NY State Senate: Bait TO Switch
The Village Voice had an interesting article a couple years back when NY was re-districting. They focused on how Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno used ca$h to lure Dems over to the GOP side. Including, but not limited to, Joe Robach:
In Rochester, the senate redrew the lines of Democrat Richard Dollinger’s district, adding turf favorable to Robach, whose assembly district was punitively redrawn by Democrat Speaker Shelly Silver because Robach supported a 2000 challenge to Silver’s leadership. Robach insists that the main reason he decided to take the Republican line against 10-year incumbent Dollinger was Silver’s gerrymander, but concedes that the new senate district Bruno designed includes enticing strongholds of his.
So he’s mad about gerrymandering if it excludes the neighborhood where he grew up, unless it benefits him.
Don’t believe me? Check out his district:
See that nubbin, the missing grey area right above the teeny-tiny land bridge connecting the two lobes of Robach’s district (detail inset in lower left)? Three guesses what that is. That’s right– historic…
Dollinger says that Robach was dangling member-item grants in the face of community groups identified with him while he was still in the race. “The way Republicans buy favor with voters is through member-items” and other discretionary pots of gold, says Dollinger, which he estimates at up to $5 million a year for the other Rochester senator, an incumbent Republican. “It’s not a policy party; it’s a pork party. When the fire department gets its new pumper, they convince people that they can’t live without their Republican senator.” Robach, who says he got $125,000 a year in member-items as an assemblyman, concedes he’s discussed this new funding with groups but says he’s “made no commitments.”
I’d say he’s made some committments since then.
So, the question is, how long can can this Bait TO Switch go on?
[Then Senate Democratic leader Marty Connor] is so disturbed by the blatant use of member-items to seduce Democrats that he scolded Republican leaders in a Voice interview. “Using public funds for political leverage is immoral and possibly illegal,” he said. “It epitomizes everything that’s wrong with the way the state senate functions.” Connor insists that Bruno can only get away with these maneuvers so long as there is a Republican governor.
Uh-oh, Joe, there’s a new sheriff Spitzer in town, I hear tell. So it’ll be interesting to see how that clips Bruno’s wings on this kind of thing. At least Bruno’s not the subject of an FBI investigation or anything.
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[...] In particular, how can Robach complain about Gollsano’s money beating him when it was Joe Bruno’s money that got him elected in the first [...]
[...] 3. There’s a bit of bad blood between these two. Remember — Robach switched parties and took Dollingers’ seat in 2002. [...]