Senate Democrats (photo via @nysenatedems)
State Senate Democrats are already contemplating which policies they will pass under a one-party state government, confident they will win big in the upcoming November 6 elections, keeping control of the governor’s office and Assembly, while flipping the upper house of the Legislature. According to one leader of both the government and campaign agendas, Democrats have a general sense of a two-tiered policy agenda they plan to take up if victorious, prioritizing a long list of stalled progressive demands.
Meanwhile, Republicans hoping to cling to their lone stronghold in statewide government, where they currently hold a one-seat majority, campaign on the argument that their control of the Senate is all that is keeping taxpayers from a massive increase in costs, an even more bloated and intrusive state government, and a state virtually run by New York City interests.
State Senator Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who chairs the party’s Senate campaign committee, outlined the preliminary agenda on the Max & Murphy program on WBAI radio, citing a series of policies where there seems to be clear consensus and Democrats could move quickly on long-sought bills, and then other, more contentious and complicated legislation that will likely need extensive consideration and negotiation.
Gianaris said a unified Democratic state government would make “quick progress” in 2019 on the Reproductive Health Act, which expands abortion rights; a “red flag” gun control bill; and voting and campaign finance reforms.
These are among the policies, Gianaris explained, that have been sidelined by the Republican control of the Senate.
“We have lost that opportunity because an artificial Republican majority in the Senate has stopped us from voting on the types of things we should be voting on,” Gianaris said, in apparent reference to the fact that Republicans only had a majority because of their coalition with the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference (which is no more) and the decision by Senator Simcha Felder of Brooklyn to join the Republican conference, despite the fact that he is a Democrat.
The Reproductive Health Act, which Gianaris mentioned, would essentially pass Roe v. Wade abortion rights into law, something Democrats are especially concerned about given the fear that a new Supreme Court with Justice Brett Kavanaugh will overturn the landmark 1973 abortion decision. The red flag bill would allow teachers and school administrators to petition a judge to remove guns from the homes of students seen as troubled, an additional measure to prevent gun violence in schools.
While he didn’t go into detail on consensus around campaign finance reform, Gianaris did emphasize the need for certain voting reforms.
“We want to make it easier for people to vote,” Gianaris said. “We’re one of the few states that doesn’t have early voting, or automatic registration, or same-day registration or any of the ways that we can improve our democracy.”
Generally, Democrats have been interested in closing the LLC loophole in state campaign finance, reducing individual contribution limits, and creating a system of public campaign financing, perhaps modeled in some way on New York City’s system.
These policies would form at least much of the first wave, according to Gianaris, who said they will be doable prior to or in a deal on the state budget, which generally passes at the end of March. Full Democratic control of the executive and legislative branches would test how well the party can come to agreement on the details of a variety of measures where this is broad support in general terms.
Gianaris, who may be named deputy majority leader to Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins if their campaign efforts are successful, did not indicate he was giving a comprehensive list, and there are several politices that Democrats have appeared eager to pass that he did not mention, such as the Gender Non-Descrimination Act and the Child Victims Act.
Gianaris said the more contentious policies that may require discussion among the Democratic conference and whose chances of passing could depend on how large the conference is, would likely be discussed in earnest post-budget.
Health care and rent regulations were two policy areas mentioned by Gianaris as falling under this category.
“The rent laws expire right around June, if I’m not mistaken, so certainly that is going to create pressure to make those changes before the current laws expire,” Gianaris said, previewing what is expected to be one of the most important issues to New York City residents of the 2019 state session, which will be slated to end in June. In the past, the Democratic State Assembly has passed legislation increasing regulations on landowners in the hopes of helping tenants, while the Senate has generally gone along with extensions of the current laws, with some tweaks.
Part of the MTA Sustainability Task Force, Gianaris and his colleagues are responsible for coming up with recommendations to Governor Cuomo for how to improve the MTA by the end of the year.
Gianaris said the MTA is “obviously something that has bedeviled the state for some time,” and that if Democrats were to win big, it is “hopefully one that we can make some progress on this year.”
A variety of solutions are possible when it comes to dealing with the MTA, with one that comes up in conversation often being congestion pricing, which essentially taxes traffic in hopes of reducing it.
When asked about congestion pricing, Gianaris said it may be a step forward but is not a solution to the entire problem.
“I don’t think that alone is the silver bullet that solves the MTA crisis,” Gianaris said. “So we’ll have some more work to do.” Cuomo has pledged to fight aggressively for congestion pricing to be included in the next state budget, while also saying he’s awaiting the task force’s recommendations and expects New York City to kick in more to fund the MTA’s tens of billions of dollars in needs.
However, as confident as Democrats may be -- Gianaris has said roughly ten seats in the 63-seat Senate could flip their way -- Republicans believe they can hold the chamber, and are arguing that the stakes are incredibly high. In an op-ed written for State of Politics, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan of Long Island outlined what he believes Democrats would do with complete control of the government, and how it would hurt New Yorkers.
Flanagan said Republican hold of the Senate this year would be the “most important firewall in history between every taxpayers’ wallet and government coffers.”
He labeled Democratic policy priorities as socialist, listing single-payer healthcare, and put to the fore several items that Democrats are not listing at the top of their list, such as supervised injection sites for heroin users, campaign finance reform — which he referred to as “taxpayer funded campaigns” — abolishing ICE and the potential for New York to be a “sanctuary state,” which he wrote would be deportation protections “for illegal immigrants who commit aggravated felonies.”
Flanagan also wrote that New York becoming a sanctuary state would make it difficult to fight the international gang MS-13, and that health insurance for all would “double the state’s budget while taking away Medicare from our seniors.”
“Nobody wants to pay a single cent more in taxes, and only a Republican majority will not allow it,” Flanagan wrote.
For his part, Gianaris on Max & Murphy framed Democratic progress as a necessary response to what is happening at the federal level under President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress. “We have an opportunity to lead the nation in standing up for progressive values and pushing back against what’s coming out of Washington,” Gianaris said, “and we have lost that opportunity, in the bluest of blue states,” because of the Republican majority in the state Senate.
Elections Day is November 6.
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by Victor Porcelli, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
former Gov. George Pataki at the 2018 NY GOP convention
The New York Republican Party is on the brink -- perhaps not of extinction, but of a certain type of political wilderness -- and one longtime party figure says he knows where things went wrong and what to do about it.
Republicans have not occupied a statewide office since George Pataki left the governor’s mansion at the end of 2006, and barring a massive upset in November, the statewide offices will continue to be occupied by Democrats from 2019 through 2022. Meanwhile, the state Senate, New York’s lone longstanding bastion of Republican power, appears increasingly likely to be captured by the Democrats this year, producing the first unified state government since 2009.
Republicans currently hold a slim one-seat majority in the Senate and Democrats believe they could flip a half-dozen or more seats in what is broadly expected to be a wave year as the party responds to election of Donald Trump and subsequent policies out of Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, GOP gubernatorial nominee Marc Molinaro, currently the Dutchess county executive and a talented politician with a moderate message, is not only behind the Trump eight ball, but severely underfunded and not well-known as he tries to topple a second-generation governor seeking a third term.
“The state has moved farther to the left, and the idea that somehow people are actually saying that Marc could pull an upset, I don’t know what world they’re living in,” said Tom Doherty, a former top aide to Pataki and currently a political consultant, during a recent interview on the Max & Murphy radio show on WBAI.
Trying to unseat Governor Andrew Cuomo, Molinaro has staked out a Pataki-esque Republican platform, criticizing high property taxes, increasing state spending, mismanagement of key state functions, runaway labor giveaways, and Albany’s culture of corruption. Still, the most recent poll from Quinnipiac gave Cuomo a 23-point advantage over Molinaro in the general election.
Doherty, who has been active in Republican state politics for decades and has seen ups-and-downs in the GOP’s fortunes in New York, characterized this poor showing, coupled with the apparently imminent loss in the Senate, as not a failure on the part of Molinaro, but on the existing leadership in the state party. In Doherty’s eyes, leadership, particularly State Chair Ed Cox, has not provided the right vision and execution in the post-Pataki years.
“He’s a wonderful man,” Doherty said of Cox. “But I’ve known a lot of wonderful men who should not be the party leader.”
The manifold problems plaguing the state GOP, according to Doherty and others, include a hard rightward lurch in a heavily Democratic state, a failure to build effective organizations all across the state with geographically applicable messaging and priorities that run good candidates for everything, and, of course, Donald Trump atop a party wherein most of the leadership has embraced the president despite his being deeply unpopular in New York. Cuomo has labeled Molinaro, who has said he didn’t vote for Trump and has criticized some of his immigration and tax policies, a “Trump mini-me.” Though it is not a fair characterization, it is likely effective with much of the New York electorate.
“Elections are always about the middle,” Doherty said. “Where are the independents voting? The problem in New York is, you have so few Republicans in terms of the numbers versus Democrats that you have to get so many of the independents in your corner. Not only do you have to make sure your guys come out to vote, and this year that’s a problem because Democrats seem very energized, extremely energized, it just made it more difficult for him.”
While much of the New York GOP, including Cox and even county leaders in extremely-deep-blue New York City, has embraced Trump, the statewide path to victory for a Republican must include some Democrats and many independents, while also holding onto the Republican base. It’s a tricky equation any year, but especially with a figure as polarizing as Trump involved.
Doherty said Molinaro needed to be better-funded, and that again goes to party leadership and infrastructure. Molinaro is a great candidate with a good message, Doherty said, but he has not had the support needed to get his name and message out to voters, making his very long odds nearly non-existent.
“Marc Molinaro is a phenomenal candidate,” Doherty said on Max & Murphy. “If you were going to take a Republican candidate in the northeast, you need a George Pataki-like, moderate Republican to compete in the places like Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, et cetera. He’s a great guy. He has no state party operation behind him, he has no money behind him.”
“And I keep hearing about these comparisons to George Pataki,” he continued, drawing important distinctions in his eyes. “New York is not the George Pataki New York of 1994, where you were fighting to go get the Conservative Party endorsement, because you needed that. Quite frankly, you don’t want that today in New York State.”
New York is now a more Democratic state, while Pataki also had advantages, perhaps most especially a sitting Republican United States Senator, Al D’Amato, Doherty pointed out, and a very strong finance director and a state party chair, as well as ready-to-help and competent local leaders. “[E]very time we landed a plane somewhere, or got off the helicopter,” Doherty said, local leaders “were there with massive rallies. None of that exists for Marc this time around, and that’s sad.”
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by Ben Brachfeld, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Ben Max contributed to this story.
Larry Sharpe on the trail (photo: @Sharpe4Gov)
Larry Sharpe has a radical plan to reshape New York’s education system. The Libertarian candidate for governor, Sharpe has been campaigning vigorously around the state, making lively and entertaining media appearances, and putting forth substantive policy proposals far different from those typically discussed in mainstream state politics by the two major political parties.
Among those is Sharpe’s education plan. A former marine and University of Maryland graduate who spent some of his youth in the Bronx, Sharpe characterizes the costs of education as unsustainable, and in dire need of reform, both in terms of policy and funding. He proposes several outside-the-box policies and engages only slightly in some of the more traditional education debates, such as over charter schools and foundation aid formulas from the state to localities. He’s thinking of much more sweeping change, detailing his platform during interviews and in a policy paper released by his campaign.
At the core of his plan is a proposal to make mandatory public education in the state end at 10th grade, upon which Sharpe says that “most of the major schoolwork has already been completed and most remaining courses are electives and, for many students, college prep.” Though for too many, he says, 11th and 12th grade have too little academic rigor and purpose, too many gym classes and study halls.
In Sharpe’s proposal, students would graduate upon passing an exam at the end of 10th grade and have a series of options in front of them. With New York spending an average of more than $20,000 per year per pupil, the highest in the nation, this would free up significant funds.
Sharpe would make grants of $20,000 available to each student over the course of several years to spend on a selection of options including prep schools, which would proliferate, he believes, under his plan, to entice that newly available money and help students become ready for higher education. In what he describes as something of a GI Bill for New York youth, Sharpe would also allow the money to be used for trade school or other training programs, or even to start a business. Students could also earn an associate’s degree, he said, then pursue a bachelor’s if college is right for them.
“When we go off to college most of the time, it is 13th grade,” Sharpe said on the Max & Murphy radio show on WBAI. “You can check out all the studies. Ask anyone who has been there, our kids are not ready for college. It takes about six years for the average kid to graduate college, we should be ashamed of that.”
Sharpe also thinks that standardized tests should be done away with prior to high school, to let students learn and teachers teach without the pressure and undue influence of the exams, and that decisions on curriculum, programs, and other facets of education policy should be left at the local level.
He envisions a loss of $4 billion in federal education grant money as a result of abandoning standardized testing and Common Core learning standards, which would allow for greater experimentation in education policy, while the $4 billion deficit would be made up for with the savings from the elimination of 11th and 12th grades, he says.
“So what did I just do? I replaced all of the federal money, plus more, and provided a surplus and allowed local school districts to get rid of unnecessary administrators,” he said. “All of that happened without one extra tax dollar.”
His plan also includes severely cutting administrative staff within the school system, characterizing them as overpaid and contributing little to the system, only drawing a large paycheck and needed only because of all the overbearing federal and state regulations that he plans to either do away with or extricate New York from.
“The average administrator makes over six figures, you can easily let some of these administrators go,” he said. “You let some of these administrators go, what can you do? Teachers will have more freedom, but not just that. Teachers will have more raises, or hire more teachers, or do things that a local district should do.”
In 2016, New York’s highest-in-the-nation spending was roughly $22,366 per pupil, about 90 percent more than the national average of $11,762, according to the US Census Bureau, though numbers vary widely among New York school districts, with rich districts spending far more per pupil. That year, total spending in New York’s public schools, via local, state, and federal money, was $61.4 billion. This year, the state increased its school spending yet again, by $912 million, up to $26.7 billion total in state funds.
The state’s funding formula, Foundation Aid, plays a part in the funding inequality: a USA Today investigation in 2016 found that the formula uses obsolete data and doesn’t reduce aid to a locality, even if migratory shifts take place. A report from the State Association of School Business Officials in 2016 found that rich districts spend about $5,800 more per pupil on average than poor districts. Sharpe has noted these issues and proposes doing away with local spending on schools, having everything go through the state in an effort to make things more equal.
There's been little discussion of K-12 or higher education during the gubernatorial campaign from frontrunners Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat seeking a third term, and Republican Marc Molinaro, though Molinaro recently released a plan for reimagining services for people with developmental and physical disabilities that includes elements related to K-12 and workforce education. In their recent debate, Cuomo and Molinaro both said they believe in expanding charter schools and school choice, hot button education issues that often dominate the conversation. Sharpe says he believes in choices, as outlined above, but as he recently told Susan Arbetter on The Capitol Pressroom, he does not foresee much role for charter schools if his education plan is realized.
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by Ben Brachfeld, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Ben Max contributed to this story.