‘Silver knows that his power base- minority legislators and hoaryWest Side liberals – really has no placeto go if he moves toward the center.So that’s where he’s headed.’
WHATEVER it is that George Pataki has on his mind for this morning, this much can be said with certainty: As far as the New York State Republican Party is concerned, when the governor finally does depart the scene, it will be as if he had never arrived in the first place.
In this respect, he has much in common with New York City’s premier Republican, Rudolph Giuliani.
Each rode a wave of civic disquiet into office.
Each authored substantive, positive, policy reforms – albeit reforms that won’t linger following their respective departures.
Why not? Because neither has done anything to encourage an ideologically appropriate succession.
Regarding Giuliani, this doesn’t surprise. His mandate was to rescue New York City not from the Democrats, but from Dinkinsism run amok.
And so he did. But now everybody just thinks he’s rude – which, of course, he is. He’s also term-limited, ambitious and self-obsessed – plus he’s paid so little attention to his party’s needs that soon the city could be in the hands of Mark Green. (Think Dinkinsism Lite.)
But who could reasonably expect more? Republicans in Gotham are like the snail darter – rare and endangered.
By contrast, the suburbs have been fertile fields for the GOP. But lately they haven’t been tended well.
So shame on Pataki. He’s trying with all of his might to become a lame duck (after having acted like one since January), and he’s done virtually nothing to strengthen the party that brought him to the dance.
Thus he could be ceding the future to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, famous Democrat of Manhattan.
Consider this: While last week’s rancorous municipal commuter-tax debate was said mostly to be about a special one-seat state Senate race now underway in Rockland County, it was actually about much more than that.
Just as Silver’s deft turning of Pataki’s right flank on mandatory drug-sentencing laws was about more than crime and punishment.
Here’s what’s happening: Next year, New York will elect a reapportionment Legislature – 211 lawmakers who will rewrite jurisdictional lines likely to determine the distribution of political power for the entire decade.
The Democratic Party is within reach of two cherished goals: Outright control of the state Senate, and a veto-proof majority in the Assembly.
If, as seems likely, this week’s Rockland County Senate race goes to the Democrat, that party will be five seats shy of a majority going into the year 2000 elections. A long shot, for sure, but so was Charismatic a month ago.
Silver’s Assembly majority, however, stands at 98-52. This is just two seats short of the total he needs to be able to ignore the GOP forevermore – especially regarding reapportionment.
This is why Silver trolls the suburbs.
Take Nassau County. Shelly wants to.
It comprises, in whole or in part, 11 Assembly districts; seven now are Republican – no surprise, given the GOP’s paleolithic control of the county.
But Nassau is wracked by scandal. It may be the only political subdivision in North America that’s not running a fat budget surplus. Hundreds of patronage jobs could be lost soon – and taxes likely will go up sharply anyway. For this, the GOP will be blamed.
Moreover, next year is a presidential election year; this hardly ever hurts Democrats in New York.
How hard could it be for Silver to pluck two, three – or more – seats out of this broth? Not very.
Silver understands that political power is migrating out of the big cities along with middle- and working-class families. And the speaker knows that his power base – minority legislators and hoary West Side liberals – really has no place to go if he moves toward the center.
So that’s where he’s headed.
Witness his embrace of the commuter-tax repeal. This is a kick in the head to the city – but it will allow Democrats to campaign as tax-cutters not just in Rockland County, but in Nassau and everywhere else in the suburbs.
And what of his refusal to consider Pataki’s proposal to repeal the “draconian” Rockefeller-era drug-sentencing laws? Silver knows that suburbanites have little patience with crime, or with apologists for criminals. In the past, this made little practical difference to him.
But now he’s working the ‘burbs – and for the first time since the Rockefeller laws went on the books in 1973, a Democrat has gotten to the right of a ranking Republican on the issue.
Again, don’t bet that it won’t pay off.
And if it does, look for some variations on the theme.
An Assembly majority with a strong suburban presence will do nothing radical regarding public education. Suburbanites know that city schools are terrible – that’s largely why they’re suburbanites, after all.
And they tax themselves silly supporting their own schools, with which they are most pleased – and while they’ll support lots more state school aid, they’ll permit no structural overhaul of current funding formulas.
Look as well for diminished support for New York’s appallingly wasteful health-care delivery system – ultimately, it threatens their own health plans – and no support at all for anything more than inflation-driven spending hikes for welfare and related social programs.
This stuff just don’t fly too high in suburbia.
Nature indeed abhors a vacuum.
Pataki and Giuliani have conspired to create one. Shelly Silver, however tentatively, means to fill it.
Ironic, isn’t it? Smart, too.