Up is down and inside is outside, argues state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris in defending the conspiracy to torch Gov. Kathy Hochul’s nomination of Hector LaSalle for state chief judge.
It was a revolt against “backroom” dealing by “insiders,” he says, when the execution was itself a backroom deal — by stacking the Judiciary Committee expressly to shoot LaSalle down.
Plus, Gianaris wrote this nonsense for an insider publication: City & State, read only by politics-watchers.
The conflict is “between reformers and the establishment,” he argues. “LaSalle’s nomination” to preside over the Court of Appeals “was an establishment selection” and the “Senate Democratic conference rose to prominence (and a historic supermajority) as an antidote to old-style, backroom Albany politics.”
Sorry, Mike: When you’re part of a “supermajority” — when you yourself are the deputy majority leader, often seen as near-equal to Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins — you are the establishment.
“An antidote to old-style, backroom Albany politics”? The Dem supermajority’s done zip to end “three men in a room” budget deals that members don’t even have time to read before passing them.
Or to stop sticking non-budget matters into those deals, with little public debate. Heck, that’s how Gianaris & Co. rammed through the disastrous 2019 criminal-justice “reforms” that lefties so love.
This is a “break with the old way of doing business”?
When it comes to “backroom deals,” it’s hard to beat Gianaris’ attempt to end-run the clear language of New York’s Constitution — as amended by the voters! — to gerrymander the minority Republican Party into utter oblivion.
Indeed, Mike’s still furious that the Court of Appeals stuck by the trial judge who tossed that gerrymander, ordering fair districts to be drawn. He wants the state’s top court to impose his agenda, not block unconstitutional rules — which was plainly the real reason to block LaSalle, a liberal Democrat with actual principles.
Judiciary Chairman Brad Hoylman-Sigal even confessed that the anti-LaSalle crowd sought to change the direction of the top court, never mind that it’s supposed to be apolitical.
Some “new style of governance”: one without the checks and balances crucial to making democratic government work.
If lefties had honest beefs with LaSalle’s rulings, they wouldn’t have had to distort his positions in a handful of cases to paint him as a “conservative.” Or declare against him before even holding a single hearing.
Hochul and others argue that the state Constitution requires a floor vote on the nomination. We’re not sure about that, but it’s still telling that Gianaris & Co. refuse to hold one, despite insisting they have the numbers to vote it down. How is that fighting the “machine” and doing the work of the people?
For that matter, what about the surprise year-end move wherein the Legislature voted itself fat pay hikes, to become the nation’s best-paid state lawmakers though its members all go home for half the year?
As for that “historic supermajority”: Democrats have a huge statewide lead in voter registration, so Dem dominance of the Legislature is natural enough. But progressives wield all the power because they manage to dominate in Dem primaries — low-turnout affairs that are dominated by insiders, special interests and activists.
That’s why the Legislature refuses to make even modest fixes to the criminal-justice reforms, though 93% of New Yorkers see crime as a “serious” problem per a new Siena poll.
Gianaris & Co. are all about working the system to impose a minority agenda, contrary to the public will and at the public’s expense.
If moderate Dems don’t stand up against these backroom dealings, progressives will either lock in permanent hard-left control of New York — or force the voters to put Republicans in power to end the madness.
