Is Steve Levy really considering a switch to the GOP?

by: cliffweathers

Tue Jan 19, 2010 at 16:28:00 PM EST

They're now just short of predicting that Democratic Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy will be switching parties in his run for the Governor's seat come November.  

Redistricting: how-to and how-not-to

by: simonstl

Wed Sep 10, 2008 at 11:22:24 AM EDT

Since folks are already moving on to redistricting conversations, today might be a good day to post this.

Way back in October, I posted about a forum on redistricting held by Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton and featuring Assemblyman William Parment and former Tompkins County Legislator Mike Lane.

I posted audio and some of my handouts then, but I had the audio transcribed, and then spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the transcription. I think it's accurate now, but of course, if you find something wrong, please let me know.

The transcript seemed to be too long for the extended text, so here it is.

The key piece for me is Parment's saying:

Telling tales out of school. Perhaps the press could ask us, “Well, did you consider voter enrollments?” And I say no. Or, they say, “You mustn't consider voter enrollments.” And no, we won't consider voter enrollments.

And we didn't. We considered voter performance. We don't care how people enroll. And if you ever looked in rural… New York State… you know… that everybody that's a rural Republican doesn't vote that way. And the same is true in the cities where you have heavy, heavy Democratic component, and not everyone votes that way. So the only thing we're interested in is voter performance, not voter enrollment.

Most of the rest of it is less surprising, but in case you were wondering about the criteria legislative leaders use to gerrymander districts, registration is apparently not their focus. Much of the rest of Parment's talk illustrates the other constraints that help determine how districts are drawn. I suspect Mike Lane's comments will be popular here, but the Assembly members' response to his suggestions for independent redistricting - heck, any change to the process whatsoever - was less than encouraging.

If you can manage to read to the end, it's worth the trip. If not, hopefully it'll prove useful as reference. (And I wish I could find Assemblyman Parment's handouts - sorry!)

Bloodsucking legislators?

by: simonstl

Wed Sep 10, 2008 at 07:17:16 AM EDT

I know it's the day after the primary, and everyone's excited (for better or worse) about that, but there's still some action in Albany. Governor Paterson's initial remarks:

Mr. Paterson, a former state senator, uttered the "bloodsuckers" line as he was telling a joke about what he saw as the hypocrisy in the way some of his colleagues treated advocates for groups like the disabled.

"There were legislators who I used to think practiced their own versions of being Count Dracula in that they would be very nice to the advocates when they came to Albany," Mr. Paterson said in a speech to a group of activists for the disabled at an Albany hotel. "By 5 o'clock, the sun would go down, and they'd go back to who they really are: a bunch of bloodsuckers."

And his clarification:

"I didn't say that my colleagues were bloodsuckers. I said that there were certain people who listened to advocates, and as soon as they left and, you know, it got dark, were acting in that way - like Count Dracula - because they really didn't care."

The Daily News takes the Dracula reference and runs with it. They also explore it in an editorial.

Legislators of both parties seem to be very sad that the Governor isn't kind enough to their always-to-be-highly-respected branch. First he calls legislators back into session from "vacation" to address potentially huge fiscal problems. Then he suggests that some legislators might be hypocritical, pretending good will while really just waiting for the advocacy bus to leave Albany.

I don't know, though - despite the choice of metaphor, this doesn't sound remotely Spitzerian to me. (And at least he's not suggesting that the Democrats are for sale.)

Update: And NYCO's take on it is also fun. Duels? Hmmm... Albany's had some interesting times.

Wake-up calls for legislators?

by: simonstl

Wed Jun 04, 2008 at 08:01:45 AM EDT

Does this apply to a majority-party legislator in your Assembly or Senate district?

This district is not a district where business as usual is a popular campaign theme.

This district needs a representative who sees it as their job to bring our perspectives to Albany, rather than represent Albany to us, as is convenient to the [legislature]'s leadership.

This district needs a representative who recognizes not only that voting machine choices* can disenfranchise users, but that the creative manipulation of legislative district lines can do far more damage.

This district needs a representative who recognizes that the relative silence of voters on state issues reflects grudging acknowledgment of a badly rigged system, not cheerful pleasure in the status quo.

I believe that it applies pretty well to majority legislators across the state, not just Barbara Lifton, whose misfortune it seems to be to have me living in her district and as a member of the Democratic Committee.

Those were words I spoke against her endorsement last Thursday night, concluding with:

We need more challenges to incumbent state legislators across this state, in both parties.

By voting against endorsing Barbara Lifton, I hope to make it clear that there is support in Tompkins County for those kinds of necessary and invigorating challenges within our Democratic Party. I encourage you to join me, now or in the future.

I'd like also to encourage TAP readers to join me, now or in the future, in challenging our legislators. If you're on a political committee, you have a platform you can use to raise questions that often get swept under the carpet for the sake of party loyalty, personal loyalty, and a steady stream of goodies from Albany.

I can't promise this will make you popular - it probably won't. At the same time, though, making controversial speeches in front of politically-active audiences does have a way of sparking useful questions, as I've been finding over the past week.

Endorsement season is coming to an end as petition season is starting, so this may be something that has to wait for future election years. Still, think about it. If you're a member of a committee with a majority legislator, ask yourself what you need to do to raise these questions.

If you're not a committee member, or if your majority legislators are in the other party, there are still lots of other ways to get this message across. Letters, donations to challengers in your party, or working for a campaign are all good ways to bring this conversation outside of the Albany-insider circuit.

It's great that the Senate may fall to the Democrats, and that Sheldon Silver has challengers this year - but we need to look beyond the core of activity in Albany and make the reform message resonate, district by district.

By itself, a speech like my non-endorsement doesn't go very far - but the conversations it opens are an important path forward for change. Brief speeches need to be abstract, but conversations have much more opportunity to reach concrete action.

* - For Republicans (and I know some of you are reading here), the issue probably might not have voting machines per se, but voter ID or some other related issue.

Update: Just after I posted this, Cliff Weathers diaried another way for committee members to show their displeasure with candidates.

It's State Committee time

by: simonstl

Tue May 27, 2008 at 12:13:10 PM EDT

Every two years, the New York State Democratic Committee is elected. Well, sort of elected - there's a petition process to get selected, and possibly a primary if there are multiple candidates who get on the same line. Mostly it seems to come down to endorsement by the county committees, who then carry the petitions.

The New York State Democratic Committee rules (PDF) make it clear that the unit of organization is the Assembly district, but all of the elections, for committeeman and committeewoman, are actually at the county level. This makes for some complicated arithmetic in proportional voting. It also means, for instance, that Tompkins County, which is entirely in one Assembly district, has two committee members, while neighboring Cortland County, in three Assembly districts, has six.

I'll confess that it's not entirely clear to me what the state committee does, beyond endorsements in statewide races. They elect a chair, who's usually the face of the party, elect DNC members, and pass resolutions whose effect I'm not that sure of. There's a Reform Caucus, and I think the Democratic Rural Conference is also connected, though the DRC site looks to be only about the gathering, not the group that runs it.

This year, Tompkins County has a contested race, apparently for the first time in a long time - which is what has me thinking about this.

Is the State Committee something that reformers (of the TAP kind, which may or may not be the same as the Reform Caucus) should be thinking about seriously?

My understanding is that there's a fair amount of travel, time, and expense involved in this volunteer position. I'm not sure how much power the committee itself really has, or whether it's a venue worth reformers' priority.

I'd love to hear more about the committee side of the NYSDC in comments.

(And no, I'm definitely not running for this, or anything else, this year.)

Legislature 2020? (fiction)

by: simonstl

Tue May 13, 2008 at 13:28:24 PM EDT

I don't know how well this will go over here, but it's a scenario that keeps coming up in conversation, though mostly unacknowledged. It's only one of many possibilities, but it's plausible. In Upstate 2050 style, I thought it might be worth writing up as fiction.

It's not a forecast of the future, but a possibility to contemplate as we keep discussing the relationship between Democrats and various kinds of reform.

(If there's enough interest, I'd be happy to find a home for more stories on the general Legislature 2020 subject.)

Redistricting Re-emerges (fiction)

ALBANY - As the census comes to an end, arguments about the political redistricting that follows are disrupting the usual peace in Albany.

"Our legislature has brought New York to the edge of the progressive wave," said Assembly Speaker John P. Marquez (D-Mount Vernon). "The voters clearly appreciate it, re-electing us 99% of the time over the last six years."

Senate Majority Leader Natalie Gregorio (D-Hempstead) concurred. "After decades of retrograde motion, the Democratic New York State Senate is finally helping our state's residents at full speed."

Outside of the Capitol, other signs suggest that state residents aren't happy about their government. The Assembly's approval rating fell to an all-time low of 7% in a Quinnipiac poll, while the Senate scored 12%. (56% of respondents replied "Don't Know," however.)

"It's the usual suspects complaining," said Marquez. "The Times, the Post, Gannett, Newsday, the Times-Union, the Manhattan Institute, the Brennan Center - corporate media journalists and researchers who think they can run government better than the people elected to run it. They even think they can draw districts better than the people who represent those districts."

"Marquez is one of those strange people who bought a gold medal and thinks he earned it," replied Dr. J.L. Bradley of the Manhattan Institute. "My predecessors here railed against the waste they saw in New York government back in the 90s. I can't imagine what they'd think now."

Together4NY spokeswoman Inez Ralston suggested fundamental problems in the election system. "They have no real connection to voters," she said. "They don't need to have a connection, really, when the Assembly is 127-22 Democratic and the Senate is 48-11. The 2012 redistricting really locked in Democratic super-majorities in both houses."

"We used to argue for changes in the rules," she continued, "and those might have helped, but the basic problem is that reformers, even Democratic reformers, can't break into a system stacked so heavily in favor of incumbents."

Bradley cited out-of-control member item spending as his main concern. "In 2008, they distributed around $300 million, a relatively tiny share of the budget. In 2020, they're up to $10.4 billion, a much larger share of the budget, with about half of that going to pay for services to communities that really need tax relief in some form. It makes them look good at election time, though."

Ralston noted that, while Together4NY is strictly non-partisan, the demise of the New York State Republican Party is also cause for concern. "It's not just that the districts are gerrymandered - it's that in many cases, there isn't anyone around with the strength to fight anyway."

Voter registration statistics suggest that while Democratic registration continued to climb, Republican registrations plunged over the years. The roughly 3-2 advantage Democrats held in 2010 became a 5-2 advantage in 2020, though there are now more unaffiliated voters than Republican voters.

"Some of that is demographic shift and a change in the political climate," said Ralston. "Some of it is people just giving up."

Newly-elected State Republican Chair Michael O'Rourke argued against that, blaming "Downstate machines and corruption plus the perpetual squeeze Democrats have put on Upstate New York - a lot of people have just had enough of New York State government and moved away."

O'Rourke suggested that Republicans would be seeking change through the Governor's mansion, a statewide race he believes they can win despite the party's failure to rally around a candidate in 2018.

Governor James Walton (D) couldn't be reached for this story, but in previous press conferences has argued that "I'm busy cleaning up the Executive Branch. It's up to them to clean their own houses."

[Remember, it's fiction.]

Parties - Selfish Reasons to Support Reform

by: simonstl

Fri Feb 16, 2007 at 17:50:10 PM EST

Continuing my earlier series on selfish reasons to support reforming the New York State Legislature (1 2), here are reasons why political parties and at least some political party leaders stand to benefit from such reform.

As usual, these are somewhat cynical perspectives.

• Relevance. Everything else in this list flows from relevance. Right now parties seem tied into the state legislative stalemate, moving at the state level only when there seems to be a clear opportunity. More opportunities should mean a lot less torpor, and a lot more reason for voters to be interested in parties.