats showed what a progressive coalition might achieve.
I'm glad that better than 8 in 10 of us are seeing this for what it really is. It's good to see that we are all on the same page here. |
