This is a really odd story:
A top New York State lawmaker was arrested early Tuesday morning for what federal prosecutors said was his central role in a brazen series of bribery and corruption schemes, including an attempt to buy a spot on the ballot in this year’s race for New York City mayor.
In outlining the charges against the lawmaker, State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, as well as five other politicians and Republican Party leaders, United States Attorney Preet Bharara said the case was but the latest evidence that corruption in New York was “pervasive.”
“Every New Yorker should be disheartened and dismayed by the sad state of affairs in this great state,” Mr. Bharara said.
Mr. Smith, a Queens Democrat who rose to become the first black president of the State Senate, was accused of conspiring with City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III, a Queens Republican, to get his name on the ballot for mayor as a Republican, which would require approval of a majority of the party’s leadership in the city.
The others arrested were Joseph J. Savino, the Bronx G.O.P. chairman; Vincent Tabone, vice chairman of the Queens Republican Party; and Noramie F. Jasmin, the mayor of the Rockland County village of Spring Valley, and her deputy, Joseph A. Desmaret, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint details a scheme hatched in a series of clandestine meetings in hotels, with cash passing hands in parked cars and hushed conversations in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day and even in Mr. Smith’s office in Albany. The meetings, recorded by an undercover agent or a cooperating witness, were primarily among Mr. Smith, the undercover agent and the witness, and Mr. Halloran and the agent and the witness. The scheme involving the race was one of three bribery schemes charged in the case.
Does anyone know what the logic or reason behind this was? I remember a while back when the issue of gay marriage was being discussed in NY and there was all sorts of party-switching mayhem, but NY politics is so obscure to me that I can’t really grok what this was all about.
If only there were some bloggers from the NY area who could explain this.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh John! You beautiful sweet dreamer. I just want to hold your face in my hands and stare longingly into your eyes. I want to feel your rapturous decency wash over me like the fresh milk from a warm baby burpvomit. I made a craft for you today. I embroidered it with our special name for one another, “Just Some FuckCole”. Tell me where to send it. No, don’t, I can’t part with it! Can I get six more phantom Balloon Juice subscriptions if I pay for 12? You are a kind man. What are you doing this weekend? Wanna watch old Friends episodes while we spoon? Yeah, me too.
Call me.
Shhh.
Just call.
TheOtherWA
I’ve been a political geek for a long time and have lived in several different areas of the US. This is one of the weirdest things I’ve read in a long time.
Got no answers for ya, John.
cathyx
@Just Some Fuckhead: Wow, that’s hot.
askew
NY politics is just a fucking mess. But, at least they managed to pass SSM. Something Delaware, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Oregon and Illinois can’t say. And considering that the Dems hold the Governor’s house and both State Senate and House in these states, it is embarrassing that SSM hasn’t passed yet.
Legalize
The simplest explanation is the one I always go with: NY politics is crooked.
scav
It is rather confusing that their minority outreach program (for candidates) involves money flowing in that direction, but maybe that’s just a sign that they really don’t see race. Everyone has to buy their way in. Should be fun watching those trying to sell it all as a liberal plant nefarious scheme and those using it to prove that there’s no difference between the parties duking it out on the interwebs
Higgs Boson's Mate
Any black Democrat who wants to switch his party affiliation to “Republican” should be indicted for stupidity.
DougJ, Friend of Hamas
I was surprised to learn that this plan was illegal in New York. I thought that was how the primaries always worked here.
CDW
It’s a really poorly written article. I don’t even know what they did wrong. Money changed hands for something, but what? So a democrat wants to run for office on the republican ticket and he’s bribing them to put his name one it? Something’s missing.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Obligatory:
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
Geeno
NY Politics make “the Chicago Way” look like a model of good government.
Like, DougJ said, I’m kinda surprised it was actually illegal here.
DougJ, Friend of Hamas
@CDW:
I think the idea was that they were offering money to Republican leaders if they agreed to support a given candidate for mayor.
burnspbesq
Wait, what? Eleven comments, and no one has ripped into the US Attorney for pursuing this instead of bankster shenanigans, regardless of whether said shenanigans actually violate some currently effective part of Title 18?
I must have stumbled into the parallel-universe version of Balloon-Juice.
dandy
@dougj:
I was surprised that they did it illegally, since there is a legal way of doing it that you would have to be catastrophically stupid to miss. But catastrophically stupid is a pretty apt description for Malcolm and for anyone who, after 7 years of almost constant investigations (going back to his shady ass charter school, through “get in on the ground floor” and aqueduct) would have a conversation without expecting the FBI to tape it.
Culture of Truth
Apparently the GOP nomination nomination for Mayor is for sale, which shows that Donald Trump must really be broke if he hasn’t put in a bid.
Chris
@askew:
Random question: I often hear people on this blog talking about how the California Republican Party sank itself into oblivion because it was unable to compete. Why is it that the GOP in New York and the rest of the Northeast hasn’t done the same and is still competitive? Is it more flexible/moderate than the California GOP? Is the Northeast whiter or more conservative than California? Inquiring minds are curious to know.
TRNC
No idea what’s going on in NY, but nice use of the word “grok” there, Cliff Claven.
David Koch
This is all Obama’s fault
DougJ, Friend of Hamas
@dandy:
There’s so many legal ways to go this kind of thing in NY, I don’t see why they didn’t find one.
But, yeah, Smith is an idiot so no surprise.
BGinCHI
I lived in Tompkins County for 4 years and never heard it referred to as the “People’s Republic.”
Yes, it’s got hippies and is relatively liberal, but Cornell is not a uniformly liberal university. Also, you get a few miles outside town in any direction and it’s extremely rural.
I used to teach in Cortland and the 30 mile drive was beautiful but with lots of serious rural poverty.
Finger lakes area is a strange combo of haves and have nots.
MikeJ
@Chris:
Republicans in NY are given a pass to say whatever they have to say to get elected. In California they’re expected to be ideologically pure.
ribber
Think about it. Bloomberg became a Republican because the Dem primary in NYC is tough. Switching parties puts you in the final game. Difference is that this guy decided to buy, and they were willing to at least pretend to sell.
Tod Westlake
I live in NY. The short answer is, Smith is a member of the Bigot Caucus that prevented the Democrats from retaking the upper chamber this January — even though they won enough seats to do so. Smith, Hikind, and a handful of other anti-gay Democrats broke off to caucus with the Republicans. You all may remember this from a few months back. Now, add to this mixture the NYC mayoral race, in which out lesbian Christine Quinn has a damn good chance of winning, and it all becomes clear. Smith couldn’t win the Dem primary as an anti-gay Democrat, but he could potentially win the GOP primary as one. With fusion politics legal in NY State, these kinds of crossovers actually happen fairly frequently, especially at the local level. But it appears Smith overplayed his hand. Good riddance.
SatanicPanic
@Chris: destroying their own popularity with Latinos via Prop 187 may have had something to do with it.
Trollhattan
@Chris:
CA legislature is kind of a microcosm of the US Senate, in that it takes a supermajority to pass most things fiscal, due to Republican poison pills. At present the Dems have supermajorities in both houses for the first time in decades.
It’s in part the result of Republican redistricting shenanigans being turned against them last time, but it won’t last. (We elected Ahnold and Pete Wilson twice, for fuck’s sake.)
Not happy that we serially send Issa and McClintock to congress.
EdTheRed
When asked for comment, State Senator
Clay DavisMalcolm Smith responded with one word: “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-yit.”Yutsano
@Chris: California has a much larger Latino population to piss off, which was the direct result of Prop 187. This caused a huge move to the Democratic column for a big chunk of voters. The NE really doesn’t have that and the other states don’t have one city with four-fifths of the population like WA does.
Ted & Hellen
@burnspbesq:
You certainly do go out of your way to push that prize pile of Bot Bullshit whenever you can. Feeling defensive?
•With no mention of Wall Street and the banks anywhere in either his second inaugural speech or his 2013 State of the Union address, the President appears to be wishing the crisis behind him more than addressing its still festering wounds.
BruceFromOhio
That was some twisted shit. I hope that blockhead ideology haunts them all for a good while.
NYC is a long way from the buckeye, but I’d like to know more about Quinn, esp if her competition is stupid enough to get busted by the cops.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@MikeJ:
Not just ideologically pure, ideologically rabid. Until the last redistricting CA Republicans only had to worry about challenges from the right. Being the most batshit insane candidate was necessary for both election and re-election.
Trollhattan
@EdTheRed:
Heh. One my favorite teevee characters of all time.
Anoniminous
@burnspbesq:
I blame Obama.
David Koch
@Tod Westlake:
Why didn’t Cuomo use the Bully Pulpit to stop that?
burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
Couldn’t resist the bait, couldya?
Trollhattan
O/T My nominees for bravest people in America.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/02/187517/abortion-clinic-to-open-in-wichita.html#storylink=cpy
Gin & Tonic
Christ, can you just imagine, somebody actually thinking that you could just buy the mayorship of New York City? What kind of ludicrous thought is that?
Tod Westlake
@David Koch:Indeed. He could have made life a living hell for these traitors. But, he kept his powder dry for some reason. Of course, Cuomo is a swine too. He’s a halfway decent swine, but a swine nevertheless.
max
@Tod Westlake: Smith couldn’t win the Dem primary as an anti-gay Democrat, but he could potentially win the GOP primary as one. With fusion politics legal in NY State, these kinds of crossovers actually happen fairly frequently, especially at the local level. But it appears Smith overplayed his hand. Good riddance.
Specifically, if he could get the R’s to go along with him, he could corral the R votes and then (in theory) get enough of the D vote to win, because he’s black (or possibly because the Quinn is something-something). The R’s get their name on a candidate and some favors, and Smith gets a promotion.
(A variant of this is SOP in Dallas.)
I don’t think it would work, because Bloomberg wasn’t going to bail on his pet, and Bloomberg’s money plus the Street is probably enough to seriously impact Smith’s R’s vote share. I’m thinking he maybe figured he was doomed in Lege due to being less than loyal, so it was ‘up or out’. Very optimistic of him to think paying off people was worth it.
max
[‘He’s going to be the April Fool all month long.’]
Chris
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Story of America’s life in the last fifty years.
It surprises a lot of people my generation to realize how red California was until very recently (gave the country Nixon AND Reagan). But when the pendulum finally swung, it swung hard. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Tod Westlake
@max: That was my point. He’d run in opposition to Quinn as the anti-gay candidate, and then hope he can scrape together enough votes in the outer boroughs. It was a long-shot even if he was able to convince the GOP bosses.
MikeJ
PSG levels!
Ted & Hellen
@burnspbesq:
Any valid reason why I should? Your president is a corporate/banker/elite fraud. Your own awareness of that is why you feel compelled to post what you hope will be pre emptive comments acknowledging it in the form of ass backwards mockery.
Chump.
Tokyokie
The joint where I had lunch today had Fox News on (with the sound off), and the crawl for this story prominently identified Smith as a Democrat (not as one looking to switch parties) and I believed misidentified Halloran as one. Others indicted were identified as Republicans at the end of the story.
nanute
This is a clear case of a handful of Republican politicians seeing an opportunity to fleece 500 large from a black/African American rube. They would gladly take his money and most likely put a more viable candidate of their choice in the primary against him.
Bruuuuce
Tod Westlake has the unspoken part of it. The bit that’s been in the news here is pretty straightforward. The Democrats have a croweded primary ticket, with several strong candidates. The Republicans, not nearly so much. The real key here is that Smith wanted the R nom without officially changing his party affiliation from D (you may remember that Mayor Mama Bloomie did just that so he could take the office).
danielx
Semi-bipartisan corruption among NY pols?
Say it ain’t so…
danielx
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, yeah! Especially when they thought they could buy it so cheaply.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
Pete Wilson was elected almost twenty years ago, and Arnold was a special case who would have been too liberal to have gotten the nomination if he had been running in a regular election. The Republicans are going to remain irrelevant until they are willing to nominate candidates who are closer to the political center.
Tod Westlake
I should add that the NYC GOP already has a pretty strong candidate in former Port Authority boss Joe Lhota. Smith didn’t stand a chance of convincing the GOP, which is what the envelopes were for.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
I hope you’re right–as in, until they elect a few Pete McCloskeys the California Republican Party remains a scattering of fringe idiots. But, given the Big Speaker at their recent party gathering was Karl Rove, I don’t think they’re past “we weren’t sufficiently conservative.”
jl
@Chris:
” Random question: I often hear people on this blog talking about how the California Republican Party sank itself into oblivion because it was unable to compete. Why is it that the GOP in New York and the rest of the Northeast hasn’t done the same and is still competitive? Is it more flexible/moderate than the California GOP? Is the Northeast whiter or more conservative than California? Inquiring minds are curious to know. ”
My two cents. Besides pissing off Latinos with the anti-Hispanic hate campaign years ago (and to which they cannot help reverting often enough to keep the memory alive), the CA GOP is melange of extreme libertarians, anti-tax fanatics, cynical opportunists/scam artists who prey off of gullible and scared bigots and frightened old white people, and the minority of the younger who are selfish libertarians.
CA is more liberal on social issues, and right in the center on economic issues. And the CA GOP has become batshit insane extreme libertarians, anti-tax nuts, social conservatives, and big money crony capitalists who hide in among those other factions.
Compared to CA as a whole, the CA GOP is totally out of it. They had influence to do corrupt gerrymandering by CA leg (including cowardly assists by Dems) and super majority rules on budgeting and tax measures in CA constitution (some of which have been eliminated recently).
Odd fate for the CA GOP that from a little over hundred years ago until the late 1950s contained pols who major liberal progressive forces in the US.
Edit: and CA GOP has really serious problems with any kind of immigration reform, which hurts them not only with Hispanics, but also Asians, South-Asians, and other immigrant populations, which you add them all up in CA, means politically, no effing future at all.
dollared
@MikeJ: Shit.
dollared
@MikeJ: Still, two away goals. And Barca will be a better team if it has to play for a couple of weeks without Messi.
jl
@Roger Moore: Arnold was despised by the CA GOP. I mean hated as a goofy commie. Arnold was bad with political schmoozing and arm twisting, but even had he been better, I doubt it would have made much difference with the CA GOP.
The CA GOP was also just in your face ‘eff you’ nasty as long as they could block things. As long as they had their precious 1/3 + 1 presence in the leg to block things, they basically told everyone but the GOP base to eff off. Didn’t give interviews on radio or TV during or after big political battles to explain their side. When they did appear, they were as likely to go off on some bastshit insane rant as say anything relevant to what was going on. They just had an absolutely foul public demeanor.
I don’t think it will change. Karl effing Rove was, as far as I could tell from the news, brushed off when he recently appeared at their state convention to mildly and politely suggest that being basthit insane assholes might be a problem in winning elections. As soon as ol’ Karl was quietly shown the back door after his speech, loons and crooks like Issa raved like lunatic hate mongers and insane conspiracy theorists for the rest of the conference. And the CA GOP base ate it up.
Now that they are totally irrelevant, CA GOP pols and flacks come on the radio and TV and say nice things about Jerry Brown, since he is slightly more conservative than the leg. But they are just groveling for Jerry’s favor, or maybe trying to get him to notice that they exist. They have absolutely nothing of substance to say to anybody but their own nutcase base.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I think the impact of Prop 187 is exaggerated. The plain truth is that California was already swinging Democratic at the time, so Pete Wilson pushed 187 to drive Republican turnout. Latino voters were strongly Democratic before 1994, and there’s no special evidence that there’s any kind of lasting Prop 187 effect that makes them lean more strongly Democratic in California than they do in the rest of the country. It’s just that Latinos are such a large part of the California electorate that their general Democratic lean has the power to be a major drive in California politics.
If there’s something that’s really going to pour salt in the California Republican Party’s wounds, its losing the Asian American vote. Until quite recently, Asian Americans leaned solidly Republican. In the past few elections, though, they’ve done an about face and actually voted more strongly Democratic in 2012 than Latinos did. That’s not a huge deal nationally, since they only make up about 3% of the population, but they’re something like 15% of the population in California. That makes something like a 5% swing in the overall vote, which is enormous.
Trollhattan
@jl:
As a historical side
shownote, when Ahnold had first been elected, the Republicans were quite vocal on the need to overturn that pesky, no-longer-needed requirement for presidents to be born in the US. Yeah, he was to be their next St Ronaldus, “mit accent.” But once Ahnold began governnating, they realized to their shock that they had not actually elected Conan the Barbarian.As somebody who voted against the recall, it offered some small, cold comfort.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, another question in the same mold – what’s with the recent about-face? It’s not like the GOP was shy about the fact that they were prejudiced before now. Is it like the Cuban Americans, where anticommunism was strong enough to join the Republicans with Chinese- and Vietnamese-Americans, but the new generation that’s never been to the Old Country just doesn’t care as much? Or is it that they’ve become more fanatically anti-immigration, as JL points out? Or both?
And thanks to all the people who answered the previous question about the California GOP.
Anya
@Just Some Fuckhead: I don’t like to see my elders propositioning each other, so stop it.
jl
@Chris: As I said above, anti-immigration stance and anti-white bigotry of GOP base is a continuing problem. Sure prop 187 was yeara ago. But remember that before 911, the national GOP attempts to gin up China as our new global enemy was pretty in-your-face insulting BS to most Asians, not only Chinese. Digging up the corpse of ‘we coulda shoulda won, and look now how awful commmie Veetnam is now’ BS is insulting to young Vietnamese who go back and visit, and while they do not like all that is going on, know that the place is not a totalitarian hell hole.
A lot of middle class East Asian immigrant kids on UC snd Cal State campuses who are going to be doctors, engineers, accountants, etc, are not citizens yet. They came over here as kids and for one reason or another are still in the process. They have resident alien siblings and cousins (Edit: and aunts and uncle and parents) who are not citizens yet. Anyone has trouble with immigration reform is going to have big trouble with that group, and since the issue is important in terms of both $$$ and personal life, I think the bitter memories will last a long time.
dandy
@DougJ, Friend of Hamas: FACT. the only thing surprising here is that dan halloran found a black guy to talk to him.
Anya
@DougJ, Friend of Hamas: It’s crazy cynical but I was thinking the same way.
dandy
@Gin & Tonic: for 80 grand?
jl
And sorry, went to look but can’t find the links now, but IIRC, quality of education, access to education from K through graduate school, is a very big issue with CA Hispanics and Asians.
I remember reading stats that something like 1/4 of students in Cal State engineering programs are Hispanic. And I was surprised to read that the ‘cultural conservatism’ that the GOP loves so much in Hispanics includes access to arts and literature and cultural heritage resources and education (at least in Hispanic’s view).
So, GOP anti-education, privatized ‘pay to play’ education reform, anti-knowledge, is big negative with CA Hispanics as well as pretty much all East Asian immigrant groups.
Gin & Tonic
@dandy: I know, right? It cost Bloomberg almost $200 per vote to buy the 2009 election.
Chris
@jl:
@jl:
Thanks and thanks. (Admit I wasn’t expecting your first explanation; I would’ve thought that demonizing governments like the PRC would make the Republicans more popular, not less, among the Chinese and Vietnamese diasporas at least if not everybody).
Your answer at 63 is also interesting in that it shows how Republicans, without realizing it, are shooting themselves in the foot among minorities not just because of their Samuel Huntington crap, but because of their economic positions, too. Their basic answer to why minorities won’t vote for them is “oh Democrats have convinced them that we hate them, but if only they’d break through the brainwashing they’d see that our free market policies are good and consistent with their conservative values…” Turns out that Hispanics and Asians are perfectly aware of the Republican stances on economics and consider that, too, to be a bug rather than a feature.
Trollhattan
@jl:
And yay, California, for being down in the dollars-per-student cellar alongside the usual suspects from the south. Parents definitely notice this, no matter how much whinging noise Michelle Rhee is making at the time.
Reasonable 4ce
Malcolm Smith was always a DINO. He is (or was) a key member of the “bipartisan coalition” of Repukes and DINOs that have a stranglehold on the State Senate.
The State Senate is gerrymandered to maximize Republican representation — and DINO trouble-making. That’s why it’s such a mess.
Dan Halloran was elected to the City Council in 2009 on Bloomberg’s coattails and ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year. He was the guy who made up the conspiracy theories about sanitation workers staging a slowdown during the 2010 snow blizzard.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think that the Republicans have been a lot more publicly anti-anyone-non-white than they were before. A lot of my Chinese coworkers didn’t really appreciate how bigoted the Republicans were until quite recently, but they’re unlikely to forget it now that they’ve noticed. That, and gutting education funding is not a good way of winning the Asian American vote.
Trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Meg Whitman tried to emulate Bloomberg. Seems that didn’t work out so well for her, but the campaign team did okay.
Gustopher
The Democratic primary for mayor of NYC is always pretty competitive.
The Republican primary, however, is usually wide open.
So, if you want to get to the general election, you are better off running in the Republican primary. It’s what Bloomberg did, after all.
But in the general election, you would want everyone to know you’re really a Democrat, since the Democrats are theoretically stronger than the Republicans. (Bloomberg never really toed the party line, and has generally been in the centrist RINO/DINO camp, Guiliani was some bizarre mistake)
Which is why Smith wanted to run in the Republican Primary as a Democrat.
e.a.f.
I would suggest there is much more to this story than reported here. Why would some one “pay” to run for the Repbulicans? Really? All you need to do is mount a decent caimpaign and you’re in. There is a requirement that law enforcement deal with bribery but there are much more serious cases to be deal with than who gets to live in the mayor’s mansion for a few years.
Why would a democrat want to run on the republican ticket? All this alledged passing of money, it is about something else, of that I am sure.
Roger Moore
@Trollhattan:
Yeah, and produced one of the all-time fails of campaign commercials, the one where she talked about how wonderful California was when she first moved there, forgetting that Jerry Brown was governor at the time. It wasn’t as bizarrely amusing as Carly Failiorina’s Demon Sheep ad, but it sucks really badly when you appear to be endorsing your opponent’s record.
jl
@Chris:
” I would’ve thought that demonizing governments like the PRC would make the Republicans more popular ”
I thought that too, until I heard how many middle age and young Chinese think about it. A big contrast in their minds is between what happened to Russia and China since the end of the Cold War. Russia don’t look so good in comparison to China, especially to younger people. And Russia, with its oligarchs, weak government, and huge lawless cartels, looks more like GOP vision of future than China. I heard this contrast over and over again when I talked about free market capitalism and political reform in the PRC with younger Chinese. They say “Well, better be careful, maybe China will fall apart like Russia.”
The GOP China bashing doesn’t work, I think, except with bitter old Chinese refugees from the Revolution. And a lot of Chinese in CA have been here for over 100 years, and they don’t give a shit particularly about what in their view is, like European immigrant family offspring, ‘old country’ stuff.
GOP is misfiring badly on many cylinders, and they don’t even know it. Of course, the GOP brass is so indifferent to any reality that their base does not see, that they are out of it on many fronts, and totally clueless.
Matt McIrvin
Asian-Americans are about 5% of Virginia as well, concentrated greatly in the northern part of the state. Though it’s obviously not as significant as in California, I suspect they’re part of the story of Virginia going blue.
jl
@Chris: And also, remember that GOP approach to demonizing foreign countries to gin up some jingoism, seems to involve, maybe by accident, sooner rather than later, targeting some racial or ethnic or economic class group as ‘suspicious’. Funny how that always seem to happen, and funny how members of the targeted groups take offense, and funny how they tend to remember that for a long time, huh?
But, then if your core base support is white bigots, it is not so funny how that seems to always happen.
Chris
@jl:
I do LOVE the way Russia has turned out as an economic scare story. It used to be an object lesson in the dangers of big government and state controlled economies. The 1990s turned it into an object lesson on the dangers of Thatcher/Reagan style neoliberalism. It’s telling too that Putin’s return to a more nationalist and statist (though by no means Soviet level) model hasn’t provoked the kind of backlash from the Russian people that “shock therapy” did.
To know Objectivism is to hate it. Funny that its most die hard apostles continue to thrive in the mixed economy models of the West rather than the places where it’s actually been applied.
LarryB
@Trollhattan: Some of us here in CA called the lavish Whitman/Fiorina vanity campaigns “the little stimulus”. Came at a good time time to help dig us out of the crash.
OzoneR
@Chris:
GOP in New York still has a lot of support locally in the suburbs and upstate because they’re far more moderate and in the State Senate, they’ve gerrymandered themselves into a majority, though its actually a strong minority now.
But Halloran is only one of four (out of 51) elected Republicans on the City Council and his election was largely a fluke. His Democratic opponent in 2009 was Korean-American in a district where the white population is dwindling and Asian population is growing. This is the district surrounding Flushing. White Dems voted for him.
In that same election, a Chinese-American Republican was elected to represent Flushing itself- a district that usually voted 70% Dem. But he’s since switched parties.
Felonius Monk
It’s NY politics. Lots of ASSHOLES in both parties.
As far as I’m concerned, Malcolm Smith can’t spend enough time in jail. A real douche-nozzle that the Dems don’t need and, I think, most don’t want.
Reasonable 4ce
Also too: Malcolm Smith was a protege of former Congressman Floyd Flake, which should tell you all you need to know. But at least Flake was shrewd enough to bail out of politics while he was ahead of the game and before his schemes could blow up in his face.
I cannot emphasize enough how gerrymandering enables this crap. Democrats usually win the aggregate statewide vote in State Senate contests, but gerrymandering yields a 50-50 split in seats or a very narrow nominal Democratic majority. This gives DINOs like Smith enormous leverage to wreak whatever havoc they feel like.
One of the unintentionally comic aspects of the 2009 “putsch” was that it boiled down to two DINOs (Pedro Espada and Hiram Montserrate) stabbing a third one (Smith) in the back. Espada and Montserrate landed in prison. It would be poetic justice if Smith joins them.
Another Halocene Human
@askew: NY politics is just a fucking mess. But, at least they managed to pass SSM.
Really? NYS took an embarrassingly long time, with quite the cast of characters on the way, including NYC state delegates with ties to big donors and oh, that guy who was beating his girlfriend.
Something Delaware, Rhode Island,
Taste the Gini index!
Minnesota,
The election was in November. The Mass Assembly was advancing gay marriage bills for like six years straight before they passed one, and that was because the supreme court of Mass pushed them to do it.
Oregon
So, there’s this Eastern half of the state that starts about two MAX stops from Portland city center….
and Illinois can’t say.
Illinois is full steam ahead and well on track to be the first midwestern state to resolve the issue legislatively, unless dark horse MN beats them on the something something horse racing analogy.
And considering that the Dems hold the Governor’s house and both State Senate and House in these states, it is embarrassing that SSM hasn’t passed yet.
Because Democrats in Dem-majority states have never opposed SSM. (It’s unpossible!)
Massachusetts is involving in some serious union busting right now. Wow, Scott Brown’s tentacles are in everything!
Another Halocene Human
@Tod Westlake: He could have made life a living hell for these traitors. But, he kept his powder dry for some reason.
Oh, but they always do.
For some reason the GOP is willing to get into factional food fights, but the Democratic Party embraces their traitors. Must be a bad hangover of Stockholm Syndrome from the Reagan-Bush years. Or just the love of power and money.
(The GOP, OTOH, embraces their felons and perverts. Jeebus wants you to defiantly stay in office and keep denouncing sluts and whores, who are defs womenfolk and not a rapey, philandery manly man like David the King because you’re a King’s Son herp derp.)
Another Halocene Human
@Chris: But when the pendulum finally swung, it swung hard. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Indeed. I predict butthurt libertarians, butthurt that their weird electoral schemes did not inaugurate the libertarian paradise, to try to run their own candidates. Of course, they will have to do battle within the party with Inland Empire/Orange County old-school Okie fire-breathing fundies, but what’s a little backstabbing among friends?
Another Halocene Human
@Reasonable 4ce: I feel like gerrymandering also enables some of these DINOs who are really just corporate whores to stay in office. Their districts are packed (with a single ethnicity, if you know what I mean and I think you do) which means fixed primaries, no real contest, which means that as long as they perform on constituent services (in my experience, such pols do ‘take care of business’), they can grift away and expect no real challenges. No need to build a coalition (hence the bigotry), no need for the appearance of clean hands, etc.
Another Halocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: Heck yeah, especially after douchebags like my NoVa coworkers insisted on mispronouncing my Filipino colleague’s last name all the time … ugh … VA … wtf is up with that place … can’t wait for the anchor babies of the impoverished Mexicanos living in Manassas to reach voting age. Muwahahahaha. Bet they won’t forget how their parents and grandparents were treated, either.
Jay C
Well, the kind of underhanded under-the-table political shit Malcolm Smith just got caught at probably isn’t all that unusual in local/state politics – Not in NYC, anyway… Yeah, “Albany” is a reeking cesspit of corruption (and Albany just a reeking cesspit); but it’s probably no fouler than many more. The really unusual thing here is that Malcolm Smith and his sleazy buds got caught: I guess that’s an occupational hazard when your financier/bagman/broker turns out to be an undercover FBI agent.
@e.a.f.:
Smith probably felt he had to grease his way onto a GOP ticket because 1) he’s a sleazeball; 2) The NYC area still has its good-old-fashioned (Dem) Political Machine – Tammany Hall with PDAs – there’s a definite pecking order, and it’s hard to push your way in (especially if you’re an Assemblyman infamous for sandbagging your own party in Albany). The GOP may just have looked like a better deal; 3) he’s a sleazeball*
* besides the envelopes-of-cash-to-GOP-bosses stuff, Smith was allegedly involved in some fairly standard graft over State financing for some road deal in suburban Rockland Country: whose local pols just happened (purely coincidentally) to own real estate on said roads: Malcolm was supposed to be cut in as partner (again, purely by chance, of course….)
aqualad08
Easy. Next NYC mayor election, Quinn is a near lock for Dem nod. Smith sold out a 33-30 Dem majority in the state senate in order to curry favor with state GOP, knowing he had no chance against Quinn in Dem primary. However, general is always a shit show. Ask Bloomberg. In order to secure place in general, Smith was willing to take path of least resistance, split African American vote, squeak by. Needed GOP backing. Bribed for it. He’s a class A shitbag interested only his own power. Got caught.
AnonPhenom
Most political bloggers around these parts are very local (neighborhood stuff) or movement (check out some of the Kos diaries). That said, this guy is usually worth a read.
Rob
They don’t call us the most dysfunctional state legislature for nothing.