THE logic behind a Rudy Giuliani gubernatorial run is seductive: Unleash on Albany the man who restored public order to New York City.
“Several times, [Rudy] said to me that he sees state government similar to where New York City was in 1993: out of control,” Rep. Peter King (R-LI) recently told The New York Times.
But Giuliani is surely wondering about the limits of the comparison. “If I thought I could make a difference in the state, really change things and it needed me, then I probably would do it,” he said at a Crain’s New York breakfast.
He has good reason for skepticism: If we’ve learned anything about Albany, it’s that it swallows leaders and their aspirations.
The New York governorship was once one of the premier platforms in American politics. But more recently — as Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer and now David Paterson can attest — the position doesn’t ennoble its occupant, but rather exposes, frustrates, mocks and enervates.
Sure, you can pick out the governors’ flaws. Cuomo lacked vision; Pataki coasted on mediocrity; Spitzer (presex scandal) staggered and spewed; Paterson has reveled in incompetence.
But the culture of Albany is the anti-Hellmann’s — it only brings out the worst.
The 24/7 job of being mayor is more demanding personally, but being governor is more demanding politically. Albany’s bureaucracy is less centralized and more complex, spreading over cities, mountain ranges, farms and suburbs and myriad layers of municipal and county government.
A governor has to contend with not just a health-care and public-sector behemoth, but thousands of smaller but entrenched institutional interests that spend nearly $200 million a year lobbying to protect their turf.
The mayoralty, as set forth in the City Charter, is far more powerful than the unicameral City Council, which won legislative authority over the budget only 20 years ago. Unlike the council, the Legislature sets its own revenue estimates and reshapes the executive’s proposed budget by billions of dollars.
New Yorkers look to their mayor and his agencies to put out fires, fill potholes, run the schools, solve murders and oversee public hospitals. The interface between average New Yorkers and state government is mostly confined to motor-vehicle offices.
Albany, for the most part, distributes money by formulas and regulates localities. And for that reason, it’s a lot harder to measure success.
But the challenge goes beyond the structure of the system. While newly elected governors come to Albany backed by a mandate for change, Giuliani’s familiarity and past dealings with Albany would put him at a disadvantage.
His relationship with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was arguably worse than Mayor Bloomberg’s: The Assembly denied him control over the city’s public-school system, abolished the commuter tax over Rudy’s protests and aborted his post-9/11 effort to his extend his second term.
Giuliani’s most polarizing qualities as mayor were also the muscle behind his achievements. “People didn’t elect me to be a conciliator,” he once noted. “They wanted someone who was going to change this place. How do you expect me to change it if I don’t fight with somebody? You don’t change ingrained human behavior without confrontation, turmoil, anger.”
If he enters the race, Rudy would likely thunder against Albany like Spitzer did in 2006, when he declared in a convention hall: “If you have a problem, they don’t have the answer. If there’s a challenge to be met, they have an excuse to avoid it. If there’s an extra tax dollar lying around, they’ll spend it. And if there’s not — well, they’ll spend that one too.”
As governor, though, Spitzer discovered that the Legislature isn’t cowed by such assaults — but emboldened.
“Giuliani would be dealing with two houses that protect their institutional prerogatives at all costs,” says Bill Cunningham, a former top aide to Bloomberg and Gov. Hugh Carey. “The Assembly and the Senate are organisms that will fight off any encroachment from the outside, the way a body fights a virus. They are immune to the normal stimuli of politics: editorials, columnists and other elected officials.”
Carey is widely considered to be the most successful state leader in the last half century. The city’s fiscal collapse gave him a stronger hand, but (as Cunningham argues) his strength also lay in his ability to negotiate and form coalitions.
Certainly, Giuliani has the potential to impose fiscal discipline and bring ideas and vigor to a capital that’s long neglected the public interest. But to be a transformative governor, he’d need a different, more artful approach than the one he relied upon as mayor — more dividing and conquering than simply conquering.
The task isn’t impossible, but it was apparently enough to deter any gubernatorial aspirations Bloomberg ever harbored. As we await Giuliani’s decision, Albany remains ungovernable.
jacob.gershman@gmail.com