The Governor isn't looking so hot these days. A brutal war between him and the State Legislature has erupted over his no-holds-barred approach to combating the status quo up in Albany. The effect of the strategy has been a lot of gridlock and fighting, especially with Senate Leader Joe Bruno. Apparently compromise isn't on the table from Eliot's perspective. On this summer break, he is going into the districts of Senate Republicans to shame them into reforming business as usual.
From The New York Sun:
The administration hopes to use the added political pressure on Mr. Bruno and his conference as leverage to force him to cooperate with the administration's agenda, including enacting tighter campaign finance rules. "The fourth man in the room is the fact that Bruno's majority is under siege," a top adviser to Mr. Spitzer said. The Republicans now hold 33 seats in the Senate to the Democrats' 29.
The escalation could begin as early as this week. Mr. Spitzer has plans to visit the local districts of a number of Senate Republicans and make speeches singling out the lawmakers for blame — a "shaming tour" similar to his trips around the state in February, during which he attacked Assembly Democrats for defying him by choosing one of their own members, Thomas DiNapoli, to fill a state comptroller vacancy.
Obviously Spitzer has no fear in using this strategy since the last time around in the spring. The question is, will it work. Taking back the Senate from the power-hungry hands of Joe Bruno would be a decisive victory, but there is no chance of it until at least the next election cycle in 2008.
Another problem for Spitzer is that there are many Democrats that disapprove of his politicking and policy proposals as well. Eliot's solution is probably to get rid of those Democrats in the primaries. I am all in favor of a reformer in the Governor's seat and I agree that old, corrupt Democrats need to go just as badly as the old corrupt Republicans. Yet so far nothing has really come to pass so that New York receives the reform it so desperately deserves.
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