A thought on the New York governor's race
Michael Barone blog
Inspired by Fred Siegel's definitive and wonderful book on Rudy Giuliani, The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life.
We tend to assume that party labels are pretty good guides to a candidate's public policies, and often they are. But in New York's peculiar state politics, they aren't—or haven't been for the past 30 years. Siegel notes that as incoming mayor, Giuliani hired John Dyson, a Democrat from Dutchess County, as deputy mayor for economic development. Dyson, Siegel notes, had been a top appointee of "the fiscally tightfisted Hugh Carey, a Democrat who had been the only genuinely successful New York governor since the spendthrift reign of Nelson Rockefeller."
The real test of New York governors, at least on fiscal issues, is the extent to which they give in to the voracious demands of New York State's and New York City's public employee unions. Giving in to those demands tends to expand New York's already bloated public sector and to choke off private-sector growth, particularly in unfashionable parts of the state, like the outer boroughs of New York City and the vast expanse of upstate New York. Carey, elected in 1974 and 1978, gave in very little; instead he subjected the bankrupt city government to the financial control board. Democrat Mario Cuomo, elected in 1982, 1986, and 1990, tended to give the public employee unions pretty much what they wanted. Republican George Pataki, elected in 1994, 1998, and 2002, sometimes clamped down on the public employee unions (notably in his tough budget of 1995) and sometimes indulged them shamelessly (as in the runup to the 2002 election). Party labels thus haven't been perfect predictors: On the spectrum of dealing with the public employee unions, Democrat Carey stood at one end, Democrat Cuomo on the other, and Republican Pataki in the middle.
Which raises the interesting question about Eliot Spitzer, currently the state's attorney general and the almost-certain Democratic nominee for governor in 2006. Where would he stand on that spectrum? Spitzer is a member of a wealthy Manhattan real-estate family and, as attorney general and likely next governor, can raise huge amounts of money wholly apart from public employee unions. (Carey was also not beholden to the unions: The underdog in the 1974 Democratic primary, he raised most of the money for that contest from big contributions from his brother and from a young and little-known real-estate developer named Donald Trump.) Would Governor Spitzer play along with the public employee unions? Or would he use his independence to stiff them? The economic future of New York may depend on the answers to those questions.
As for the Republicans, declared-candidate Randy Daniels, Pataki's appointee as secretary of state, and possible candidates Rep. John Sweeney and former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso have ties of varying strength to Pataki. They might well follow his middle path on this issue. Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, mentioned occasionally as a candidate, would probably be tough on the unions; he was a fiscal tightwad in Massachusetts. Any Republican candidate might be wise to raise this issue against Spitzer; he won't want to antagonize the public employee unions during the campaign (they can turn out a lot of voters) even if he plans to follow Hugh Carey's example in the governor's mansion.
Posted at 4:00 PM EST by Michael Barone
8/10/05
A bad idea whose time has come
Sen. Daniel Akaka's bill for Native Hawaiian sovereignty is expected to come up for a vote in the Senate in September. It would give Native Hawaiians the same status as American Indians. It would create a separate, race-based independent government for Native Hawaiians. Never mind that there are very few people of entirely Native Hawaiian descent or that they are not living in separate enclaves but are thoroughly interwoven into the fabric of Hawaiian life. Never mind that Indian reservations have grave problems.
This is a hugely regressive step, away from the Aloha welcoming spirit that has been one of the glories of Hawaii for many decades and toward racial separatism. It seems directly contrary to the spirit and intent of the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 struck down a Hawaii law providing that only people of Native Hawaiian descent could vote in elections for the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down the policy of the Kamehameha School (funded by the $6.2 billion Bishop Estate) to limit admissions to students of Native Hawaiian descent. The thought behind these policies and the Native Hawaiian sovereignty bill is that Native Hawaiians are so disadvantaged that they need special privileges and a special status.
But that claim is pretty thin gruel. In 1995, in an interview with the head of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, I observed that Native Hawaiians (however defined) are better off in every material way than any other people of Polynesian descent. But he insisted on their victim status. "Native Hawaiians"—I'm quoting from memory, perhaps inexactly—"have lower incomes and education levels than any other ethnic group in Hawaii, except of course the Filipinos." I love the "of course."
For more thorough explanations of why the Akaka bill is a bad idea, read John Fund and Tim Chapman. Nonetheless the bill seems likely to pass. Senator Akaka is a nice man, well liked by other senators; Hawaii's Republican Gov. Linda Lingle has strongly supported the bill; several Senate Republicans support it. The attitude of many members of the Senate and of the House is to defer to members from Hawaii on what seems, on its face, to be a purely local issue—even if polls in Hawaii have shown majorities or pluralities against the bill. Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona has been trying to rally opposition. Good luck to him.
Posted at 10:30 AM EST by Michael Barone
8/10/05
Mainstream media bias (exhibit No. 1,248,391)
In Tuesday's Washington Post, on page A4, the following appears under the heading Washington in Brief.
"The company is owned by Bob Perry, a Republican Party financial donor who gained notoriety last year as the chief financial backer of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads criticized the Vietnam War record of Democratic challenger John F. Kerry."
Gained notoriety? Does anyone believe that the Washington Post would write that George Soros "gained notoriety" as one of the chief funders of Americans Coming Together? Evidently the reporter or editor who wrote this line is operating under the impression that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's charges were proved to be false. But that is not the case. The SBVT charge that John Kerry lied when he said that he was in Cambodia during Christmastime 1968 was proved correct when the Kerry campaign in August 2004 conceded that he had not. Nor were Kerry's Christmas-in-Cambodia claims made idly. He repeated them in the Boston Herald in 1979, on the floor of the Senate in 1986 and to the Associated Press in 1993. On the Senate floor he said the episode was "seared—seared in my memory."
I asked a friend who is a partner in a large law firm if his firm would make managing partner a man who lied on several solemn occasions about having served in Cambodia in Christmas 1968. Of course not, he said; that's an important position and we couldn't risk having someone who did something like that. To which I asked, why is the managing partner of your law firm more important than the president of the United States?
Anyway, in the alternative world of the mainstream media the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's charges were entirely discredited and anyone who financed the group is notorious. It's there in print.
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