Just when you thought New York’s government couldn’t get anymore dysfunctional, it just did.
The Republicans have taken back the New York State Senate, utilizing two corrupt Democrats – Sen. Pedro Espada and Sen. Hiram Monsserate – who decided that they would now caucus with the Republicans.
From Monsserate’s wiki (I know, I know, but it gives a pretty good summary here):
Monserrate was arrested on December 19, 2008 and accused of slashing Karla Giraldo in the face with a broken drinking glass during an argument in his Jackson Heights apartment.[5] He was arraigned the same day and pled not guilty to the charges of second-degree assault, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. If Monserrate is convicted, state law requires that he be expelled from the Senate.[6][7]
His companion initially made statements to hospital staff and the police which led to his arrest. She later changed her account to match that of Monserrate namely that the cuts on her face near her left eye from a broken glass were an accident and she is no longer cooperating with the investigation.[8] Sources have discussed with the media evidence including video surveillance that support the charges of assault and the attempt to cover it up.[9][10][11]
On February 27, 2009, the order of protection which prevents Monserrate from having contact with Giraldo was extended over the objections of Monserrate’s attorney.[12][13]
On March 23, 2009, a Queens grand jury indicted Monserrate on three counts of felony assault on Giraldo and three counts of misdemeanor assault.[14] If convicted, the maximum sentence would be seven years.[15] Monserrate denied the charges, saying “Listen, the reality is that from the very beginning I have said this was an accident. My girlfriend said it’s an accident. This is an accident and we look forward to the dismissal of all these charges based on the truth.”[16] At arraignment, he pled not guilty to all charges.
demkat620
Very nice. Do they change to Republican as well?
bago
So he’s a backstabber AND a facestabber?
LD50
I’m immensely relieved to see a news story with the words ‘government’ and ‘dysfunctional’ yet with the word ‘California’ nowhere in sight.
Calouste
A case of rats joining a sinking ship.
The Grand Panjandrum
Looks like New York’s got its Louisiana mojo working. Nice. What’s the Yankee equivalent of gumbo?
Zifnab25
Yikes. Next time anyone wants to talk about “party first” and “we need to elect the incumbant or the Republicans will win” reference these two jackholes.
Too Lieberman with the lot of them.
gwangung
So, bascially the NY Repubs are welcoming, with open arms, someone who’s a domestic violence abuser.
Classy.
Punchy
So when this guy is convicted, Fox News will put a “R” next to his name, right? Right?
GranFalloon
From Jackson Heights, huh.
Isn’t that where Mr. Randy Watson is from?
You may remember him as “Mike the Policeman,” from the “What’s Going Down” episode of That’s my Mama.
sparky
after i moved from ny to fl, i tried to explain to people that ny state government was actually more dysfunctional than fl’s, but they didn’t want to believe me. i think the difficulty was that the graft in florida is more brazen. maybe this will change people’s minds. i can’t believe that after the last year and the tax revenues for the state starting to collapse due to various wall street boo-boos, that the senate could pull this crap.
oh wait, yes i could. i could say they are playing with fire but frankly, the voters in nys get what they deserve.
The Other Steve
Did you see the SCOTUS handed down a decision saying judges who take $3 million from a guy to get elected to the court have to recuse themselves?
Needless to say Roberts, Alito and the Constructionist Twins dissented.
asiangrrlMN
Wow. Just wow. I think they may be more comfortable in the Republican Party, anyway. If New York is this fucked up politically, I may have to strike it from my list of states in which I could live. Sigh. New York City is my fave American city.
Blue Raven
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Manhattan clam chowder, clearly.
Xenos
I have been impressed with the scandals NY has been inundated with. Makes me almost ashamed to be from Massachusetts. Just a few years ago we had Whitey/Billy Bulger, the Big Dig in all its crooked permutations, and more. Now, just small potatoes – the hub is eclipsed by the Empire state. Maybe this has an inverse relationship with baseball or something.
Now NY is even getting a gold plated railway tunnel under the Hudson. I guess this is what bush league feels like.
Johnny B. Guud
It looks like the gay marriage bill might have had a role to play in this fiasco.
gbear
Some people will certainly go to extremes to maintain their homophobia.
PurpleGirl
Yup, both Espada and Monserrate have been against civil rights for gays and, especially now, same sex marriage.
Randy Paul
Despite Monserrate, Jackson Heights happens to be the center of the gay community in Queens (the Queens LGBT Pride Event took place here yesterday), is very ethnically diverse with significant populations of South Asians, Latinos, Poles, Italian-American and Greek-American populations.
It’s gourmand heaven and it’s also the birth place of scrabble. There’s nowhere else in NYC I’d rather live.
Anne Laurie
Lots of people on either side of the divide will tell you that NYC isn’t really part of New York State. I grew up in the Bronx when the Democrats ruled the city and the Republicans owned the rest of the state, and there was a general assumption that any politician who left the rich brew of inter-city warfare for the backwaters of Albany lacked either ambition or talent or both. I’m sure this psychology has “improved” over the past 40 years, but perhaps the idea that state reps just aren’t as important as city councillors & don’t deserve the same level of scrutiny retains enough force that goombahs like Monserratte slip under the voters’ radar?
Elie
In my opinion — this is the result of having a weak, unpopular Democratic governor…. consequences going back to the Caroline Kennedy imbroglio and his subsequent fall in popularity for mismanaging that — were bound to happen.
Patterson is a stupid wimp who couldnt take care of business and now he has a small jail break among the rank and file that again, he will not be able to manage. Its unfortunate but the Democrats in NY have blown the Governorship — no easy immediate fix. I don’t know NY politics but hopefully some other NY Democrat can step up to staunch the bleeding. If not, things could get much worse yet for the Democrats in that state.
Sad. I was hoping more for his tenure (Patterson).
burnspbesq
@Elie:
Root for the Dodgers this year. If they go all the way, maybe Joe Torre will retire from managing baseball and you can run him as the Dem candidate for governor. He’s at least as qualified as any of the other possibilities.
Will
@sparky:
I worked on a NY State gubernatorial race some years back. That was my last paid job in politics. The depth of the corruption was so sickening in this state, I simply did not want to work anywhere near it ever again. I learned a lot of things that season, mostly that NY state is by far the most corrupt in the country, and does not have a functioning and/or representative democracy governing it. I know that’s not exactly news to a lot of folks, but to hear it said over and over again, and then to actually witness it firsthand, are two very different experiences.
cmorenc
Or, along this line of thinking, you could equally walk this result all the way back to the inability of Patterson’s immediate predecessor Eliot Spitzer to resist his passion for $4000-an encounter call girls, when he won the Governorship on the basis of his record as a ruthlessly reformist AG attacking corrupt wealthy GOP-connected fat cats (giving plenty of folks motive to industriously dig around for something that might bring Spitzer down). Spitzer was far from perfect in managing his brief tenure as Governor, but I serously doubt he would have turned into the weak bumbler that Patterson has turned out to be, especially with the process of choosing Hillary Clinton’s interim successor.
JosieJ
Well, Paterson’s weakness and Spitzer’s inability to keep his dick in his pants didn’t help, but this dysfunction is endemic to Albany. Anne Laurie had it right when she said:
It’s changed in the past few years only in that, with term limits enacted in NYC, a lot of council members now try to move up to Albany when they have to leave their seats in the city. It’s more difficult (not impossible, just more difficult) to establish ongoing graft in the city–just when a council member is really getting going, term limits rear their heads and they have to move on. State senators and assembly members aren’t term limited, so once the gravy train starts rolling, it’s really difficult to stop.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Espada and Monserrate will pay any political price for switching sides. They’re both from heavily Latino districts and their homophobia won’t necessarily hurt them among that population as long as they continue their fear-mongering about the Church being forced to marry gays and lesbians. Because of his personal issues, Monserrate may be on slightly shakier ground than Espada, although we’ll have to see how the Dems respond, and what happens in the next election.
Of course, the state GOP is still in some disarray, despite their coup–although not as much disarray as the national party–so the Dems may pick up a couple of seats elsewhere and render Espada and Monserrate moot.
Ron
@PurpleGirl:
Actually, Espada had told NY-1 he was in favor of the marriage equality bill and Monserrate was listed as “undecided”. So it doesn’t seem to be about that bill at all.
JosieJ
I hadn’t heard about the NY1 comments; I thought Monserrate had indicated in the past that he was against the bill, on the grounds that it would force churches to solemnize marriages between gays and lesbians. Turns out Espada was a co-sponsor of the bill, so obviously, I got that one wrong! I could be wrong about Monserrate, as well.
sparky
i wonder if the Mayor-For-Life is thinking about becoming Gov-for-Life.
JosieJ
I unsuccessfully tried to edit the above to say:
I hadn’t heard about the NY1 comments; I thought Monserrate had indicated in the past that he was against the bill, on the grounds that it would force churches to solemnize marriages between gays and lesbians (even though it would do no such thing). Turns out Espada was a co-sponsor of the bill, though, so obviously I got that one wrong!
Bruuuuce
It gets even more complicated; the vote in question took place after the Senate had been gaveled closed.
And, to make it better, not only is that scumball Monserrate (my Senator, I’m sorry to say) a felon who needs to be incarcerated for his assault, but Espada apparently doesn’t even live in his district! (can be he impeached for that?) and is also under criminal investigation for other reasons.
Too bad they did this Monday, and not Friday, before Queens Pride — where IIRC Monserrate appeared (though perhaps not, as I didn’t see him). He’d better resign himself to an “ex-” before his “Senator” title.
My letter to him includes one of my favorite quotes from the movie 1776: “Dear Sir, you are without any doubt, a rogue, a rascal, a villain, a thief, a scoundrel, and a mean, dirty, stinking, sniveling, sneaking, pimping, pocket-picking, thrice double-damned no-good son of a bitch.”
Every word is true.
someguy
You’re ignoring all the good things about New York though. It’s got a very generous social safety net including better than average health and workers comp benefits, and the state is very favorable to union labor – you can’t win a lucrative state contract unless you’re unionized or paying prevailing wage & beneifts. The environmental protection laws are among the best in the country, holding any commercial property owner liable for any pollution on the property, including forcing cleanup of pre-existing (pre-purchase) pollution. The income tax is admirably progressive, though obviously not high enough to cover the budget shortfalls. Plus it’s not that corrupt; the governor is the guy who really runs things and the legislature, though crooked and newsy, doesn’t have a whole lot to say in how things are actually run.
The real problem is that downstate needs to cut and run from corrupt Republican upstate – cede it to New Jersey or Pennsylvania or maybe Mississippi. Do that and New York would prosper.
sparky
@someguy: i think you are conflating specific policies with the substance of the government. nys has a horribly dysfunctional state government, and the reason it has progressive policies is that the costs are always fobbed off on people who have no say in them. unrepresentative corrupt and wasteful government doesn’t magically become better just because we prefer the policies.
and if you want an example of how even the good policies are only the product of corruption, you need look no further than Pataki’s diversion of the Empire/Blue Cross conversion money directly to 1199. looting isn’t better just because it is bi-partisan.
Randy Paul
I’ve lived in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New York and Tennessee.
California, New Jersey and New York were the best of the 7, at least when I lived there.
Bruuuuce, I feel your pain. I live in Jackson Heights.