Senate Democrats’ deal-making debacle in Albany might allow a Western New Yorker to stumble into a key committee post after all, but it won’t be because of either stellar leadership or political power. Democratic leaders have demonstrated neither. While upstaters might actually salvage a little clout — although there’s no guarantee even of that — the term “stumble” is appropriate.
Let’s recap: Three dissident Democrats from Brooklyn and the Bronx last week cowed Senate Democratic leader Malcolm A. Smith, of Queens, into a deal that won them key perks in return for a promise not to side with the Republicans and keep the Dems from their cherished goal of total Legislature dominance. As part of that deal, a form of political blackmail, senior Buffalo-area Democratic Sen. William T. Stachowski, who had been all but promised the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, was brushed aside for one of the dissidents, gaining only a vague and relatively meaningless post as assistant majority leader.
That deal unmasked Stachowski, and by extension the rest of the Western New York Senate and Assembly delegation since the departure of Assembly Majority Leader Paul Tokasz, as politically weak and ineffective. It also revealed Smith as a weak leader, and as two-faced to boot; earlier, in a meeting with this newspaper’s editorial board, he had reassured questioners that he and other leaders in the Senate would look after Western New York interests. Instead, he let the most meaningful chance to show that commitment be hijacked by a handful of party dissidents.
Western New York, shut out of the top state jobs, is an economically devastated region that desperately needs access to key state decision-making. Giving it that access should be a top state priority. Obviously, it isn’t.
And those who misled area voters come across, not so much as liars, but as weaklings.
The deal now has fallen apart, apparently because the dissidents got even greedier — there is talk of a demand for an added state stipend, which is close to the current scandal in Illinois — and Smith called everything off.
And that means Stachowski just might get the gavel at the Finance Committee — although it offers little confidence that that accession to power and legislative influence will mean what it should, to Western New York.
In this election, Democrats did barely win a majority of the seats in the 62-member Senate. Among the hard, and expensive, pushes Democrats had to put on in the fall was the one to protect Stachowski, a steadfast but low-key figure, from a strong challenge raised by the more colorful Republican candidate, former Buffalo Police Detective Dennis A. Delano.
Smith put Democratic Party money and time into Stachowski’s effort. While his public pronouncements stopped short of saying it was a done deal, he was not shy about noting that, in a Democratic Senate, Stachowski would have “a leg up” on the juicy committee post. Now it seems clear that, no matter what Smith may have meant before the election, he didn’t come away with enough power to keep promises, or even fulfill suggestions. With a bare 32-30 majority in the Senate, Smith does not hold power so much as power holds him.
Smith, apparently, was even willing to surrender one post he envisioned for himself. Instead of following recent tradition of holding both the constitutional post of Senate president and the partisan job of majority leader, Smith had agreed to settle for being president and leave the majority leader’s role to another of the dissidents, Sen.-elect Pedro Espada of the Bronx.
For years, the criticism of how business is done in Albany was that power has been concentrated in the hands of too few people. Now, at least in the Senate, it appears that power is so fiercely fought over that no one has very much.
Especially, to our chagrin but not our surprise, senators from Western New York.