The State Legislature, under Sen. Charles Schumer’s Albany allies Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, selected Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the seat of former Sen. Clinton.

Now we have Schumer lobbying the White House. This resulted in President Obama calling a potential 2010 Democratic Senate primary contestant, Long Island Rep. Steve Israel, and asking him to drop out even before he declared his candidacy! Quickly following, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer also gave up. Long Island Congress Member Carolyn McCarthy and Manhattan’s own Carolyn Maloney will soon receive phone calls from President Obama making them similar offers. In exchange for dropping out, there will be the standard political quid pro quo: pork barrel member item projects, favorable passage of pet legislation to special interest groups and employment opportunities in Washington for friends of Israel, Stringer, McCarthy and Maloney. In Albany, Schumer will work with Paterson, Silver and Smith to insure favorable continued gerrymandered districts after the 2010 census. This will guarantee all three Congress members another decade in office. How ironic, since in the 1970s Schumer had no problem challenging the establishment in open primaries, which he won for State Assembly, Congress and Senate. Now Boss Schumer advocates selection by clubhouse leadership, denying voters a choice. He has morphed into Washington’s most powerful inside-the-beltway career Senator today.

Larry Penner
Great Neck, Long Island

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

To the Editor:

Terrific editorial. I made the same points myself when I heard the president was intruding on the democratic process after he gained so much from exercising his democratic right to challenge in primaries.

Additionally, as a researcher who believes it was wrong to hold back research linking tobacco and health, and as an asthmatic whose condition was worsened by having to tolerate the “smoke filled” environment longer because of legal actions preventing data on smoking and tobacco from seeing the light of day, I am especially upset that Ms. Gillibrand is representing me. Yes, attorneys should represent clients, but some refuse to do things that they believe are immoral and quite often firms excuse these attorneys. However, Sen. Gillibrand took on her assignment vigorously, from what I heard.

Secondly, it is one thing for an attorney to defend her client in such an atrocious case but quite another to have such a person represent us in the United States Senate.

Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D.
Upper East Side

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

To the Editor:

As a voter in the 20th District, where Gillibrand first stepped into national politics, I value her grasp of the upstate community needs, particularly as they apply to agriculture and the New York City watershed. Not all of New York State centers around the city. It is therefore appropriate for a U.S. Senator to represent the “other masses” of New York State—those of us who reside outside city limits.

At best, a U.S. Senator should champion the needs of its metropolitan constituents. And yes, city residents are experiencing many hard-pressing issues, including the economy. However, those of us residing in the outer counties have struggling economies, too—ones not based on Wall Street, which Gillibrand has recognized and championed on our behalf, during her few short years in office.

I’m sure Carolyn Maloney is worthy of the Senate seat. But New Yorkers should consider selecting a senator who best represents the interests of our state in its entirety, not just the five boroughs.

Tara Collins
Meredith, New York

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

Later, Chuck Schumer took on D’Amato and beat him, and now Schumer has won the Trifecta himself. He is thought to have gotten Kirsten Gillibrand selected by Gov. David Paterson to be U.S. Senator. Now it looks like Schumer got the President of the United States to call Rep. Steve Israel, who would have defeated Gillibrand in a primary, to ask him to stay out of the race. Finally, Chuck has just had his staff counsel named U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, probably the most powerful in the United States.

It would appear that Chuck Schumer may be the most powerful politician in the United States. After all, he is generally credited with having delivered the U.S. Senate to Democrats. The party owes him a lot, and the President owes him a lot.

So let’s see whether this is good for the people and for democracy. Primaries were invented to give people a choice. When the country passed a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of senators and getting that choice out of the hands of the cigar-smoking backroom boys, it was a good thing for democracy. When a President makes a telephone call and tells a fine candidate to get out of the race, it is decidedly not a good thing, especially when it would appear that Israel was the leading candidate. One can only wonder if, with Chuck whispering his ear, Obama called the others whose names have been mentioned, like Carolyn Maloney and Carolyn McCarthy.

Chuck once called and asked if he could come to Albany to announce that he would vote for the war in Iraq. I was delighted to host him, even though I was certainly opposed to the war. It was a great thing for the public radio stations I run, but because I wanted to keep things from degenerating, I announced we would have audience members write their questions on cards and I would read the cards to the senator. When I came into the hall, an older man was yelling at a staff member that he “…didn’t care who I was and he was going to stand up and have it out with the $%^&^*”

I asked him to lower his voice and told him I expected him to play by the rules, at which point the guy standing next to him threw a cup of hot coffee at my head. Someone called the police, who asked if I wanted to press charges. I declined. But the best part came when Chuck walked into the hall and asked in a loud voice, “Where’s the peacenik who threw the hot coffee at Chartock?” That was Chuck at his funniest and his best. Now I think the situation may be becoming more serious.
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Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.