Democratic voters in Lower Manhattan have a chance to send a dramatic message on Primary Day, Sept. 9: They can bring down Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver – and shake Albany’s pay-to-play culture to its core.
Silver didn’t create the Albany mess, but today he personifies it. And, while there’s certainly no guarantee that his ouster would set things right, it sure couldn’t hurt.
So, to that end, The Post today endorses the candidacy of Paul Newell for Assembly in the 64th District.
Newell is a 33-year-old community organizer who’s lived in the area for much of his life. He also is an unapologetic liberal of the sort that Manhattan grows like mushrooms after midnight.
But so what?
The point is to break Silver’s grip on power; one more liberal in Albany will make no difference whatsoever. Again, this primary isn’t about Newell – or even Silver, exclusively.
It’s about the Albany culture.
Take Silver’s “part-time” job at the tort law firm Weitz & Luxenberg. The speaker won’t discuss that job or how much it pays him, but one needn’t doubt that it’s a lot – and that the work clashes directly with his legislative duties.
And, sure enough, Silver has stood as a solid brick wall against efforts at tort reform – which would help New York immeasurably, though at the expense of his law firm and his industry. Silver also is in total thrall to organized labor – which forks over big bucks and political support in exchange for legislative and budgetary favors. Result: Unions win; the democratic process loses.
In any event, Silver, as speaker, long ago abandoned a majority of his constituents – whose demographics, by the way, have changed markedly since he first won office back in the ’70s. Class-warfare games – like Silver’s “millionaire’s tax,” meant to generate revenues for the unions – won’t do much good for new, more affluent Battery Park City residents and those who’ve moved into converted office space.
Especially not when the tax kicks in well below $1 million, as you can bet it would. More important to Silver than district voters are the Assembly’s 107 other Dems, who grant him his enormous power as speaker. Indeed, so busy pleasing them is he that the all-powerful Silver failed to prevent the MTA-instigated nightmare at the Fulton Street subway complex.
Silver, meanwhile, hasn’t faced a serious challenger in decades. And since becoming speaker in 1994, he’s wielded tremendous power over 19 million New Yorkers – thanks to just a few thousand local votes.
But that means it’ll take just a few thousand votes to send him packing – and profoundly shake the perverse system over which he presides. Downtown Democrats have an opportunity to help themselves and their state – by voting for Paul Newell on Primary Day.