Today’s New York Times reports on the latest candidate who thinks he can beat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Last January, after the Supreme Court overturned the ban on corporations’ spending money on federal campaigns, the Times Editorial Board got angry.

Here’s some of what they wrote –

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century...

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights.

It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

Now that former Councilwoman Helen Sears has ended her weekend as a Republican, the Special Election to replace former State Senator Hiram Monserrate is down to 2 candidates.

Assemblyman Jose Peralta has the Democratic & Working Families lines while Hiram is the candidate of the Yes We Can party.

Most observers think the support of Peralta by the Democratic organization, various unions plus Hiram's bad deeds make Peralta the favorite.

But I wouldn't be so sure.

Special Elections are low turnout affairs and they usually come down to which candidate has the best "pulling"operation.

The usually astute Elizabeth Benjamin falls for some spin that tries to make the case that the NY Times story about Governor Paterson’s aide is somehow good news for former State Senator Hiram Monserrate (D, R, D, ?)

A really stupid story from today’s Daily News –

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/02/16/2010-02-16_i_got_intimidating_call_sez_monserrate_backer.html

A man suing to keep Hiram Monserrate in office claims he received an "intimidating" phone call from an assemblyman looking to replace the ousted Queens state senator.

Michael Nardiello told the Daily News he heard from Assemblyman Jose Peralta (D-Queens) last week after adding his name to a suit fighting Monserrate's historic Senate expulsion.

This week’s New York Magazine has an interesting article about Governor Paterson by Chris Smith.

However one part of the article stands out to me. Writing about what was going on when Paterson had to appoint someone to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate, Smith says:

“Andrew [Cuomo] has always dreamed about being governor and president; David has always dreamed about being U.S. senator,” says a New York Democrat who is a friend of both. “We had an opportunity for it to work out that way. We had a small threshold where if David had named himself senator, we could have had some time with Malcolm Smith as interim governor while putting together a process to give Andrew an opportunity in a special election to run for governor. It would have solved a lot of problems”

State Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos has an op-ed in the Party’s house organ, the New York Post titled –

Ending one-party rule in New York

“As we've seen in New York, one-party rule breeds arrogance and contempt for taxpayers”

….

“Voters across New York face a clear choice: Continue one-party Democratic rule, or restore bipartisan governance that's responsive to the taxpayer.  We've seen the consequences of one- party rule in Albany: More taxes, more spending -- and more people unemployed. That just won't cut it anymore.”

In today’s Politicker, we read the following –

Jackie Salit, head of the Independence Party in New York City, said Obama has lost touch with the independent voter and has been too focused on tending to the Democratic base. Salit, in an email to supporters this morning, said that Obama could lose the White House if he keeps this up.

Fun fact that Ms. Salit does not want us to remember –

While most people have happily ignored racist disbarred lawyer Alton Maddox for years, I now have learned from Room 8 that he still has some fans.

As a necessary corrective to some of the nonsense recently written about him here, here is what really happened as a result of Maddox’s role in the Brawley hoax.

More than two years after he was found to have defamed a former prosecutor in the Tawana Brawley case, Alton H. Maddox Jr. has finished paying off a $95,000 damage award against him.

On Friday, three days after the his Marist Poll was shown to be off by a significant margin in the New York City Mayoral Election for the second election in a row, poll director Lee Miringoff claims an unreleased poll was actually right!

http://www.observer.com/2009/politics/unreleased-marist-poll-showed-thompson-closing-bloomberg#comment

A Marist poll completed the day before the election but never made public showed “a continuation of the trend we saw in the previous week” with “Democrats and African-Americans coming home,” said pollster Lee Miringoff.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/shock_move_hands_victory_to_right_8isahAUBozxE1tNc3QhapK

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/11/norman-seabrooks-anger.html

The DN's Errol Louis flagged this interview Correction Officers' Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook gave NY1 last night at Bill Thompson's party, which perfectly captures the anger among Thompson supports at Democrats who stayed on the fence.

Seabrook, whose union endorsed Mayor Bloomberg in 2001 and 2005, but turned its back on him in favor of Thompson this year, was asked by Grace Rauh what he thought the mayor's closer-than-expected margin means going forward.

Steve Malanga, senior editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal has an Op-Ed in Sunday’s New York Post complaining about how New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine is responsible for ruining because of high taxes.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/bribing_the_voters_of_new_jersey_wc8CPVLsmQe5klWsuOeqD

“The state has one of the most progressive income tax structures, so that residents earning more than $250,000 in 2007 (the last year data are available) constituted just 3.9% of all households but paid 59% of state income taxes. And these folks will pay an even bigger share of the burden this year because Corzine raised their tax rates and cut some of their deductions.”

Bill Thompson recently spoke to a forum on poverty, hunger and homelessness in New York City.

NYPIRG, the Albany Times-Union & Bill Hammond of the Daly News are upset about a legal defense fund set up to pay  State Senator Hiram Monserrate legal fees