To accomplish much of what he wants to do, Mr. Spitzer will not only have to take on the lobbyists and the powerful special interests who showered money on his campaign, but he will also need to win over a politically divided Legislature that will probably be under the same leaders who were responsible for the infamous gridlock under three terms of Gov. George E. Pataki.
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Complicating matters for Mr. Spitzer is the reality that the Legislature has proved extremely adept at insulating itself from accountability to the voters, whether through laws that let incumbent lawmakers draw their own district lines to virtually ensure re-election, or through lax campaign- finance laws that allow large donations, and that make it easy for political parties to funnel huge sums of money to aid the rare endangered incumbent.
Mr. Spitzer has roundly denounced these practices. But if he takes aim at them right away, he risks souring his honeymoon period and endangering parts of his agenda. If he does not, though, he risks finding himself where many a governor has found himself before: frustrated again and again by lawmakers who risk no retribution at the polls.
Michael Waldman, the executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, which branded New York State's Legislaturethe most dysfunctional in the nation, said Mr. Spitzer has his work cut out.
"This is potentially a reform moment that comes along once every generation or two, where people broadly are fed up, where candidates get elected with specific mandates," he said. "But reform moments don't always turn into reform. Spitzer has a big agenda, and it won't be easy. "He's been very gutsy in laying out an agenda that was much more specific than it had to be, and he can claim a mandate for it. But the Legislature is still the same Legislature. And governors and presidents with big electoral mandates don't always get the deference from Legislatures that they want." No relationships in Albany are more complicated, or more important, than those among the three men who actually run the state: the governor, the Assembly speaker, and the majority leader of the State Senate. Agendas can live or die based on those relationships.
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And it is hard to know what Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader in the Republican-controlled Senate, will be like in his new role as the odd Republican out. Mr. Bruno has long espoused a get-it-done philosophy, and has shown himself to be ideologically flexible. But he has been unhappy with Mr. Spitzer in recent weeks as Mr. Spitzer has campaigned with gusto against some of the Republican senators Mr. Bruno needs to maintain his slim majority.
WTF? I don't know what I find more galling - The idea that Joe Bruno would be upset that a Democrat would dare to campaign for, ya know Democrats or the allegation that Mr. Spitzer did anything of the kind. Exactly who did he campaign for "with gusto" and when did this happen? Much to my dismay, I didn't see anything of the sort. In fact, I saw little evidence at all that our Governor-Elect, the one campaigning with a massive war chest towards a 40 point victory cared much at all about anyone downticket at all.
