New York’s Senate Democrats earn no respect
Senate Minority Leader John Sampson has watched from the sidelines this year (Photo: NYS Senate)
Back when Newt Gingrich was rallying Republicans to take up the banner of revolution, his biggest battle wasn’t against House Democrats in Washington — it was against the inertia and defeated mind-set within his own party.
In the early 1990s, Republicans had more or less accepted that they were the party of the “loyal opposition” in Congress, and would be consigned to the minority for the foreseeable future.
It’s hard not to suspect that a similar psychological malaise haunts Democrats in New York’s state Senate.
A little history. Four years ago, Democrats actually won a razor-thin majority. “After forty years in the wilderness, we are now in charge of the New York state Senate,” declared a triumphant Sen. Malcolm Smith.
Demographic and voter enrollment trends — all favoring the Democrats — seemed to indicate that the future had finally arrived for their caucus and their agenda.
But the next two years brought debacle upon humiliation. In 2009, the defection of several key Democratic lawmakers threw the Senate into a protracted leadership crisis.
Democratic lawmakers were caught up in a series of legal and ethical scandals and they badly bungled the 2010 election campaign, losing their majority just in time to fumble control of the crucial redistricting process.
Adding insult to injury, the current Democratic leader John Sampson has allowed himself to be outmaneuvered and marginalized so completely this year that even his fellow Democrat, Governor Andrew Cuomo, seems happy to keep him on the sidelines.
There is speculation in Albany that Cuomo prefers working with Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos. This from Karen DeWitt’s report earlier this week:
In an interview with the Buffalo News, Senate Minority Leader Sampson was asked whether he thought Governor Cuomo wants Democrats to be able to take control back of the Senate in November.
“You’ll have to ask the Governor,” Sampson said.
Cuomo was asked, by a reporter at the budget signing ceremony, whether he would support Senator Skelos to continue as majority leader of a Republican led Senate after the November elections, Cuomo did not say no, only that it was still too soon to talk about politics, with several months of the legislative session remaining.
“We’ll get to politics later in the year,” said Cuomo.
It doesn’t look like Cuomo is exactly inviting Democrats to jump on his coattails, which means that leaders like Sampson will have to find yet another path out of the wilderness. Do they have the Gingrichian fire in the belly that’s needed?
I’m skeptical.
After decades of marginalization (Sampson himself has been in the minority for more than fifteen years) one wonders whether this cadre of leaders has the policy ideas, the charisma, and the political savvy to bring a real fight to the GOP in 2012.
Their problem is Gerrymandering
Their problem is that they didn’t kick Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate out of the party when they threatened to leave. Instead of saying “good riddance, you two aren’t worth holding the majority” the Democrats fumbled and lost any respect they had gained.
absolutely knuck.
But consider that the Democratic Governor, basically the leader of the Democratic Party in New York State, is essentially is neutral on who runs the Senate and could even be said to prefer his Republican counter part to the Democratic counter part.
It is the flip side to gridlock, there is no difference in any real sense between these two groups in New York State. The Governor needs to move an agenda to be successful our Governor is not a a sloth; he has his eye on a bigger prize, he wants and needs to move his agenda. Yet he favors Republicans in the Senate to help him move that agenda to Democrats.
So this wrangling is not about issues or platforms or differences between the parties; but about personal power and favors as the party structure itself is effectively meaningless.
Cuomo wants to become President. This means he is currently more interested in having Republicans in his camp than in having Democrats. He wants to be a uniter, rather than a divider.
If there is a flaw in his game plane, it could come from the Democrat primarie for President in four years.
Sorry for the misspelled “plan.”
Cuomo is also conservative for an NY Dem (see his tax policies, union-bashing, flirtation with fracking), so making deals with the moderate side of the GOP isn’t a huge stretch.
And the Dems in the Senate are a collective basket case. Even if they gain control of the Senate, they have no self-control. Really the worst kind of self-dealers.
So Brian Mann decides to end the discussion because JDM has some valid points. The hypocrisy is disgusting
I’m a bit disappointed as well…. reasons Brian? I think we need more discussion not avoidance/
Its a joke, in NYS there is no difference between these two parties no one is in the wilderness except those who don’t play along with the eternal corruption and favors.
Its all the same, everyone gets paid.
Also the idea that we NPR is committed to free speech about race is also a joke given that JDM had a good point about being a “white” Hispanic” on the previous thread. There is NO such thing. Hispanic is not a race it is an ethnicity, Zimmerman is Hispanic.
But it is bad for the narrative to say that Zimmerman is an Hispanic.
Now if pointing that out gets a thread shut down ok that is fine, but it is also pretty hypocritical, it messes up the clean story about the story, but it also tells people don’t talk about this issue don’t talk about race, because there is only one acceptable answer.
If Minority
Leader Sampson is too weak
Should he grow his hair?
Count me in on wondering why the Tulsa thread was shut down.
Hi folks –
I asked Dale Hobson to freeze the Tulsa thread because I thought the discussion was moving in directions that required close moderation that I couldn’t provide. (I was busy on assignment.)
We’ll open more threads about race issues in the days/weeks ahead, and will have plenty of chances to dig into some of these things in thoughtful ways.
–Brian, NCPR
It was a good call, Brian.
One of the problems we have with “race” in this country is the consistent inclusion of people of mixed race into the “minority” race.
I guess it started back in the day of “half breed.”
You see it with Zimmerman being called Hispanic when he has a white father and a Peruvian mother.
When are we going to see people as people and cut out all this race garbage?
Pete, being Hispanic is not a race, it is an ethnicity. There is no such thing as a “white” Hispanic, many if not most Hispanics in the US are Caucasian some are of African descent some are of Native descent depending on the country of origin. Many Hispanics were the fist settlers of this country, the Tejano’s for example were the first European settlers of Texas.
But I just wanted to say that as a point of fact and will drop the discussion at this point per the moderators request.
Actually if we want to get into it a little, is the ignoring of Sampson racial? If our last governor had been white would he have been treated differently? We probably need to look a little closer to home about these issues.