Governor Pataki’s Speech

William F. Hammond Jr.’s piece dealing with Governor George Pataki’s speech and self-promotion at the Republican National Convention brought disappointment [“Pataki Brings Delegates To Their Feet,” Opinion, September 3, 2004].

Mr. Pataki reminds me of the emperor with no clothes. Under his leadership, the GOP has lost or been unable to regain numerous public offices. This list includes two United States Senate seats, four congressional seats, including three on Long Island and one in Westchester, state comptroller, state attorney general, county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties, New York City comptroller, New York City public advocate, and five New York City Council seats.

Mr. Pataki’s approval of the 2002 reapportionment plan for the state Assembly allowed Democrats to gerrymander so many seats, the GOP is now a permanent minority, unable to grow beyond 50. Even worse, this guarantees Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver 100 votes to override any bill signed by the governor.

The gap between enrolled Democrats and Republicans has grown to over 2 million voters. His candidate against Senator Schumer – GOP New York State Assemblyman Howard Mills – is so weak that the Conservative Party candidate, Dr. Marilyn O’Grady, may actually receive more votes and win second place.

Mr. Pataki’s lavish spending of taxpayer dollars to various special-interest groups to grease his 2002 re-election must have made the late Governor Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, roll over in his grave.

His record deficits, excessive spending, and late budgets would just reinforce similar negative issues facing President Bush.

With no political coattails in New York, it is a foregone conclusion that he can’t even deliver his home state to the GOP column.

As a lame-duck governor, it is common knowledge that he is hoping for a Cabinet-level post in the next Bush administration. Should that fail, his ego is positioning himself for a future national run for political office.

The only way Mr. Pataki will get to Washington is as a tourist like you or me.

LAWRENCE PENNER
Great Neck, N.Y.

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Selecting Judges

Elected or appointed or anointed judges; that is the question.

David Hafetz’s stories on the bribery trial of Kings County Justice Gerald Garson [“Prosecutors Say Videos Show Garson Accepting Bribes for a Divorce Case,” New York, August 18, 2004, et seq.] and David Andreatta’s story on the machinations of the Brooklyn Democrats’ judicial selection process [“8 Candidates Vying For Democratic Line in Brooklyn Primary,” Page One, August 18] show why elected judges chosen by independent, merit-screening panels generally make better judges.

The state’s chief judge established a commission that has recently announced its preference for elected judges.

Consider Queens and Brooklyn. In Queens County, Supreme Court justice Laura Blackburne has been removed from her current assignment and transferred to “less taxing” duty.

She became a Civil Court judge and then a Supreme Court justice, both times in unopposed elections thanks to her county leader, Thomas Manton, and to her district leader husband.

In Kings County, we have Gerald and Michael Garson. Gerald has been charged by the district attorney with bribery to fix cases, and Michael has been “charged” by the press with mishandling his aunt’s estate.

In New York City, it is unusual to become a state trial judge (Supreme Court) without having served a term as a lower court judge (usually Civil Court), yet both Garsons became Supreme Court justices, also unopposed, directly from private practice thanks to county leader Clarence Norman and with help from Anthony Genovesi, the boss of the Thomas Jefferson club in Brooklyn.

However, the Manhattan County Democratic Party has used an independent merit-screening panel since 1977, and there have been no complaints about its elected judges.

Perhaps the Brooklyn and Queens county Democratic organizations should also use similar screening panels. Both litigants and their attorneys would be better served.

ALAN FLACKS
Manhattan

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‘Electoral College Football’

There has to be a better way to add a vote to the Electoral College to prevent an exact tie between two candidates than Bruce Bartlett’s proposal [“Electoral College Football,” Opinion, August 19, 2004].

Adding one more seat to the House of Representatives would not only engender a good deal of partisan squabbling in Congress – now only the state legislatures have to draw new lines and only every 10 years – with no easy and obvious resolution, it would also leave the lower chamber with 436 members, with no tie-breaking mechanism in place should everyone be present and voting.

This would, in effect, be a mechanism for requiring a slight supermajority for passage of a bill in such cases, which might or might not be a bad idea, but certainly one that should be entertained on its own merits alone, not simply for serving as a quick fix to what is, after all, only a quadrennial occurrence.

The House has had 435 members for decades before the New Deal changed American government forever. Let it be.

JOSEPH S. FULDA
Queens

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Protesters Pummel Officer

The New York Sun reported that I was cycling in a group of protesters when I was arrested [Protesters Pummel Officer, Leaving Him Bloody on Street, Eric Wolff, Page One,August 31, 2004].

In fact I was pedaling behind the group of cyclists watching them, performing my function as a legal observer and wearing the neon green legal observer hat that identifies me as such.

The Sun reporter who interviewed me may have missed that distinction, but the police certainly shouldn’t have when they arrested me.

KEITH EMMER
Manhattan

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