You may recall that, in the midst of the now-largely-forgotten brouhaha over Deval Patrick’s renting a Cadillac and fixing the drapes, there was a certain amount of wistful gazing over the border to New York, where Eliot Spitzer had just won a landslide victory and appeared to be well on his way to shaking up the mess that is Albany.
Well, y’all can forget that now. If you hadn’t heard, Gov. Spitzer’s top aide just got caught misusing the State Police to dig up dirt on the Republican Senate President — and then lying about it. Spitzer himself isn’t directly implicated (yet), but it’s a huge body blow to Mr. Ethics. Saith the Grey Lady:
Gov. Eliot Spitzer indefinitely suspended his communications director and reassigned another top official today after Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo’s office issued a scathing report accusing the governor’s staff of using the State Police for political purposes. The report was a devastating blow to a governor who had promised to bring a new dawn of ethical responsibility to state politics and validated growing outrage among state Republicans about Mr. Spitzer’s politicization of the governor’s office.
There’s more in tomorrow’s paper, and so far it’s getting worse rather than better. Folks, that’s some serious wrongdoing, whether or not it ends up being criminal. That kind of thing, not the Cadillac/drapes nonsense, is worth getting worked up about.
Also, the reporting on Spitzer sounds a lot different than it did a few months back. Check this out, also from the NYT:
His Aura Faded, Spitzer Faces Bolder Enemies
Nearly seven months ago Gov. Eliot Spitzer declared he would “change the ethics of Albany.” But yesterday Mr. Spitzer was reduced to apologizing for a scheme that seemed straight out of the political playbook he pledged to rewrite…. [T]he report has emboldened Mr. Spitzer’s enemies and threatens to derail his entire legislative agenda, starting with one of his major objectives: overhauling Albany’s notoriously lax ethics….
A little over six months ago, when Mr. Spitzer took office, everything seemed lined up in his favor…. Six months later, Mr. Spitzer’s administration has been knocked on its heels. His problems stem in part from the fact that unlike the business executives who often found themselves in his crosshairs when he was attorney general, legislators have far more power to fight back. Moreover, Mr. Spitzer appears to have energized a Republican Party that was listless not long ago.
Fascinating. Meanwhile, check out some of the commentary from our progressive fellow travelers in the Empire State:
I thought, furthermore, that Spitzer wasn’t properly employing his political capital toward message-building.
Well, all that was written back when Spitzer had political capital to spend. Others will argue over the details of how much Spitzer knew and when he knew it and whether he ought to fire this or that person. I’m not concerned with that. It seems that six months into his term, Spitzer has completely squandered the tremendous political capital he had in November. Well, honestly, despite not being a true acolyte of the Great Pumpkin, I’m dumbfounded. How could he do that? How can it even be possible, under the normal laws of political physics as it were, to throw that much capital out the window? … And nobody needs a blog or a columnist or a pundit to tell them what Spitzer has just managed to do to himself. He knows, they know and we know.
Now what?
Ouch. And again, more briefly but equally powerfully:
It would be an understatement to say that I’m disappointed.
I’m guessing the wistful looks of progressives disappointed with their new Gov are being cast our way these days.
No laws were broken. Spitzer fired the bad apples. I agree this is more serious than Drapegate etc. — which I always have thought was manufactured rubbish — but if what’s out is all there is, this will be nothing more than a memory in the autumn. Summer flings often end that way.
at least not yet, though Darren Dopp is suspended without pay. Another guy who’s implicated, Richard Baum, has so far had no action taken against him. And a third, William Howard, was reassigned to a different government job.
is the NY Senate, which has been held by the GOP for many many years. There are plenty of GOP NY Sens in districts who voted D for Pres, US House, and US Sen. Those folks, who are exactly the ones who’d help turn the NY Senate blue, are the ones who’ll be disgusted by Spitzer’s actions, and not particularly care if it was his employees, or even Spitzer per se. It’ll be more of “the Dems in NY are just as bad, and I’ll go with the evil I know [my GOP State Senator] over the evil I don’t [the Dem challenger].”
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Ultimately, crap like this makes it far harder to turn the state Senate blue. A fully Democratic [or GOP] lege has a much easier time trying out legislation that could make it’s way nationally, investing in the core issues that they value [instead of minor smidges here and there] and, as an added bonus, in most states it makes it far easier to gerrymander, which’d help their party at the federal level in the next decade.
made by this guy.
This is just so interesting. From the NY Sun:
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Hack payback? Maybe. But it’s also reality. So memo to the Patrick administration: pay attention to what’s going on in New York right now — Spitzer’s missteps could be a useful object lesson. The state legislature is both your best friend (because you need them to get anything significant accomplished) and your biggest enemy (because they’re going to hate some of your best ideas). I think Deval Patrick knows that, and he’s still working out exactly how to play it. Maybe he misjudged a few things vis-a-vis the lege in the early going, but lately he’s looked pretty good.
Both candidates are progressive, liberal, outsiders who have more experience in non political offices (be it corporate or prosecutorial law) than in politics. Both ran against their own state legislature, and both have found it really hard to work with their legislators. There have been missteps and bad plays by both guys.
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But what they really need to do is focus on some house cleaning and really purge the legislature of people they dont need. In the case of Patrick he should target the 20 or so Hackocrats in his own party that consistently get in his way. In Spitzers case a Demcratic Senate and he should manipulate who its President is. I guess he would then still need to guess Sheldon Silvers ass to get anything done but it beats dealing with a corrupt man like Bruno.
It’s the surest way to make sure the lege digs their heels in against him. Any legislator he can’t eliminate is an enemy for life, and many legislators he doesn’t even “go after” will forever be distrustful of him, his motives, and his actions.
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For progressives, it would be nice if some conservative Democrats or merely pro-status quo folks were replaced with progressives — but Deval Patrick would cut off his own hoo-ha [or hoo-hoo, depending on where you were educated] if he tried it.
… is that it’s different guys every time. I think DiMasi was a hero (relatively speaking) on health care; but he’s been completely in the special interests’ pockets on tax fairness.
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Really, I trust in the cowardice of politicians. So the question is how to make them more afraid of an active, engaged electorate than of the lobbyists. Patrick’s had only middling success at that so far.
marriage equality, and perhaps health care. It’s really hard for a Dem to run in MA and be anti-marriage equality at this point. The electorate has essentially “purified” the [future] Democratic politicians on this issue, in the same way they’ve done it for organized labor over the past xx years. Perhaps health care will be the next issue on the front burner, where Democratic voters demand a certain amount of “purity” from their candidates.
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If this is true, maybe it will happen one issue at a time. If so, I can only hope that my pet issue [energy/environment] will take it’s turn after health care.
…he’s gone after corp kahunas who made same excuse: i didn’t know what my underlings were doing.
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however, as for the question “now what”:
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he sits tight for a while, it blows over. bothers media more than average joe.