Politics Now

Building the bandwagon for gay marriage

  For several years, gay marriage rights has been a social issue that has sharply split the Democratic-run Assembly and the Republican-led Senate.

   In 2007, following a  long and emotional debate, the Assembly approved a measure legalizing same-sex marriages. Backed by then Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer, the Assembly stance has since been roundly embraced by Gov. David A. Paterson since he took office earlier this spring.

   But during the previous two sessions,  the Senate beat back lobbying efforts to have New York join other states that have legalized gay marriage.

   Now, things are fuzzier. Republicans are at risk of losing their Senate majority to Democrats. But still unclear is whether here would l be enough support to pass  bill.

   Supporters of gay marriage rights, however,  believe they stand a far better chance if the GOP loses control of the Senate. And from around the country, money is pouring into Senate Democratic races from people and organizations with an interest in having New York join Massachusetts, California and Connecticut with marriage equality laws.

   Donors say it's about simple civil rights, and that sooner or later New York is going to legalize such marriages.

   Opponents say a Democratic shift in the  Senate would result in the legalization of gay marriage  -- perhaps the first of many social policies that would change in  Senate that had been dominated by Republicans for seven decades.

--Tom Precious

Mr. Spitzer has arrived

It's become quite clear over the past year that Gov. Eliot Spitzer is no fan of the Capitol press corps -- AKA the Legislative Correspondents' Association.

Still, his aides brought a large, framed photograph of the governor up the one flight of stairs to the LCA, where the black and white image was put in place this morning -- on Day 355 of his admininistration -- along a wall of photographs of other governors dating back to Teddy Roosevelt.

Maybe fitting, but the Spitzer photograph is hardly warm and fuzzy; LCAers here this morning have characterized it as everything from Spitzer looking angry to confused. [Of course, mabe they were just upset their favorite Spitzer photograph -- a beach shot featuring a shirtless, smiling governor -- didn't make it onto the wall.]

Either way, he's here -- at least on paper -- and reporters can look up from their cluttered desks to the Spitzer image looming large in the center of the press room. Like the governor, who has rarely come to Albany since the whole troopergate affair blew up in July, the photograph also isn't much in the mood for answering questions.

As for George Pataki -- remember him? -- his photograph was moved into a corner slot, above the desk of a Bloomberg News reporter who was away from the office and had no say in the matter.

-- Tom Precious

Urban myth along the Thruway?

    Those suspicious of government have never looked kindly upon EZ-Pass, the program drivers can use on the Thruway and other highways and bridges to have tolls automatically deducted from an account via a signal that bounces off a device mounted on the driver’s windshield.

    So the Big Brother conspiracy theories have run amok the past week or so since a mysterious e-mail began spreading that the state had secretly begun a pilot program north of Albany to use the EZ-Pass system to catch speeders.

    "Recording devices were installed at intervals along the highway.  Once an (EZ-Pass) equipped vehicle passes, the device registers the account number and the time. Same is again registered at the next 'check-point.' Based upon the distance between the register points and the posted speed limit, the state is sending speeding tickets in the mail to the guilty persons," the e-mail, which has found its way into the hands of state officials, reporters and lobbyists. It even goes on to say special chips will soon be placed in new registration stickers to do the same task.

    No so, insists the state. In a rare case of responding to a rumor spread over the internet, the state Thruway Authority and Transportation Department have joined forces to shoot down the claims.

For starters, industry officials say, state law requires an observation or radar by a police officer of an infraction.

    "While the (Thruway) Authority accepts E-Z Pass as an electronic form of payment for tolls along the Thruway, current law in New York does not permit the enforcement of Vehicle and Traffic Law speed violations through the use of E-Z Pass. The Authority and State Police Troop T do not use E-Z Pass to enforce the Vehicle and Traffic Law along the Thruway," a statement by the agencies states.

"Similarly, officials at DOT and State Police do not use E-Z Pass to enforce the Vehicle and Traffic Law in New York State, on New York State roads, highways or interstates," a release from the agencies, which was provided by an industry lobbyist, added.

--Tom Precious

Breaking News: Spitzer says be nice to state legislators

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been tagged by some state legislators as a bully who enjoys threatening his critics. Remember the "steamroller'' characterization of himself to a lawmaker earlier this year?

But on the governor's 2010 campaign Web site, niceness apparently counts when communicating with legislators.

The campaign is asking people to write lawmakers, especially Senate Republicans, to urge them to end the gridlock and get back to Albany to take up important business. [Legislators, of course, say they are working, and that Spitzer is merely trying to deflect criticism from his Spitzergate/troopergate scandal and his new policy to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.]

Under its "tips for contacting'' legislators, the Spitzer campaign notes that the "best letters are courteous.''

"Never use vulgarity, profanity or threats,'' the campaign advises.

Words to live by.

-- Tom Precious

Albany gridlock gets new ammunition

Think the paralysis in Albany is going to be healed anytime soon?

If you have a hint of optimism, well, then consider the latest. Today’s New York Post reports that Senate Democrats, with knowledge by aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer, came up with a new idea to discredit the governor’s chief political rival: sic the IRS on him.

A letter was circulated this week by Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, who is the governor’s chief ally in the Legislature, to several colleagues in which a request is made to the IRS that it investigate whether Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno may have violated any tax laws in connection with his use of state aircraft.

[Bruno has been cleared by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of breaking any state laws for his use of a state helicopter, which he would sometimes use between Albany and Manhattan on days that were mixed with state and political meetings; his aides have said the flights involved no personal business.]

Smith said he put the brakes on the letter being sent to the IRS. But, more damaging to the already poisoned atmosphere in Albany, he told the newspaper that aides to Spitzer were also aware and involved in the effort.

All this comes after Cuomo reported in July that aides to Spitzer were part of a scheme to to use the State Police to monitor the travels of Bruno in an attempt to embarrass him. Spitzer and Bruno have been feuding all year.

It also comes as Spitzer has been insisting that the scandal – he and his aides never use that word – is over and it’s time to get back to the business of the state.

Apparently, not quite yet.

-- Tom Precious

Timing in life, and Albany, can be everything

The ongoing scandal at the state Capitol involving charges the Spitzer administration used the State Police to gather information to help smear a political rival of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, has caused finger-pointing in many directions.

   Some papers have been accused of being on Spitzer's side, others for siding with Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, the target of the monitoring.

When Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued his damaging report in July, the Times Union of Albany became a target because it received the State Police information that Spitzer aides were intent on using to deliver a political - and maybe more  - blow to Bruno.

Since then, Senate Republicans have been more direct claiming the Times Union was actually part of a scheme with the Spitzer administration to embarrass the Legislature's top Republican, something the paper has denied in defending its original July 1 story.

So it was curious this week to read the Sunday' Times Union, which reported an "exclusive" story on how the Republican Pataki administration kept information about Bruno's use of state aircraft.  The newspaper  relied on a Freedom of Information request filed earlier in the week with the State Police.

It was curious because The Buffalo News submitted a FOIL for the same information - more
than a week earlier. But The News didn't get the package of documents until after the Times Union story ran.

The whole matter was hardly exclusive to anyone.

Information that the State Police kept records of Bruno's flights was a rather obvious footnote - No. 10 on page 16  - of a recent report on the whole affair by the Albany County district attorney.

The Buffalo News, relying on the district attorney's report, put in its FOIL request on Sept. 25, seeking all of Bruno's travel documents from 2004-2006. The News also requested that it be called when the documents were ready, and it would be pick up the documents from the State Police offices.

A week later, the Times Union requested the same information.

The Times Union, according to its Sunday story, obtained the documents on Friday, Oct. 5.

The following Monday, after the Times Union story ran, The Buffalo News' FOIL request was found on the desk of a secretary in the press room of the Capitol. No postage or date of delivery on it, the package had been routed through a state mail system.

When the package actually was delivered is unclear, though it wasn't in the batch of mail examined Friday in the press room.

The State Police says it followed all the proper procedures for mailing. The date of the response from the agency was listed as Oct. 1. Still, the Times Union was confident enough to label its Sunday story "exclusive."

Cuomo's office has sharply criticized The Times Union's Sunday article because it claimed the new documents of Bruno's travels during the Pataki years raise doubts about Cuomo's findings that the State Police actions this year regarding Bruno's travel were out of the ordinary.

Lawyers for Cuomo, in a detailed letter to the Times Union, noted that the more recent efforts by the State Police under Spitzer was unusual because, in part, they re-created documents that never existed so they could be released to a newspaper.

"While we understand the Times Union's unique interest and involvement in this matter, it is important to us as investigators to keep the factual record clear," the two attorneys said in a letter posted earlier this week by the New York Daily News.

-- Tom Precious

Spitzer attacks critics, again

Gov. Eliot Spitzer continued beating back what he called the “rabid right" for opposing his new policy to permit illegal immigrants to obtain New York State drivers’ licenses.

“The rabid right that wants to pile on and use this to demagogue the issue will not carry the day in the State of New York," Spitzer said in Albany today.

With his policy under mounting criticism, Spitzer has sought to characterize opponents as right-wing extremists who are anti-immigrant.

And just who are these opponents? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been known to tilt left on occasion. Toss in former Republican NYC mayor and presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani and former Democratic mayor Ed Koch, who sometimes even gets called the “L" word.

Some district attorneys have come out against it. The union representing federal border patrol agents says it’s dangerous. So, too, does John Lehman, a member of the federal commission that investigated the 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attacks. OK, well, he’s a conservative.

Also in the “opposed’’ column are county clerks (a group not known as a bastion of conservatism, or liberalism for that matter), an assortment of Democratic lawmakers, a Democratic member of Congress, a Democratic county executive.

“Those who have ignored the issue of immigration for 20 years and now want to come back and say, ‘Oh my goodness, look at the problem that is out there.’ They are the ones who have created this," Spitzer said of the illegal immigrant problem.

“We’re governing. We’re not playing partisan politics," he added.

-- Tom Precious

Spitzer hitting the money trail

His at-home approval rating skidding, Gov. Eliot Spitzer will head to Texas tomorrow [Wednesday] for a day-and-a-half of political fund raising.

After weeks of bashing President Bush in a battle over a children's health insurance program, the Democratic governor will go to the president's home state to shake the Democratic money tree. A Spitzer spokeswoman said the trip will raise money for the governor's 2010 re-election campaign.

Word of the trip came after Spitzer continued his bashing-the-right-wing tour with a stop in Manhattan to rally against what he called the "politics of fear.'' He is waging a two-front war right now: with Bush over the health insurance dispute and with Republicans and some Democrats over his new policy to permit illegal aliens to obtain New York drivers licenses.

The governor leaves tomorrow morning and returns Thursday.

-- Tom Precious

Public still wants answers from Spitzer

Two investigations may have found no illegal acts, but the public is not buying that Gov. Eliot Spitzer did not know what his aides were up to in using the State Police to monitor the state travels of his chief political enemy, a new poll out today finds.

The Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters found that 78 percent believe Spitzer should testify under oath about his knowledge of what the attorney general's office found was a smear campaign directed against Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Spitzer was not questioned by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's investigators and the governor's appearance before the Albany County district attorney was not under oath. The state's Commission on Public Integrity is still investigating the matter.

"It's the old Watergate question. What did he know and when did he know it and three-quarters of New Yorkers want him to testify under oath,'' said Maurice Carroll, the Quinnipiac polling director.

In all, 56 percent of voters believe Spitzer knew about the campaign by his top aides.

The scandal continues to haunt the governor's standing among New Yorkers, the poll found. It showed his approval rating at 47 percent, the lowest since he has taken office in January and off considerably since his 60 percent rating just back in June before the campaign against Bruno surfaced.

Meanwhile, the approval rating for Cuomo -- who is not close with Spitzer and who some pundits believe could mount a primary challenge against Spitzer in 2010 depending on the political winds -- checked in at 62 percent.

-- Tom Precious

Business (not) as usual at the State Capitol

In the short-lived John Cleese comedy "Fawlty Towers," the line, "Whatever you do, don't mention the war,'' was among the more memorable.

Albany's version of that in chats these days with the Spitzer administration is, "Whatever you do, don't mention Troopergate.''

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has clearly reached his limits with reporters asking about the scandal his administration has been living through the past couple months since it was revealed top aides used the State Police to monitor the travels of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, his GOP nemesis.

There was the famous, "Get a life, buddy,'' comment that Spitzer recently said to a Binghamton reporter asking about the matter. And, the other day, Spitzer practically jogged through a hotel lobby to avoid the topic.

For nearly two months, Spitzer has done a disappearing act at the Capitol, at least with the press corps. He's held a couple of events nearby or an hour or so away in recent weeks, but has cut off his public events in the actual seat of government.

So when it appeared on the governor's schedule that he was to be in Albany today but with no public appearances, some reporters were wondering if the governor might also be meeting with investigators from the state Commission on Public Integrity, which is looking into whether any ethics laws were violated. At one point, a rumor spread that he was meeting at the agency's office across the street from the Capitol; that apparently wasn't the case.

Asked if he had testified before the commission, Christine Anderson, a Spitzer spokeswoman, said she was going to stop answering questions about when and if the governor will be meeting with the investigators.

But, we're told, no such sessions were on Spitzer's private schedule today.

-- Tom Precious