Mayor Emerges as Silver Crony

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, couldn’t find a lot of Republican friends at the state Capitol last week.


On Monday, for the umpteenth time this year, Governor Pataki accused Mr. Silver of blocking important legislation and spending money the state doesn’t have. Later that day, Mr. Pataki and the Assembly minority leader, Charles Nesbitt of Monroe County, worked together to deny Mr. Silver the votes he needed to override the governor’s budget vetoes. And the Republican Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno – who had previously joined the speaker in objecting to the vetoes – made himself scarce during the Assembly fight.


Maybe Mayor Bloomberg never got the memo from GOP headquarters. But just two days after this highly partisan battle, Mr. Bloomberg went out of his way to make nice with Mr. Silver.


“One of the reasons the city is doing well, in all fairness, is because Shelly Silver has looked out for our interests in Albany,” Mr. Bloomberg volunteered Wednesday night on “Talk line with Zev Brenner,” a Jewish-themed radio talk show. “I don’t think people quite appreciate just how hard he’s worked and how tough it has been on him to stand up for the city. I’m a friend of the governor’s and the majority leader, Joe Bruno’s, as well, but Shelly Silver deserves a lot of credit for helping this city.”


Later on the same show, Mr. Silver repaid the compliment by underlining the mayor’s departure from the party line.


“Mike Bloomberg is a different brand of Republican,” Mr. Silver said. “He is not the far right-wing Republican that dominates the Republican Party, that’s constantly angry.”


These expressions of mutual admiration come at a time when Mr. Pataki, the de facto leader of the state Republican Party, is doing his best to isolate and undermine Mr. Silver – to paint him as the root cause of everything that is wrong with state government, from high taxes and out-of-control lawsuits to late budgets and legislative gridlock.


Yet party regulars, when asked about the mayor’s comments last week, were not inclined to label them treason.


They agreed that Mr. Bloomberg – who was a registered Democrat until shortly before launching his campaign to be mayor – resides on the left wing of the Republican Party, even by New York standards. But they said the mayor’s good relations with Mr. Silver probably owe more to his pragmatic, businesslike style of governing than to his centrist politics.


Mr. Bloomberg can’t succeed as mayor without a lot of help from Albany, and, like it or not, very little can happen at Albany without Mr. Silver’s cooperation.


“Why folks are still surprised that the mayor speaks well of Speaker Silver is really beyond me,” said the Republican minority leader of the City Council ,James Oddo of Staten Island. “Long ago they should have learned you’re not going to hear partisan politics from this mayor.”


“It’s his style to keep good relationships with all those people who are players in helping New York,” Mr. Oddo said. “That’s his mantra…I have no problem with that.”


A Republican close to the governor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Pataki views Mr. Silver as a “a one-man wrecking crew on the state,” someone who bears much of the responsibility for New York’s high taxes and government dysfunction.


But the governor would not expect Mr. Bloomberg to take his side in that battle, the Republican said. While Mr. Pataki could win re-election with only a third of the vote in New York City, Mr. Bloomberg needs more than half.


“Therein lies the calculation,” the Republican said. “The governor and the mayor play their roles in this dicey game very, very well.”


In an interview last week, Mr. Silver said it is only natural that he and the mayor, who share a mutual constituency, should be friendly.


“He’s a pleasant guy to deal with, to do business with,” Mr. Silver said. We don’t agree on everything. He recognizes that people have a right to have a different viewpoint than he does….He’ll try to persuade and cajole, and he’s always happy to reach a compromise. That’s what politics is all about.”


Relations between Messrs. Silver and Bloomberg go beyond the merely cordial. The two periodically break bread at the Prime Grill, a kosher steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan. The mayor attended the bris, or ritual circumcision, of each of the speaker’s two grandsons.


Mr. Silver said he gets along well with other Republicans, including Mr. Bruno, with whom he plays golf. “The governor’s a different story,” he acknowledged.


So what has Mr. Bloomberg gotten for his courtship of Mr. Silver? Certainly not every thing he has asked.


The mayor wants Albany to shield the city from personal injury lawsuits, which cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year, while Mr. Silver, a trial lawyer by profession, generally resists efforts to rein in tort litigation. Mr. Bloomberg is pressing public employee unions for concessions on wages, benefits, and work rules, while Mr. Silver is one of the unions’ closest allies at the Capitol. And Mr. Bloomberg is expecting Albany to send the city billions of dollars in additional school aid, in compliance with a court order, while Mr. Silver’s proposed solution would require the city to shoulder a significant share of the cost.


According to a fiscal policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, these clashes make it hard for the mayor to argue, as he said on the radio, that Mr. Silver “has looked out for our interests in Albany.”


“What he said about Silver was very politic,” Mr. McMahon said. “But the more you think about it, the less true it is.”


The exception, in Mr. McMahon’s view, was Mr. Bloomberg’s biggest victory at Albany to date – winning mayoral control over the city schools. The teachers’ union and Assembly Democrats were leery of the proposal, and Mr. Silver could have blocked it from happening. In the end, however, the speaker brokered a deal in which Mr. Bloomberg got most of the control he wanted and the teachers got a two-year contract that increased average salaries by 16%.


“That clearly was a big thing that Silver did for him, and everybody in Albany understood it was Silver’s to do,” Mr. McMahon said.


To be sure, Mr. Bloomberg hasn’t gotten everything he wanted from his Republican allies at Albany either. Mr. Pataki has lined up against the mayor in lawsuits over school funding and refinancing $2.5 billion in city debt. And Mr. Bruno’s Senate Republicans were the chief obstacles to bringing back New York City’s income tax on suburban commuters. Those differences have not prevented the billionaire mayor from donating generously to Republican campaign accounts.


“It’s a reflection of his terrific understanding of the New York political ecology,” said a New York University professor who is close to the mayor, Mitchell Moss. “That’s what makes a great mayor. A mayor puts the citizens of New York ahead of partisan interests.”


The New York Sun

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