SUSAN ARBETTER ON ccSCOOP

Political Paradoxes, Paroxysms, and Pyres

O’Luck, who is black, wrote that if affirmative action programs were not around, white men and “the connected” would have access to nearly 100 percent of all city, state, and federal government dollars spent.  

“Before Affirmative action, came along, non-minorities had their own affirmative action program; i.e., no blacks and women. I believe as taxpayers, minorities and women deserve a piece of the pie.”

DeFrancisco, who is white, questioned O’Luck about what he considered the discounting of hard work in O’Luck’s political calculus. The Senator then referenced his own childhood poverty, college graduation, and ultimate success. 

But the conversation was interrupted by an angry Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat with a history of volatile behavior (he is under indictment for punching out a New York Post photographer). Senator Parker, who is black, lost his cool during a minutes-long rant about DeFrancisco’s “racist” line of questioning. It’s hard to hear, but the tone is evident.

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On Wednesday, during an appearance on Errol Louis’s radio program, Parker didn’t back away from his position. Instead, he raised the political stakes by calling DeFrancisco and other State Senate colleagues, “white supremacists.” 

In response, Parker’s fellow Democrats reacted angrily to their mercurial colleague. State Senator Ruben Diaz claimed that Parker needed help. Conference Leader John Sampson assured the media that Parker was being reprimanded. GOP Minority Leader Dean Skelos, who is white (like all of the Republican State Senators at the moment), called for Parker to be censured. 

But it wasn’t until several Republican allegations emerged in the media suggesting that it’s really the Democrats who are the racists, that things started getting ugly. 

The Politics of Race

Sometimes racism is more than just racism. Sometimes it’s a political strategy. In this year’s do-or-die atmosphere in the State Senate, every tool is being used to one-up members of the opposing party. 

One of those tools is race. 

It’s actually quite handy as political tools go; New York State comes with pre-perforated geographic divisions that make it especially easy to divide people culturally, racially, and politically. In the simplest terms, upstate is white and Republican. Downstate is black and Democratic. The possibilities for rancor are ripe.

While this perforation has existed for years, there are several forces at play this year that are causing the state’s underlying cultural fabric to be stressed almost to the point of rending. Some of this you have heard before: That it’s an election year; that the party that wins the most seats in the State Senate gets to draw voting district lines; that the GOP could be “redistricted” out of existence for decades if the Democrats retain a majority. 

But what you may not have heard before is that there are other much more difficult issues roiling the State Senate, such as a shifting of power away from upstate, an unequal distribution of wealth, and a toxic mix of class and racial privilege.

The old dynamic had Republicans in power, in the money, in the news. The Democrats had none of the above. 

And then, just like that, with the flick of a lever, the majority shifted.  

But leading and being in the majority is not the same thing. Case in point: If you think knowing the rules is trivial, you should watch a novice Democrat on the dais get grilled from the floor of the chamber, in tandem, by Republican Senators John DeFrancisco and Thomas Libous. They are legal sharks, comfortable with leadership. To use a metaphor from the animal kingdom, there are moments in the Senate chamber when it’s like watching sharks play with their food before they eat dinner. In this icky scenario, the Dems play the role of chum.

If these are hard words to write, how hard must they be to acknowledge when looking in the mirror? 

The Democrats, many of them, feel publicly humiliated by the disdain with which they are treated by their Republican counterparts. The calculus gets worse when you remember that many districts in New York City are predominantly black and poor, and some of those districts have been starved of state resources almost to death under a system of member item distribution that benefitted upstate Republicans. And not just slightly—the system was so lopsided in favor of the majority that even members of the GOP labeled it harsh. 

Back in 2009, when the Dems had just taken over the majority and were being pressured by good government groups to equalize pork distribution, a State Senator from Brooklyn was heard to say (and I’m paraphrasing), “Fine. But first I have to make up some lost ground.” 

The Fuse Is Set

You cannot underestimate the power of righteous indignation when mixed with a large dose of daily humiliation, spoon-fed by those who feel entitled. It was, in part, this volatile mix of emotions that ensured the failure of the Treaty of Versailles. 

While the New York State Senate is in no way Weimar, Germany, here at the Capitol, in our insular, small, petty little universe, a restlessness has become palpable. 

Democrats are angry and frustrated. The tenor of several conversations I have had could be characterized like this: “We’re racists? How dare they? How DARE they?!” It was a Democratic Senate staffer who pointed out this election flyer to me. 

It’s a mailer, issued by Republican East Syracuse Mayor Dan Liedka, linking David Valesky, a Democrat from Syracuse, to what one blog describes as the “scandal-scarred leadership of the Senate Democrats.” In the photo, you see the faces of Malcolm Smith, John Sampson, Pedro Espada, and David Valesky. 

It’s a metaphor that might work but for two glaring inaccuracies: The first and most important is that John Sampson hasn’t been connected to any of the scandals that have “scarred” the other two Dems. The second is that Jeff Klein, a white man from the Bronx, is the Deputy Majority Leader, which in the current configuration of Senate leadership is higher up the leadership ladder than Sampson.

The Latest

Thursday on The Capitol Pressroom radio show I asked Governor Paterson about Kevin Parker fracas. Thanks to Celeste Katz of the New York Daily News for presenting the conversation in print:

During an appearance on public radio's "The Capitol Press Room," host Susan Arbetter noted that Paterson served for years in the state Senate with many of the same people who are there now, including Republican Sens. Thomas Libous of Binghamton, Dale Volker of Buffalo and John DeFrancisco of Syracuse.

Asked if he ever felt that members of the GOP were racist or had racist tendencies, Paterson said, “not against any of those three individuals.”

He then went on to defend Parker: “I think what Sen. Parker—and I have not seen YouTube and I haven’t heard it—but what he may have been trying to translate for his colleagues was the frustration of the fact” that black businesses before 2006 had trouble getting state contracts.

The Governor is legitimizing what he thinks Parker was trying to say. 

In case you think that the Governor is simply defending an old friend, he was not. It was Parker who infamously told reporters in the thick of the June coup last year that he didn’t think Paterson would be elected in 2010 because he “is a coke snorting, staff-banging governor.”

The match is lit. We’re now just waiting to see if flame touches accelerant.  

Susan_Arbetter@wcny.org

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