The key to winning the speaker seat, party insiders say, is Queens county support. The county Democratic Party has picked the winner in each of the three campaigns for speaker over the 22 years since the post has existed.Gianaris Plans Council Race and Speaker Run
[Evan] Stavisky, who has worked on earlier Gianaris Assembly campaigns, said it was essential for any candidate to get the backing of the tightly unified machine.
“The first challenge is how to find the support of Queens County,” he said.
He discounted the theory that any borough would expect its legislators to be next in line because a Manhattan member had had the seat for two terms.
“It is a new game every time and the political circumstances are different each time,” he said.
Queens has been willing to back a speaker from Manhattan in exchange for getting control of powerful committee chairs, as it did when backing Miller and Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan).
Some believe that the Queens County organization should continue this strategy.
“I think Queens has a net loss if it has the speaker. You can’t have the speaker and Land Use, Finance and Public Safety,” said one Queens Council member, adding that all but one Democrat from the borough currently had a committee chair.
Vallone, though, said the decision was far from simple.
“Queens has done very well when my father was speaker and it has done very well when it controls the most powerful committees,” said Vallone, chairman of the public safety committee.
County executive secretary Michael Reich said he could not yet speculate on which candidate the organization might back, since no one yet knows all the candidates running for Council, let alone speaker.
But the county party would have only one factor in mind when deciding who to support, according to Reich.
“Our goal,” he said, “is to make sure Queens County is in a position to promote the issues that are important [to it].”
Excuse me, Crappy's hopping off the bowl in order to puke in it... Could you tell this was written by a former Queens weekly reporter?
4 comments:
Well, if it is the Demoncratic Machines of Queens that are reponsible for all these powerful posts, then THEY have to shoulder the blame that is routinely leveled ath Mayor Bloomie.
Its a shame that the city council members lead such a charmed life.
Well hell, you would be hard pressed to find a nasty comment in so many blogs and other media outlets about them.
It is funny when you go over to the community blog like Astorians.com, with posts like "I hate my boss" and "Exciting New Mexican/Bangladeshi/Brazilian Restaurant Opens" you would think that the community is humming just fine, and not going down the tubes from the ineptness of the machine appointed yo-yos like Mikey.
The political discourse of that community, be it the local paper, community board, or precinct council, has always been a cross between an old ladies tea (with the same faces over and over and over again) and a grammer school yearbook (with depth of discussion).
People always like (with good reason) to keep hands off Astoria, but it continues to fester all sorts of pathogins that seems to spill into other communities (remember the blackout of 2006?)
What happens in Astoria today will be in your backyard tomorrow.
If nothing but Mexican and Bangladeshi restaurants open in a community (and little else) it is a slum.
if Quinn is indicted this guy could be speaker by july.
Post a Comment