Alan Chartock. Photo courtesy of wamc.org.

To understand what he did and why he did it, you have to understand the realities of elections. Since about half the eligible people don’t bother to vote in presidential elections, the name of the game is to get your voters to turn out. When Romney chose Ryan he was offering a huge incentive for conservative Republicans to get out and vote. He was lighting a fire under their behinds. That’s the way elections are won or lost.

The Romney problem is that there are more Democrats and independents in the United States than there are conservative Republicans. Romney’s vice presidential choice will light an even bigger fire under the keisters of the Democrats and independents who do not want to lose Social Security as we know it or the highly popular Medicare program. Ryan is death on both of these programs.

There may be a lot of people who don’t like what the Republicans are calling “Obamacare,” but just ask any senior or anyone who just can’t wait to get to Medicare, what they think of the incredibly popular senior medical program; or ask seniors (or their appreciative children) what they think of Social Security.

I remember my late mother’s appreciation for her Social Security check. My mom had worked all her life putting money into Social Security. I admit that my mother hated most Republicans but the thought of losing Social Security or of the Republicans trying to “modify” Roosevelt’s signature program by handing it over to the Wall Street crowd to get their hands on the highly efficient program would have brought this liberal lady out onto the streets. By threatening Social Security and Medicare, Romney has given the Democrats the gift of life. No matter what he says to save the day, the words and actions of Ryan will prove to be fatal to Romney. In fact, Romney has committed political suicide by choosing Ryan.

Finally, there is Medicaid, a program designed primarily to help the poor and elderly who have no other place to turn. When those often non-voting poor realize that their health care is being threatened by the draconian Ryan, they will have a good reason to vote. As we saw, not that long ago in Florida, just a few votes can swing an election.

In New York, the Democrats should be celebrating. The New York state Senate is up for grabs and if the lower-income voters turn out, it is inevitable that they will vote for Democratic candidates down the line. Democrat Andrew Cuomo has given Dean Skelos and the Republican Senate majority every break. He didn’t veto their self-serving gerrymander bill as he promised he would. I am old enough to remember the Democratic landslide in Goldwater-Johnson in which all kids of Republicans got thrown out in New York.

To turn this election in their favor, you had better believe that the Democrats are going to plaster the television airwaves with Ryan’s picture and what he wants to do with two of the most popular social programs in American history. You’ll see crying babies and seniors threatened with eviction. When I explained how this was going to work to some elderly friends, one of them said, “You don’t have to worry, it will only be younger people who will lose these benefits.” In response, I said, “These younger folks have been putting money into these programs for years. They are looking forward to Social Security and Medicare. They are going to be very angry when and if all of this comes down.”

Poor Mitt Romney; he may be good at making a lot of money. That doesn’t make him smart. He’s just committed political hara-kiri. In New York, he’s probably the best thing the usually hapless Democrats have going for them.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

by Alan Chartock

Conservative predictions about gay marriage haven’t come true

What was all the fuss about? Gays and lesbians wanted to marry. You’d have thought the world was going to explode. Nothing made for better news copy. Some evangelicals literally raised hell; we were Sodom and Gomorrah. God would punish us. Leviticus in the Bible was quoted again and again: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” We were about to revisit Jonah’s Nineveh. The cry urging repentance was heard throughout the land.

Incredibly, an awful lot of people went along with the bigotry and nonsense and more than a few still do. But, as so often happens, an oppressed group followed Joe Hill’s advice and went on to organize. Since the Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village, gays have been turning on their oppressors and saying “Enough.”

From then until now, tremendous strides have been made. Our politicians have eschewed the old safe road that condoned bigotry; kicking and screaming, they have been turned around. Sure, some have done so for so-called “political reasons,” but that’s OK. It is classic Americana that getting politicians to have some guts is always helped along by the old labor leader Samuel Gompers’ message that we reward our friends and punish our enemies.

No one likes to recognize it, but even President Barack Obama was late to the marriage equality party. That’s OK; at least he seems to have gotten there. In New York State, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is portrayed as a hero for kicking legislators in both parties until they did the right thing. That may be true, or perhaps he saw a wonderful opportunity to cover his blue dog conservative Democratic tracks by supporting a gay rights campaign.

Frankly I don’t give a damn, since he did the right thing. His father, Mario, found a lot of similar traction in his stance on the death penalty. They both did what was right and were rewarded for it.

I love the fact that what started as one of the biggest political battles in New York is already being taken for granted. There will be no retreat. There will be no return to the bad old days. The same thing happened with abortion, and many of the same political forces and coalitions were behind the rear guard there, too. One can only wonder what in the world the conservatives see in this, as they always push to stay in office and to survive.

I have talked to many of these politicians and they always tell me the same thing: The most important thing is “the sanctity of the family.” I often ask them how gay marriage desanctifies marriage or goes against natural law. They always mumble and repeat themselves. At that point, there is little you can do. When asked why two people who love each other shouldn’t be allowed to marry, they come back with all that mumbling again.

This brings us back to Chartock’s first law of politics. It’s called political saliency. That means that many folks vote based on a single overriding concern. In some cases, the issue is a woman’s right to choose. In others, it’s the political survival of Israel. Here, it’s a gay or lesbian couple’s right to marry, to have families, to be able to visit a loved one in the hospital.

So gays and lesbians and their allies got together and, like the little engine that could, they began to climb that mountain very slowly. But when they reached the top, they picked up speed. They’re not there yet. Not in places like North Carolina, where people get behind that voting curtain and let all their bigotry hang out. But in New York, in Massachusetts and in so many other states, it turns out, it’s no big deal.

So what was all that fuss about, anyway?

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

By Alan S. Chartock

You cannot have democracy without good information. How are any of us expected to vote intelligently if we don’t know what is going on?

Andrew Cuomo campaigned for office on a platform of transparency in government. As attorney general, he employed Blair Horner to create something called “Project Sunlight.” For 25 years, Horner was (and still is) one of the most respected men in Albany. He was a good government lobbyist who kept legislators’ feet to the fire. He was always Mr. Integrity, so when Cuomo hired him, those of us with some lingering doubts took notice.

Horner was responsible for setting up a database that was supposed to tell all. However, after a relatively brief amount of time, Horner resigned from the Cuomo administration, suggesting that he had accomplished what he set out to do. A man of conviction, he now works for the American Cancer Society and appears weekly on public radio. I did my best to get Horner to tell me why he left so early in the Cuomo timeline, but he stuck to his story. I like a man of character.

Now we are starting to see some other troubling signs from the man who was going to lead the most transparent gubernatorial administration in history. It turns out that Cuomo is committed to secrecy. Several news items have appeared in the New York Times and the Albany Times Union suggesting that Cuomo is dedicated to anything but transparency.

We all know that it’s easier to operate in secrecy than to show your cards to your opponents in the political game. The problem is that politics can be brutal. If your opponents sense your vulnerabilities, you can be sure they will use them against you. The current assumption is that Cuomo the Younger wants to do what Papa couldn’t: run for president.

Let’s face it, if you had his office, you might do the same thing he’s doing. When he was attorney general, Cuomo did a lot. At the conclusion of their terms, attorneys general customarily do what Cuomo’s predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, did: send thousands of pages of documents to the state archives. Cuomo didn’t.

When two ace investigative reporters from the Albany Times Union went to the archives to look around, they found a memo having to do with something called “Trooper Gate.” It turns out that soon after they got hold of that memo, the files of the state archivist were combed by the Cuomo people and lots of material, including the “Trooper Gate” memo, disappeared. Now people are calling that disappearance “File Gate.”

The Cuomo people say they have the right to remove such documents—and it turns out they do. At least one top source says the original memo was removed because of a single sentence suggesting that the Cuomo investigation was less than stellar.

Cuomo worked hard to create the aura of a strong attorney general. He said that he would let the facts lead him. However, this case hints that there may have been some political motives to his investigation.

In the old days, Cuomo had a reputation as a political enforcer for his father. At one point, he accused me through an operative in the strongest possible language of having written an anonymous New York Times op-ed about his father. I had not, and the father sort of apologized. When he ran for governor, we were told that it was the new Andrew Cuomo. Now we hear that communications between top Cuomo people are not done by email but on devices that don’t create replicable records.

None of this passes the stink test. Right now, Cuomo is very, very popular. People think he is efficient. Try looking through history and notice who else was characterized as efficient in the beginning.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Like most of us, politicians prefer to avoid pain—they’d much prefer to take the easy route than tackle the tough issues. Here are a couple of examples.

The Legislature has gone along with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s tough fiscal regimen on its agencies and citizens. Tax caps, the lack of a hike in the minimum wage and finger-wagging at teachers all come out of what is known as “The Second Floor,” Cuomo’s office. The hypocrisy comes in when, during the lame duck session that follows an election before the new Legislature is sworn in, they raise their own pay. They do this because they desperately want the money but also know that people who have been hurt by governmental austerity are deeply resentful when the government types raise their own pay.

The solons have to do this in two separate sessions. Of course, they could do it the honorable way—vote the pay raises in and then suffer the consequences with the voters—but they are loath to do that. I suspect that if you were a legislator, you might opt for the less painful way yourself. Aw, come on, of course you would.

Naturally, the governor (with his 70 percent approval rating) has to sign the pay raise bill. That’s where the trading comes in. If they want the raise, they’ll have to give him something significant in return. It’s the American way, you know. Governors have been doing this for years.

If there is one thing that Cuomo now understands, it is that the people will not hold him responsible. After all, he campaigned on the platform that he would not allow the majority parties in the Legislature to follow the despicable process of drawing districts where they had the best chance of winning. When he broke his word, no one seemed to care. They gave him credit for cleaning up Albany.

I suspect this pay raise business will follow the same sort of track. Not only that, my bet is that Cuomo will either not accept a raise for himself (he’s got plenty of money) or announce that he will give it to charities of his choice. After all, he’s running for president.

You can see another example of pain avoidance in the massive toll hike that has been proposed for the New York Thruway. That road is already one of the most expensive in the nation when it comes to making truckers pay. That, of course, is the point. The Thruway authoritarians, who have been severely criticized for sloppy work by uncompromising State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, know that many of the truckers who use the Thruway are out-of-staters. Of course, out-of-state folks don’t vote in New York, so the idea is to soak them. The politicians probably figure that the truckers will just raise their rates and we’ll all end up paying more at Walmart and the grocery store to offset the increased trucking costs.

When you raise tolls on commuters, however, you do so at your own risk. When you give this kind of power to so-called “independent” authorities, politicians are shielded from having to accept the political responsibility. The governor has declined to say much about the toll hikes on the Thruway except to suggest that if the hikes are needed, they are needed. Anyone who thinks that even the isolated members of the Thruway Authority would proceed with the draconian hikes without a wink or a nod from the governor’s office must live on another planet. Just sayin’.

These politicians are really pretty clever. The last thing you want to do is to bear any pain. Rule No. 1 for politicians has always been “Get re-elected.” Rule No. 2 is also familiar: “Never forget rule No. 1.”

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

By Alan S. Chartock

Political theorists have long raved about the advantages of balanced government. It is always best to have one independent branch looking over the shoulder of the others; balanced government helps prevent abuses.

When the very popular Andrew Cuomo was elected governor, it could easily be said that he had a mandate from the people to clean up Albany. In fact, that’s exactly what he said he would do. Unfortunately, from this perch, Albany looks pretty much the same as it always has.

We still see the powerful legislative majority leaders drawing districts that give them a better chance of winning. We still see legislators asking for raises and likely getting them while they dismiss the possibility of raises or pensions for civil servants, including our teachers.
There are some very dangerous things happening in the state capital. One of the most dangerous is a move by the powerful governor to take away the “pre-auditing” function from the independently elected state comptroller. The people who wrote the state constitution made the comptroller independent so he or she could audit the other branches. Anyone who runs a business or a not-for-profit organization knows that at least once a year, businesses have to be audited.

In New York State, the comptroller has always had the ability to pre-audit contracts. That means that before a state contract can be let, the comptroller has to take a look at it to determine if there is any bad smell to it.

Is a contract about to be let to people who are fiscally enigmatic? You wouldn’t want suspicious people like the mob pouring the concrete for the soon-to-be-rebuilt Tappan Zee Bridge. You wouldn’t want suspicious people running a large gambling casino in Queens. Without this important pre-auditing function, by the time the contract had been let, the horse would have long been out of the barn.

Unfortunately, the power to pre-audit major contracts was taken away from the comptroller in the powerful governor’s budget. When that happened, my eyebrows shot up toward the sky. Why in the world would you take this kind of protection away from the people of New York? I wrote about it in this column; I opined about it on the radio, but the response was anything but deafening. The subject, esoteric as it was, was ignored by almost everyone.

I recently spoke with State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli about it on the radio. He was not reticent in his response. When I asked him about the governor’s move to strip him of the important pre-audit function, he said the move “made no sense.” And, with imaginary dark music playing in the background, DiNapoli said that he hoped that there would be no other moves like this one to cut down on the comptroller’s powers. He has always said, “It is my responsibility to be an independent voice, and I take that very seriously.”

It is no secret that DiNapoli was not Cuomo’s choice for the comptroller’s job. DiNapoli is the kind of guy who gets along with everyone. Cuomo’s reticence in supporting his fellow Democrat was perplexing.

When the comptroller’s office is vacant, it is the Legislature’s responsibility to fill the office. The Legislature elected DiNapoli, who then went on to run for a full term without fellow Democrat Cuomo’s support. Anyone besides DiNapoli might have resented that just a little, but DiNapoli is like Ferdinand the Bull: He does not like these things to become personal, he’d rather just smell the flowers.

Despite that attitude, the more bellicose Cuomo has carried the fight to the comptroller for no good reason that I can see. Maybe it’s that the comptroller could get in the way of some of the governor’s plans.

In any case, I’m glad I asked DiNapoli the question and I’m especially glad that he answered it. Sometimes, even Ferdinand got angry—like that time he got stung by the bee.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

By Alan S. Chartock

With Chief Justice John Roberts supporting the congressional right to pass the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the politics of health care rises to the top of the list in New York state. Let there be no mistake about it: Politics in New York can get very dirty, especially when big money is involved. We had better be careful.

State Sen. Pedro Espada serves as a perfect example of the toxic mixture of health care, politics and money. His Soundview Health Center clinic is now closed, thanks to his political corruption. First he raised people’s expectations about health care, then he crashed them.

New York is certainly not the only state where politics can get dirty—it’s just the way the game is too often played. When you are a state senator, you are powerful. When you are a corrupt state senator, not only are you powerful, you can put your dirty hand into the pot and take money that should go to people who need it a lot more than you do.

We have seen it time and again. When dirty politicians like Carl Kruger get to vote, that vote and that influence become toxic. A system that allows this kind of thing—in health care or any other area—is poison.

In New York, a lot of influence is doled out to individual senators. In order to put together a winning coalition that can rule the political roost, a leader has to find the votes to make a majority. When the Democrats got their chance, they needed Espada so much that they gave him enormous power. When the Republicans had to put together a winning coalition, they likewise gave the corrupt Kruger enormous power in order to get him on board. When people wanted something from him, they went to his bagman, Richard Lipsky, who put in the order, not unlike a waitress at the local greasy spoon.

When President Barack Obama, as part of his health care legislation, asked that states establish “exchanges” where people could buy their health care insurance, state Senate Republicans balked. As a result, instead of having a state law establishing the exchange, Gov. Andrew Cuomo established the exchange in New York by executive order. The last thing that Republicans, taking cues from the national party of the same name, were going to do was to help Obama win re-election with his signature heath care program.

The problem is, things are going to get complicated. The same political influences that allowed Espada and Kruger to do their dirty work will undoubtedly show their faces in this complicated exchange system. The more complicated it is, the more points of access there will be for the few rotten apple politicians who give a bad name to all their colleagues. We will need to police the new system—and that’s easier said than done. In my mind’s eye, I see some politicians drooling over the potential opportunities here.

The question, of course, is one of political will. If we truly want to make the new system corruption-free, we will be able to. In the past, however, we have been known to present crooks with opportunities. Our mistake was that we should have extended a single payer system, like Medicare, to all Americans. After all, that system works and we know it.

Of course, there are crooks who try to game that system, but it has by and large been highly successful and uncomplicated. Now the powers that be are insisting that the insurance companies get their greedy hands into the mix, hence the complicated exchange system.
Once again, the foxes have been put in charge of the hen house. As Pete Seeger wrote in “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “When will we ever learn?”

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

I used to turn down pot so I could someday run for Congress

By Alan S. Chartock

When I was a young man, I refused to smoke marijuana when offered the opportunity. I thought that it might interfere with my future career—at the time, I thought I might like to run for Congress and that if you were caught, you were disqualified.

Of course, we now know that weed is a rite of passage. Presidents and presidential candidates freely admit to drug use. We also know that white middle-class kids and their parents are exempt—it’s tough to get caught smoking dope when you are on the 15th floor of a Park Avenue apartment. On the other hand, if you are a black or Latino kid on the streetcorner, it is very easy to get stopped and frisked and sent off to jail.

Right now there is a great debate on whether to make marijuana possession legal or almost legal. I have a doctor friend, one of the top addiction specialists in the country, who tells me that marijuana is what we might call a “gateway drug.” She says that if you start with weed, you often graduate to something stronger. I have great respect for this doctor, who has to deal with people who have been sucked into drug use, and I find it difficult to dismiss her concerns. Yet the inequalities I mentioned above are also of great concern.

Let there be no mistake about it: Alcohol is every bit as dangerous as marijuana. In fact, judging from the number of automobile accidents every year caused by alcohol abuse, strong drink is much more dangerous than marijuana.

Now that the Rockefeller drug laws have been modified, things have gotten more sensible. Fewer kids are being put into the system, but there is still a glut of arrests among our most disadvantaged citizens. Some distinguished lawmakers have suggested it is time to legalize marijuana and other much more deadly and heavy drugs. Some have suggested that if we legalize cannabis, the same arguments that lead to its legalization will be used for other drugs.

Such a debate is really above my pay grade; I certainly can see all the arguments for and against it. As long as there is poverty and a lack of hope, there will be drug use in this country.

The idea of making marijuana possession a violation, like a speeding ticket, is a step in the right direction. Jail or prison time is just not an answer. The only people who make out in that scenario are those who run our gigantic prison industry. We know that there are just too many people behind bars. I certainly think that if we are going to spend the money, we should spend it on giving people an economic chance and some hope—I am sure that would go further than consigning them to a life of hell sending them to jail. Even a history of a violation may well hurt someone’s chances in life.
We know that cannabis has helped people who are terminal cancer patients. Our congressional and legislative hearings are replete with such testimony from some very high-ranking people in this country, including judges and doctors.

It is hard to believe that there isn’t a simple majority, even among the Republicans in the state Senate, who haven’t used marijuana. That makes it rank hypocrisy to criminalize its use. Otherwise, I suggest that all those sitting in the upper House should turn themselves in. I mean, wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?

Sometimes in life, choices have to be made. We know that when we tried to criminalize the use of alcohol, the result was catastrophic; a black market resulted and criminals got rich. The same thing is true with the distribution of marijuana. The time has come to do the right thing and use available money to help people who have developed serious drug problems. Makes a lot more sense than what we are doing.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

There are some interesting clues to insider politics. Clinton has announced that she is not interested in serving another term. She says she will not campaign for the president. Her husband, Bill, says he wishes his wife would run for the top job.

The woman who replaced Clinton in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, says she will be an original signatory to the draft Hillary movement. I can hardly believe she made that announcement without checking with Hillary. A recent New York Times poll shows there has been a reversal in the female vote and that a majority of women now favor Mitt Romney.

Obviously, we have no real idea about what goes on here. But we have to remember that Barack Obama narrowly edged out Clinton for the Democratic nomination to run for president. Maybe, in the immortal words of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, Clinton is still thinking, “I could have been a contender.” Or maybe there are another thousand reasons why Hillary is saying what she’s saying.

Now the atmosphere is filled with rumors that Team Obama will have to replace Vice President Joe Biden with Clinton. Up until now, everyone denied the rumor. The president has stated that he isn’t making any changes. But winning the presidency is what we call a “mutually exclusive game”; you only get one winner and there are no second prizes.
If confronted by the cold hard facts that they might lose the presidency, the Obama people may have to ask Clinton and Biden to switch places—Clinton runs for vice president and Biden is offered the secretary of state position. I’m a big Biden fan and I think he has the chops to make a lot of friends for the United States.

Back home in New York, one can only wonder how Gov. Cuomo is taking to all of this. We know the Cuomos are always thinking six moves in advance—“Is this good for me or bad for me?”

If Clinton runs for vice president and the ticket wins, there will be no contest—she’ll be the candidate in 2016. On the other hand, if she doesn’t run, there will be more of a Cuomo opportunity. Let’s face it, I don’t think Clinton wants to do it and I don’t think that Obama wants to jettison Biden, but when the middle of the night comes and it’s a question of winning or losing, the hard realities will prevail. It will be a win-win.

There have been many times in U.S. history when such difficult decisions have been made. Ike had to live with Nixon, who he never really liked. Kennedy had to take Johnson; without him, he just wouldn’t have won. So unless Hillary is ill or is otherwise indisposed, she’ll have to take the offer when and if it comes.

When and if Hillary becomes vice president, she will be the font of all patronage and pork in New York. That too, may cause a little friction with the governor’s office—or just the opposite. You just never know.

Based on recent polling, I really think that this is a no-brainer. The way it looks now, Hillary, if she wins, would be the first female vice president. That’s huge.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Everybody knows you can’t run for president without writing a book. As my mom used to say, “They’re all doing it now.” Many of the new political books are about Andrew Cuomo. In fact, Cuomo himself is writing a book, and a New York Post columnist and a writer for Vanity Fair are each writing a book about Cuomo.

The Vanity Fair version has the best chance of being the real thing. For their part, Team Cuomo has been saying they will “cooperate” with the guy from the Post who has been very, very nice to the governor. Team Cuomo has been hinting they might cooperate with the Vanity Fair guy, who is closest to real critical journalism.

It sounds to me like the price of such gubernatorial cooperation might be an “understanding” about how tough the book will be. These things are never put in words, and I would be the last person in the world to suggest that a quid pro quo might be at work here.

If I wrote a book about Cuomo, it would not be about Cuomo. There’s just too much competition. I don’t think Team Cuomo likes me and I am quite sure they wouldn’t cooperate. I once wrote a very complimentary book about Mario Cuomo; very few people read it.

Nope, the way to do it is to write a thinly disguised novel. You could begin with the usual Law & Order-type disclosure making it quite clear that “this book has absolutely nothing to do with any governor living or dead.” The main character’s name might be Anthony. It would have lots of sex and tales of old and new lovers. It would chronicle a huge political divorce that rips two of the dynastic families in the country asunder.

It would show Gov. Anthony to be a loving father who does anything he can for his three lovely daughters. It would show Anthony on the phone daily with his dad, the family patriarch and former governor to whom he was so devoted to he would do anything to further his father’s place in history. A familiar line from the older Cuomo to the younger might be, “Now Anthony, you’ve got to get that guy before he gets you.”

Obviously there would have to be side plots. There would be the U.S. senator who incurred the governor’s wrath because she didn’t fall in line. There would be the former senator, now secretary of state, who had the best chance to put a stop to Anthony’s chance to be president. She would make the ambitious governor crazy.

The novel would chronicle the governor’s chief strategist who went around threatening those who would not go along. He would be heard saying, “We have two speeds: go along or death.” Obviously, you’d have to include at least three of the top legislative leaders. These would include the wily, brilliant Democratic speaker; the silver-haired Republican who owed everything to Anthony, a Democrat who had saved his hash; and a bitter black Democratic Senate minority leader who, but for Anthony’s intervention on behalf of the Republicans, would have been the leader of the Senate.

Of course, there would be the back-room real estate moguls who funded a political action committee to do the young governor’s bidding. They would chuckle that they had a Democrat who was really a closet Republican and they would throw obscene amounts of money into keeping the young governor in power. They would spend more money than any other influence-peddling group.

Naturally, there would have to a beautiful heroine, probably a television anchor who desperately loved our hero and who ended up, after living with him for years, marrying him just before he ran for president so the voters in Kansas would go along. In the background would be a former president who hugged young Anthony when he saw him but kept putting his wife, now the secretary of state, into the catbird seat and urging her to run for president—with her numbers, she couldn’t lose. There would be lots of telephone dialogue between the white-haired ex-president and young Anthony.
That’s just for starters! Once the book comes out, a movie would be inevitable. If you’re an agent out there and like this idea, give me a call.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Meanwhile, something else is going on. An interesting group of people is encouraging the immensely popular Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for president, despite her having said she’s done with politics. There is her successor as United States senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, for example. I know Gillibrand, and I can tell you that she is one tough cookie. She is a hell of a smart woman who knows how to play the cards, and I have never seen her make a political error. When she recently said she would be a charter member of the Draft Hillary for President Club, I think
we can assume she knew exactly what she was doing. She also had to know that when Cuomo heard what she’d said, he would not be a happy camper. Gillibrand must have assessed the risk and figured it was worth it. To know Cuomo is to know that all other politicians are seen as rivals and, in many cases, as the enemy. I suspect he learned that from his pop. Politics is a tough game, and only one person gets to be president. Cuomo is immensely popular in the polls. Nonetheless, the jury is still out as to whether the voters like him personally as much as they like what he has done in New York.
While Gov. Cuomo may be popular with the people, I think it is fair to say that the political insiders aren’t exactly crazy about him. Maybe that’s why Gillibrand was recently joined by fellow Democrat Sheldon Silver, the sharpest, smartest and sliest politician in politics, when he issued what appeared to be a forceful endorsement of Hillary for president. When pressed, Silver said Cuomo was good as well. We know that the Senate Democrats, who are in the minority, don’t like Cuomo. They will probably stay in the minority because of Cuomo’s support for
the Republicans in the state Senate. While Cuomo’s credentials are arguable, those Democrats in the state Senate are old-style tax-the-rich Democrats.
A third person with encouraging words for a Hillary candidacy is none other than Bill Clinton, who says he hopes that she will change her mind and run. Now I ask you, Would he do that without his wife’s tacit support? We know that Hillary says she will not do a second term as secretary of State and she has said she won’t campaign for President Obama. That sounds like she wants to clear the boards to run. If the state and national polls are telling us anything, it is that Hillary would mop the floor with Cuomo in a head-to-head confrontation. Of course, it’s still very early, and we do not know why Hillary has said that she wouldn’t run. But the tea leaves are all suggesting that a Clinton candidacy is what the people and the political community want. Hey, it’s a good thing that Cuomo and his people don’t read my column.

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.