I’ve found the overarching tradmed coverage of the New York State Senate debacle to be depressingly uninformative – no one really seems to know what’s going on. But there have been a few developments that bear noting. First off, a state judge refused to grant Dem Sen. Malcolm Smith’s request for an injunction to stop the GOP from conducting Senate business, saying he lacked the authority to do so. The GOP + Pedro Espada + Hiram Monserrate proceeded to conduct a brief, do-nothing session, which more or less came to an end when Monserrate walked out after giving a speech, denying the Skelos-Espada faction a quorum to do anything further.
Monserrate’s behavior has been unusual – under considerable pressure, he’s been playing footsie with his Democratic frenemies, making it seem like he’s not totally committed to the coup. He better decide soon, though, because of couple of folks are already starting to sound a bit like potential primary challengers: Assemblyman Jose Peralta and NYC Councilwoman Julissa Ferraras, his former CoS. Meanwhile, the chief advocate of gay marriage in the state, Thomas Duane, briefly considered switching sides as well – Espada said he’d like to see Duane’s marriage equality bill come to the floor. But later reports have said he’s staying put.
Undoubtedly there will be much more to come in the days ahead.
get the primary challenges set up and be done with it. We need to make sure that some serious and strong contenders for these seats get involved.
Disagreement is one thing, but allowing the Republicans to actually be in control is something completely different…these 2 need to go and they need to go now.
What has been pretty clear to me is that the existing Senate Democratic leadership really wasn’t up to leading a majority. Plus, it seems like a quarter of the caucus just isn’t fit to serve.
Most of them need to be gone anyway. They get in and no matter if it’s their first term or tenth they not only feel like but actually know they’ve got the seat for virtually forever.
But given that will never happen. Let’s start with these two traitors. Add in Duane. And Ruben Diaz who was part of the last conspiracy. Hell, just toss any incumbent from the Bronx. Not too many babies will go down with the bath water.
1. The governor has been outraged. He has been busy digging a bigger, better and deeper hole for himself. These two rebels and the GOP go behind his back and take over the senate with the GOP! If they had the courage to do this in front of him, he would have thrown a shovelful of mud/dirt on them. What a missed opportunity!!
Some of the plotting took place in a senator’s office across the Governor’s mansion in Albany.
At a press conference, Gov Paterson said that this will not be allowed. When asked what he was going to do to stop this, he could not not come up with any suggestions.
2. The republicans met Hiram’s and Pedro’s asking price and got the deal. The Right Hon. Senator Thomas K. Duane also negotiated with the GOP. They would not meet his asking price – bring the gay marriage legislation to vote. An indignant Tom Duane is a democrat – for the time being.
The timing of the Bruno announcement seems more than a coincidence…, ref
http://andrewsullivan.theatlan…
It sounds like that may have been the offer made to State Sen Duane.
What the FLYING FUCK is going on here?
(It’s probably still a rhetorical question at this point.)
Carol Shea-Porter is going to be really hard to beat and generally tends to outperform the polls shown in a general election. She is likely going to keep that house seat for a while.