| Some of us saw this coming when he delayed his potential campaign announcement for the umpteenth time, but it's nice to see it made official. What hasn't been said already? Goodbye, good luck, and don't come back.
But Ford's timely demise isn't just a win for Senator Gillibrand, or liberals, or the netroots. It is, in fact, a win for the fledgling pro-reform movement in New York State politics.
New York politics operate on money. That's no secret, and it's not exactly different from politics anywhere else. But New York's almost total lack of campaign finance laws on the state level allow a disturbing amount of power to be wielded by a relatively small number of people who have money to burn.
Billionaire coup architect Tom Golisano is a perfect example. Golisano spent a lot of money in 2008 supporting candidates he liked. Some of them were good candidates, and good people. But when Malcolm Smith wasn't deferential enough, Golisano used his power to try and overthrow the state government.
Another example is Mike Bloomberg, the man who personified the corrosive force of money in American politics when, faced with a voter-approved limit on his term of office, simply bought all the votes he needed to stay in power.
Here's where Ford comes in. Make no mistake about it, Ford's base of support (such as it was, consisting mostly of the upper east side of Manhattan, but only above the 30th floor) was centered in and around the same kind of big money contributors who own and operate much of the dirtier side of the New York state legislature.
One of the ringleaders of this behavior (and one of Ford's major backers) is Mike Bloomberg. Another is Steve Pigeon, the "Democrat" whose most undemocratic ideas and total lack of anything resembling the human emotion of shame landed him the seat as the man behind the curtain to Pedro Espada, and the operator of the massively corrupt Independence Party.
The power that Pigeon and those like him wield is, without a doubt, the biggest single opponent to fixing what's broken in New York State government. Why? Because the privileged power brokers like the concentration of control into their own hands.
What kind of power? The power to direct state money, yes. To bend and break laws, sure. To lie, cheat, steal, and get away with it. But moreover, it's just about raw power. The power to bring the state government screeching to a halt because Malcolm Smith checked his Blackberry during a meeting with you. The power to push elections one way or the other. The power to take home a seven figure salary without paying the taxes that the plebes have to.
In a system with no campaign finance laws, no term limits, and no demand by the people that the legislature do the public business or else, power has collected around the lowest common denominator--the people most shameless in their exploitation of that broken system to reward corruption and punish underdogs.
Call it whatever you want--the center, big business, the DLC, corruption--Ford's candidacy represented a money-first view of politics, that the guys on Wall Street mattered more than what was right for New York State as a whole. And New Yorkers rejected that: in the polls, in contributions, in their participation online and across the state.
Because of that, a strong ally of reform, populism, and a fighter for New York State has sent Ford packing. Now it's time to do the same for our legislature, and get this great state back on track. |
