Day 306 - A Turn for the Better?
It is with pleasure that we report the first good news from Albany in some time.
Governor Spitzer has appointed Bruce Gyory as his senior adviser, with special responsibility for relations with the legislature.
As luck would have it, Bruce is a person I knew years ago, along with his parents, Nick and Esther Gyory. His father was a labor leader, chief deputy to Alex Rose, president of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers, a union which disappeared when Americans stopped wearing hats. Mr. Rose was a co-founder of the Liberal Party and was its leader until he died in 1976. Bruce Gyory was chairman of the Albany County Liberal Party for some years, following his family tradition of moderate progressive politics.
Gyory is currently registered as “independent”, which does not mean that he is a member of the misnamed Independence Party, which was formed in 1994 to support Tom Golisano for governor. Many people enroll in the Independence Party under the mistaken impression that they are not making a political choice, but acting independently. The fault here lies with the State Board of Elections in allowing the new party to use that name.
All three Gyorys were pleasant, down to earth people, liked and respected by their colleagues. Bruce grew up in a relatively unstressed atmosphere in a family of moderate means (Rose made himself the lowest-paid labor leader in the AFL-CIO). He is a student of history, (remember what Santayana said) and a fair-minded reflective person. I hope that the governor will listen to his advice, and that Bruce will be able to persuade others to allow a fresh start at governance.
We note with satisfaction Bruce’s statement, reported in the Times today, that he would not return to lobbying when his service to the governor ended. This eliminates the possibility of his using the revolving door through which people go back and forth between holding public office and influencing public servants on behalf of commercial interests.
Errol Cockfield, the new press secretary, is a gracious person who does not have a track record of threatening reporters. In fact, he was one himself, the Albany bureau chief for Newsday. This is an area in which it is obviously wise to make a fresh start, and the governor is trying to do that in the field of press relations. Christine Anderson, the new communications director, deserves credit for avoiding trouble in her first year in the administration, when there was plenty of trouble for her to avoid.
The two appointments were first reported yesterday by Jacob Gershman in the Sun. Today the Times ran a lengthy biographical article by Nicholas Confessore on pB6, which you should read if you want to know more about Bruce.
The Goodwin Column
Earlier this week, the press expressed the mounting dissatisfaction with the first ten months of the Spitzer administration. A column by Michael Goodwin which appeared at the top of p31, the op-ed page, was titled OUT WITH ELIOT, IN WITH MIKE. It begins:
"Eliot Spitzer has fallen and he can't get up. With each passing day bringing fresh proof the job is over his head, we must start looking for our next governor.
"Fortunately, we don't have to look too far. The end of Michael Bloomberg's tenure at City Hall is Jan. 1, 2010, which begins the gubernatorial election year. Here's my point: Mayor Mike ought to get over his White House fantasy and set his sights on Albany for the next stop on his excellent adventure tour."
Goodwin continues by quoting Mayor Koch at length. The last three-term mayor was characteristically direct in discussing Spitzer's shortcomings.
"Koch, calling himself a 'distressed' Spitzer supporter, warned the governor is running out of time to admit his errors and change course. 'If he keeps going down this track, he's finished,' Koch said bluntly."
The Daily News Editorial
An editorial, written in strong tones, but in an effort to be helpful, came in a Daily News editorial Thursday, WHAT SPITZER MUST DO. Link to it if you can. It is the best summary of the administration's failings that has yet appeared. The editorial is not, however, all negative. It is laced with praise for Spitzer's abilities, and urges him to use them for constructive purposes. We quote:
"Eliot Spitzer has made a hash of his first year as governor. He won office in a landslide and it has been downhill ever since. The drop has been steep and too often of his own making...Year One had important accomplishments. For example, Spitzer began to deliver fair school funding for the city and overhauled worker's compensation to the benefit of labor and management. But far more fell by the wayside, and Spitzer let the agenda become swallowed by two fiascos: Troopergate and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.
"Compounding the damage, the governor's 'steamroller' pronouncement gave New Yorkers a reason to question his temperament, his mishandling of Troopergate gave them grounds to question his integrity and his somersault on licenses provided cause for wondering either how clearly he thinks things through or what he stands for."
The editorial continues by praising Spitzer's good qualities "very smart, very rational, very logical and very convinced of the correctness of his position". The paper continues: "Spitzer must recognize that he needs to build support for his policies by convincing the public that his ideas are right for New York. He cannot take for granted that his brainstorms are self-evidently good."
The News concludes: "The state Public Integrity Commission is in the midst of its own probe. Spitzer must provide the panel with every shred of requested information, testify under oath and make the record public. Then Spitzer can start over, a rookie no more."
Our Observations
We at New York civic are not regicides, and we do not want the governor to fail his first year in Albany. Unfortunately, his credibility is in serious doubt, and his actions appear sudden, not fully thought out, and not discussed with anyone else in advance of public release. Talk about his potential for the Presidency, common in January, has completely disappeared. Critics cite his case as an example of the Peter Principle, according to which a person is promoted until he reaches a level at which he or she is incompetent.
Nonetheless, he was elected governor by the people of New York State, winning 69 per cent of the vote, which is a huge majority. New York has no constitutional provision for the recall of an elected official, as California and many western and midwestern states do. It was the recall of Gray Davis that resulted in the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor in October 2003. Arnold was re-elected in 2006 after a poor start which resulted in all his referendum proposals being defeated by the voters in November 2005. He apologized to the public, made significant staff changes, and went back to work. The Governator learned from his errors, hopefully Spitzer, who as yet has no nickname, will learn as well.
We hope that Governor Spitzer will get back on track. But there are issues that still hover over him. His declining poll numbers make him more vulnerable to criticism and less able to persuade others to follow his lead. Senator Bruno is using what we call TrooperChopperGate, which the Daily News called "a piffle", to preserve his 33-29 Senate majority. Bruno is trying to harass and embarrass the governor by holding a kangaroo court to force him either to lie under oath or to recant the story he initially told, which no one finds credible. Hopefully, the courts will relieve the governor of this indignity, especially considering the political purpose of the proceedings.
We hope that the Spitzer futures market has hit bottom, and that the presence of Bruce Gyory and other cool heads will help make the next 38 months better than the last ten. It is unusual in journalism to find serious fault with someone and root for him at the same time. But this is New York, where we are all unusual in our own way.
#425 11.2.07 1357wds
Bison Writes on Climate Change
The issue of climate change, formerly known as global warming, has gained increased attention from the public, thirty-seven years after the first Earth Day in 1970. Fires, floods, droughts and hurricanes have raised people's consciousness that the weather is not what it was a generation ago. We do not know for sure whether human endeavors can avert these changes. We do know that the Ice Age did not result from any activity of the cavemen who inhabited the planet around that time.
Nevertheless, it is incumbent on us to do whatever we can to save energy. We should harness the sun, water and the wind rather than rely on exhaustible fossil fuels. This concern has manifested itself locally in drives to replace gasoline powered vehicles with electric cars and buses, and to restrict and tax automobile traffic. Michael (Bison) Oliva explores the situation in an article he has written for us which you can link to here: