Primary Influence in 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.

The New York Sun

If generals are always fighting the last war, politicians are always plotting the next campaign. To that end, the smattering of upsets and near misses recorded in Tuesday’s primaries give strategists a lot to think about.


In Nassau County, a candidate running on a platform of “fixing Albany,” Charles Lavine, snatched the Democratic nomination from one of the state Legislature’s entrenched incumbents, Assemblyman David Sidikman.


In the 34th Senate District, straddling the Bronx and Westchester County, an audacious gambit by Senate Republicans came up craps as their preferred candidate, Democratic Assemblyman Stephen Kaufman, lost both the Republican and Democratic primaries.


And in Albany County, activists pushing for reform of the state’s Rockefeller-era anti-drug laws managed to defeat an incumbent district attorney, Paul Clyne, in a Democratic primary by painting him as too tough on drug criminals.


These and other noteworthy outcomes may or may not change the way government operates in New York. But they will almost certainly change the way campaign battles are fought. Here are a few of the tactical lessons to be drawn:


Political parties can easily get around the law prohibiting them from spending money on primary elections.


Senate Republicans raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Mr. Kaufman, a Democrat, through a committee known as New York Forward. Although its mailing address was the office of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, and though it raised most of its money from Republican senators and donors who support them, New York Forward claimed it was independent of the party and could therefore legally participate in the primaries.


“It’s highly unusual for a political party to so blatantly circumvent the law and funnel money through a made-up organization to a candidate in another party,” said one election lawyer, Jerry Goldfeder of Manhattan.


In the Albany County district attorney race, the Working Families Party openly campaigned for the challenger, David Soares. Party officials maintained that their efforts were focused on the November election, not the primary, and therefore permissible. Democratic officials won a temporary court order blocking the activity, but dropped the suit in the interest of party unity after Mr. Soares won.


A political watchdog with the New York Public Interest Research Group, Blair Horner, predicted such tactics will become a regular feature of future primaries.


“If they can get away with it, they will,” Mr. Horner said. “If legislative leaders can rake in money on the side and spend it on the candidates of their choice, they’ll do it. They won’t be able to help themselves.”


New York’s campaign finance laws are even more porous than previously understood.


New York Forward, as a “multi-candidate committee,” is theoretically bound by the contribution limits that apply to the races in which it takes part. A spokeswoman for the committee, Susan Del Percio, said it was supporting two candidates in Senate primaries, Mr. Kaufman and Caesar Trunzo of Long Island. The contribution limits for each of those races was $5,400, or $10,800 for the two combined. Yet New York Forward accepted donations in excess of that amount, including gifts of $54,000 each from two PACs operated by the Service Employees International Union.


Similarly, the Working Families Party accepted $81,500 during the race from the Drug Policy Alliance Network, a nonprofit group that favors more lenient sentences for drug-related crimes. A spokesman for the state Board of Elections, Lee Daghlian, said the network appears to be a corporation for election law purposes, and therefore should donate no more than $5,000 a year.


Albany dysfunction is starting to resonate with voters.


Complaining about the dilatory, secretive, spendthrift, and relentlessly partisan habits of state lawmakers is nothing new. Recently, however, critics have found ways to penetrate the popular consciousness. Late last year, the Citizens Budget Commission argued that Albany bears responsibility for the fact that New Yorkers pay the highest local taxes in the nation. And this summer New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice issued a study portraying New York’s government as the most dysfunctional of the 50 states.


Lawmakers gave critics even more ammunition by failing to enact a budget by the March 31 deadline for the 20th time in a row, then not passing it until August 11 – beating the previous record by a full week.


Of the several candidates who seized on these failings as a campaign theme, only Mr. Lavine won his race. But the other anti-Albany insurgents, though unsuccessful, did throw scares into their opponents, including several Assembly Democrats in western New York and a Republican senator from the Syracuse area, Nancy Larraine Hoffmann. Ms. Hoffmann and the other incumbents responded to the threat not by defending Albany, but by portraying themselves as supporters of reform.


Constituents will hold their local lawmakers responsible for actions of the Legislature as a whole.


The conventional wisdom has been that no matter how much voters deplore the goings-on at the state Capitol, they don’t blame those problems on their own legislator. Mr. Lavine’s campaign could change this thinking. With considerable support of the Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, and his “Fix Albany” campaign, Mr. Lavine attacked Mr. Sidikman not as an individual politician, but as a typical member of the Assembly’s Democratic majority.


“The theme connecting the whole thing is that, when properly applied, the ‘Albany is dysfunctional’ message has some legs,” Mr. Horner said.


“I view this as the first skirmish of the big fight of 2006,” he said. “Whoever is running for governor, one of the big questions is going to be, ‘What are you going to do to fix Albany?'”


The New York Sun

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