{"id":5792,"date":"2012-04-11T07:31:27","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T11:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5792"},"modified":"2012-04-11T09:21:19","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T13:21:19","slug":"new-yorks-senate-democrats-earn-no-respect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/04\/11\/new-yorks-senate-democrats-earn-no-respect\/","title":{"rendered":"New York’s Senate Democrats earn no respect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Senate Minority Leader John Sampson has watched from the sidelines this year (Photo: NYS Senate)<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It’s hard not to suspect that a similar psychological malaise haunts Democrats in New York’s state Senate.<\/p>\n

A little history.\u00a0 Four years ago, Democrats actually won a razor-thin majority.\u00a0 “After forty years in the wilderness, we are now in charge of the New York state Senate,” declared a triumphant Sen. Malcolm Smith.<\/p>\n

Demographic and voter enrollment trends — all favoring the Democrats — seemed to indicate that the future had finally arrived for their caucus and their agenda.<\/p>\n

But the next two years brought debacle upon humiliation.\u00a0 In 2009, the defection of several key Democratic lawmakers threw the Senate into a protracted leadership crisis.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There is speculation in Albany that Cuomo prefers working with Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos.\u00a0 This from Karen DeWitt’s report earlier this week<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll have to ask the Governor,\u201d Sampson said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll get to politics later in the year,\u201d said Cuomo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.\u00a0 Do they have the Gingrichian fire in the belly that’s needed?<\/p>\n

I’m skeptical.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when Newt Gingrich was rallying Republicans to take up the banner of revolution, his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6548,4838],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5794,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5792\/revisions\/5794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}