“Meet Brooklyn hardball”
Like many progressives, I have mixed feelings about New York State Senator Chuck Schumer. On the one hand, he’ll do anything for a campaign dollar. On the other, he’s tough as nail, has a liberal voting record, and pulled out one of the greatest political feats of our generation when he led the Democrats to six Senate seats in 2006 (as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee).
And I’ll give him this: he’s been a major thorn in The Decider’s side (via the Politico):
He was the first senator to call for a special prosecutor to investigate the exposure of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. And he was a leading face of the congressional push to investigate the firings of several United States attorneys, convening hearings that eventually produced Monday’s resignation of Gonzales.
“The ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ crowd thinks they’re tough. Meet Brooklyn hardball,” said Ken Baer, a Democratic strategist.The Gonzales affair was, for Schumer, a textbook case of his modus operandi. He was a loud, early voice raising the question of firings of U.S. attorneys, diving into the details of the story when the scandal was still bubbling up on liberal blogs. And he followed it relentlessly to the end, emerging Monday as the Democrats lead voice on Gonzales’s resignation.
And let’s face it: “Brooklyn hardball” is game of catch compared with Albany hardball.
schumer is awesome. especially for the down to earth way he lives in dc. but he also takes the time to talk to staffers. i know state officials who are ‘above’ that. anyway, keep in mind that chuck is a product of albany, so he knows albany hardball as much as brooklyn hardball. although brooklyn hardball has a nice ring to it.
a game of “catch”? maybe at schumer’s level. but, trust me, as someone who lives and brooklyn and can see the machine all up close and personal, the real brooklyn hardball is fucking vicious. local politics in the county of kings is a full contact sport. literally. i have actually seen brawls at polling places.
and besides, where do you think those brawlers in albany learn their trade? they learn it coming up through the urban machines, and the brooklyn machine is first among equals in the “hardball” dept.
Do they leave threatening phone messages on candidates’ father’s answering machines in Brooklyn?
You’re right that Brooklyn is rough, but upstate is just as bad or worse. Do you remember the big Duchess County scandal from about five years ago?
funny that you bring up duchess county. i’ve worked on two state senate campaigns. a primary challenge to a thoroughly corrupt dem in brooklyn and on brian keeler’s campaign in duchess. about two weeks before e-day in keeler’s campaign i start thinking about how many poll watchers we are going to need and how i need to train them.
then i realize, this ain’t brooklyn. e-day in duchess was a picnic compared to primary day in brooklyn. no fistfights, no mistresses running polling sites, no outright vote buying, no burglaries of campaign offices (oh, yes.) and no one physically threatening senior citizens who declined their candidate’s free steak dinner.
But didn’t a county assessor allegedly get murdered there back in the day?
heard something about that when i was working up there. not really sure of the details though. that said, small towns can be rough too. my little redneck hometown down south has a pretty rough reputation as well. i guess the thing about brooklyn that strikes me so is the institutional nature of the problem. one can find bad actors anywhere. in brooklyn, it’s the entire political culture that is a bad actor. that and it’s beyond cuthroat.
The ball they are playing in Albany is wholly transplanted from Brooklyn. Joe Bruno in Canarsie 30 years ago would have been eaten alive…
[...] I have a lot of respect and admiration for our senior Senator from NY. You took back the Senate as head of the DSCC (Thank you, Thank you, [...]