Pinning the Tail on Albany
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.

People tempted to see messages in the results of Tuesday’s elections to the state Legislature should have spent a little time outside the polls at Sunset Park, Brooklyn, on Election Day.
Chatting with the voters of the 23rd Senate District, which straddles Brooklyn and Staten Island, would be enough to alert anyone to an essential truth of state politics: The average citizen of New York City pays almost no attention to what happens at Albany.
The incumbent senator from the 23rd District, Democrat Seymour Lachman, is retiring at the end of this year, leaving a vacancy that both parties were eager to fill. The result was one of the few competitive races for a legislative seat from New York City. Democrats nominated a social worker and union activist, Diane Savino, and Republicans tapped a former official in the Giuliani administration, Albert Curtis.
Like many Democrats running for the Senate this year, Ms. Savino presented herself as an agent for change and reform at the state Capitol.
“Legislative gridlock. Late state budgets. Political scandals,” the Savino campaign wrote in one brochure. “Albany is broken and must be fixed….We need a proven fighter for working families to get our state government on our side once again.”
Mr. Curtis emphasized the clout he would bring to bear for the district as a member of the majority in the Senate, promising in a newsletter to deliver “big bucks for Brooklyn and Staten Island.”
On Election Day itself, representatives of both campaigns stood at the corner of Fourth Avenue and 60th Street in Sunset Park, amid the Asian-American grocery stores and Hispanic restaurants, handing leaflets to passers-by on their way to cast ballots at the Luis Munoz Marin Elementary School.
Yet voters leaving the polls were scarcely aware of the race at all. Most, in fact, did not recognize the name of either candidate.
“If he was on the Conservative ticket, that’s who I voted for,” said John Keegan, who evidently cast his ballot for Mr. Curtis. “I don’t care for the Democrats, and I feel like the Republicans have got their hand in the cookie jar….If they had a box ‘none of the above,’ that’s what I would do.”
A construction worker, Steve Filchuk, said he voted for whoever was on the Democratic ticket – which is to say Ms. Savino.
“Traditionally, the Democrats support union workers more,” Mr. Filchuk explained. “Unless a Republican is saying something I feel…I’ll vote along party lines.”
In the end, Ms. Savino won with 63% of the vote. Not coincidentally, 59% of the voters in the district are registered Democrats.
This is not to say that New Yorkers are blind party loyalists. They have, after all, elected Republican mayors three times in a row. And statewide politicians such as Governor Pataki consistently win a share of votes from New York City Democrats.
When it comes to “down ballot” offices, however, most New Yorkers don’t know enough to form independent judgments. Far from carefully weighing the reform issues gripping the state Capitol these days – such as how to divvy up the cost of Medicaid between state and local governments, or whether legislative rules should be changed to give more clout to rank-and-file lawmakers – the voters of New York City play the political equivalent of pin the tail on the donkey.
“They see ‘Democrat,’ they associate that candidate with certain values,” said a political consultant with the Parkside Group, Evan Stavisky. “They see ‘Republican,’ they associate that candidate with certain values… They make their choices accordingly….Voters know more about the party than they do about individual elected officials.”
A few well-known, popular Republican legislators manage to win in the more conservative Democratic areas, but their ranks are dwindling. After Senator Guy Velella, a Bronx Republican, went to jail on bribery charges earlier this year, his former constituents voted to replace him with a Democrat, Assemblyman Jeffrey Klein.
The case of Senator Olga Mendez provides another stark example. As a Democrat, Ms. Mendez was elected to the Senate from East Harlem 13 times in a row, often running unopposed. This year, having switched to the GOP, she lost to the Democratic nominee, City Council member Jose Serrano, 81% to 18%.
Thanks to the victories by Messrs. Klein and Serrano, along with a third Democrat who appears to have won a seat near Syracuse, the Senate Democrats gained three seats on the Republicans. The Senate minority leader, David Paterson of Harlem, is portraying these results as a mandate for reform at the state Capitol. Certainly the voters, by whittling the GOP majority to 35-27 from 38-24 earlier this year, have moved the Democrats a step closer to taking control of the Senate for the first time in almost 40 years.
But the same electorate that voted for change in the Senate voted for the status quo in the state Assembly. Majority Democrats, who already have a dominant 103-47 majority, picked up yet one more seat.
Meanwhile, the number of registered Democrats in New York state grew by 411,000 over the past year, compared to 140,000 for the GOP. Registered Democrats now outnumber Republicans 5.5 million to 3.2 million.
Perhaps the real change going on here has less to do with dysfunction at Albany and more to do with New York’s ever-deeper shade of blue.