THE "PORK" IN NEW YORK, Thoughts of an older American on Constitutional Government in the USA Options

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"CURSE HURTS: BRUNO - RIPS SPITZ HISS"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor

July 8, 2007 -- ALBANY - Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said yesterday that he believes Gov. Spitzer did call him "an old, senile piece of s- - -," and claimed the self-described "f- - -ing steamroller" governor may have called him even worse.

"Yes, I believe he said it," Republican Bruno told The Post, which broke the story of the alleged slur against the 78-year-old lawmaker yesterday.

"I hear from other members of my [Republican] Conference that the governor has been extremely nasty about me and my leadership when he talks to them, and I think it's unfortunate that the governor of this state stoops as low as he does with personal attacks and threats against people with whom he disagrees," Bruno continued.

"I didn't ask them for details of what he said, but they said it was very nasty, very uncomplimentary," said Bruno, of upstate Rensselaer County.

"He will truly say anything and have tantrums, literally, when he gets upset."

"He's just too temperamental and he really needs to learn how to be a chief executive," Bruno continued.

The Post report quoted a Long Island Republican senator saying that Spitzer called him late Thursday - after Bruno demanded a grand jury investigation of allegations the governor used the State Police to spy on him - and denounced Bruno as "an old, senile piece of s- - - who is under federal investigation."

The latter was a reference to a federal probe of Bruno's private business relationship with individuals and companies that have done business with the state.

Bruno has insisted he did nothing wrong.

The Long Island senator, who spoke directly with The Post but requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the governor, called the alleged remarks "offensive."

Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp denied the governor ever made any remarks critical of Bruno, contending he only speaks well of him.

Spitzer, the former attorney general serving his first year as governor, and Bruno, a 31-year Senate veteran, have been locked in a bitter battle for weeks.

Spitzer has accused Bruno of being controlled by special interest lobbyists who want to keep the status quo, while Bruno has accused the governor of pushing campaign "reform" efforts that are really aimed at destroying the GOP.

Earlier this year Spitzer described himself as a "f- - -ing steamroller" who would roll over lawmakers in an angry conversation with Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco (R-Schenectady.)

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07082007/news/...tate_editor.htm

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"GOV'S 'OLD' LINE A JOE BLOW - POL TELLS OF DISS"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor

July 7, 2007 -- ALBANY - After his peace overture was shunned, Gov. Spitzer referred to 78-year-old Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno as "an old, senile piece of s-," a well-known state senator told The Post yesterday.

In the latest round of the Statehouse Smackdown, the potty-mouthed governor stunned the Republican lawmaker by using the harsh and inflammatory language in a phone call while also adding a reminder that Bruno "is under federal investigation."

"I found the comment offensive, and it certainly doesn't do anything to engender good will or an ability to translate issues into results," the senator, who demanded anonymity for fear of retaliation by Spitzer and his allies, told The Post.

"I let the governor know quite clearly that I found the comments offensive and not suitable for a chief executive to be talking to anybody like that," the senator added.

Bruno's chief spokesman, John McArdle, said the Long Island senator recounted his Thursday conversation with the governor directly to Bruno after Bruno had just gotten off the phone with Spitzer, 47, who had called in a failed attempt to reconcile their differences.

"Senator Bruno was shocked and stunned when he was told this, and he couldn't believe how desperate the governor has gotten," McArdle said.

"He found it unbelievable because he had just had a conversation with the governor, and he was not aware of these comments until after the governor had called him."

Bruno acknowledged in December that he is the subject of an FBI investigation into his dealings as a private business consultant to individuals and firms that have done business with the state.

He has insisted he did nothing wrong.

McArdle, meanwhile, said other GOP senators had told Bruno that Spitzer used insulting and "aggressive" language as he sought to undermine their support for their leader in a series of one-on-one phone calls.

Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp, told that a senator and McArdle contended the governor had made the insulting remark, said the claims were "not true."

"All of his [Spitzer's] calls to senators were affirmative."

"In fact, he specifically told them that he had not and would not make personal attacks on Senator Bruno, no matter what the senator was saying about him," Dopp said.

Spitzer's call to the senator would have come just a few hours after a furious Bruno denounced the governor for a "dangerous abuse of power" and urged that grand-jury investigations be launched into the alleged use of the State Police to monitor his activities.

Bruno was responding to The Post's report that he had been targeted by Spitzer for an unprecedented State Police surveillance program that led to allegations that Bruno had improperly used a state helicopter for political purposes.

Spitzer strongly denied the report, but Dopp offered three contradictory explanations for why the State Police prepared special stop-by-stop travel reports on three trips to New York City made by Bruno.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07072007/news/...tate_editor.htm

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Spitzer is the king of gridlock - Long Island GOP big"

BY NICOLE BODE and JOE MAHONEY

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, July 9th 2007, 3:23 PM

A high-ranking GOP state senator from Long Island ripped into Gov. Spitzer yesterday for presiding over a "totally dysfunctional" administration that he claimed has tied the Legislature up in knots, producing some of the worst gridlock New York has ever seen.

"His aggressive name-calling style is not conducive to getting positive results for the people of this state," Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) told the Daily News.

"What he has done is make the office of the governor totally dysfunctional."

If Skelos was looking to ignite another donnybrook like the one that steamed up the Capitol last week, he wasn't getting any such result.

All Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp would say was, "The governor has made repeated calls for cooperation and will continue to do so."

Skelos, often described by Republicans as the heir apparent to current Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer), said he was not among the lawmakers contacted directly by Spitzer in recent days and thus had no firsthand knowledge of allegations the governor has been describing Bruno as "senile."

The Spitzer camp has denied claims by Bruno allies he made any such remark.

Spitzer told The News over the weekend that he always refrains from engaging in personal attacks and insisted he considers Bruno his "friend."

Two other Long Island Republican senators who did field Spitzer phone calls in recent days, Charles Fuschillo of Nassau and Suffolk counties and Carl Marcellino, also of Nassau and Suffolk counties, said the governor never personally attacked Bruno when he spoke to them.

"We had a very friendly and amicable conversation," Marcellino recalled.

"There was no negative invectives or anything."

"The only thing he did was ask me to call Sen. Bruno and ask him to get back to work, and I suggested he contact the senator himself to try to patch up whatever differences they may have."

A fourth Long Island Republican, Sen. Kemp Hannon of Nassau County, said Spitzer did not reach out to him.

One Republican senator who asked not to be named claimed Spitzer's actions suggest he has a "divide-and-conquer" strategy because he had been cordial with the upstate senators he contacted, but was antagonistic toward Bruno when he spoke to the Long Island delegation.

"My sense is the governor has no real end game in this," the senator said.

jmahoney@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/09...k__long_is.html

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"GOV AIDES FISHED FOR BRUNO BUSTERS"

July 9, 2007 -- TOP aides to Gov. Spitzer went shopping for probers in their quest to dig up dirt on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, their boss' top political rival, The Post has learned.

Spitzer's aides sought, unsuccessfully, to persuade investigators at the office of at least one New York City district attorney to investigate Bruno for possible criminal conduct, a source close to the situation said.

In addition, an investigative agency was contacted by Spitzer's office about a possible probe of Bruno before the accusations of the misuse of state aircraft became public nine days ago - suggesting a conspiracy aimed at Bruno was already under way, a source said.

Sources said the staffers then "ginned up" two investigations of Bruno's use of state aircraft, even though they knew the officials who headed them didn't believe the inquests were justified.

"This started weeks ago," the source insisted.

Through a spokeswoman, Spitzer, a former assistant district attorney in the office of Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, declined to comment.

The spokeswoman, Christine Anderson, cited an ongoing inspector general's investigation ordered by the governor Thursday after The Post disclosed Bruno was the subject of a special State Police surveillance effort.

Morgenthau spokeswoman Barbara Thompson also refused comment, citing "ongoing investigations by other agencies."

Richard Baum, Spitzer's chief-of-staff, and Darren Dopp, his communications director, secretly "reached out" to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany DA David Soares early last week to get them to declare they would investigate claims that Bruno used a state helicopter to attend political events, sources said.

Spitzer's aides said they contacted Cuomo's and Soare's offices, offering to provide copies of specially maintained State Police travel records showing that Bruno improperly, and possibly illegally, used a state helicopter to fly to Manhattan on three occasions for political, and not governmental, business, a source said.

But officials in both offices were skeptical about the validity of the information, according to the source.

"Calls were made to Soares and Cuomo by the governor's people, Baum and Dopp, telling them they wanted them to request Bruno's travel records and to say they're going to 'look into' them on their own," the source told The Post.

"It was ginned up because [Soares and Cuomo] were initially reluctant to get involved."

Another source said, "Soares' office was called . . . and told to 'request' the information," but initially refused to do so.

Dopp insisted in an interview with The Post last week that Cuomo and Soares acted on their own.

Spokesmen for Cuomo and Soares have publicly said Bruno's travel records would be reviewed.

Bruno has accused Spitzer of leaking false, specially prepared information to the Albany Times-Union about his travels, which he insists were proper.

Bruno, citing The Post's revelation that the State Police conducted an unprecedented surveillance program of his automobile travel in Manhattan, has also called on Cuomo and Soares to begin separate investigations into the governor's conduct.

Meanwhile, insiders expect Cuomo and Soares to examine Lt. Gov. David Paterson's claim on an Albany radio station early last week that the State Police were indeed keeping travel records on senior state officials.

Paterson's statements appeared to directly contradict the State Police contention that no such records exist.

Paterson told WROW-AM that "police records" were kept on air and auto travel for top state officials like himself, with the expectation that the records would be available for public inspection.

Dopp initially claimed on the same day that Paterson made his statement that the State Police regularly kept special travel records on Bruno, in part because of a supposed complaint from state Conservative Party boss Michael Long.

Long, however, said he never made such a complaint.

Dopp then changed his story and claimed that the same travel records that were being kept on Bruno were also kept on all top state officials, including Bruno, Spitzer and Paterson.

He then pledged to make the records public.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07092007/news/...cker.htm?page=0

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"SPITZER'S SPITE"

July 9, 2007 -- New Yorkers who view the ugly confrontation between Gov. Spitzer and state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno as just another political mud-slinging match are wrong.

Similarly, those who see the struggle as an unpleasant but necessary crockery-smashup on the road to real reform in Albany are also mistaken.

Sad to say.

Indeed, if there were any coherence to Spitzer's efforts to break Bruno's grip on the levers of power, as part of a larger plan to bring true participatory democracy to the capital city, this page would be cheering him on.

Loudly.

As it is, Spitzer's campaign seems wholly ad hoc, a mixture of verbal vulgarity and abuse of police power aimed at one individual alone - as Bruno's co-conspirator in dysfunction, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is getting a total pass.

And that's just wrong.

Spitzer's apparent inability to deal with frustration - there is little reasonable doubt that he in fact called Bruno "an old, senile piece of sh--" last Friday - is shocking enough.

Worse is the effort - exposed last week by Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker - to have State Police collect "incriminating" evidence about Bruno.

None of this is the mark of a mature, trustworthy leader - which is what Albany needs now more than ever before.

Once upon a time, we saw Spitzer as just that sort of leader.

This led us to endorse the liberal Democrat's candidacy over that of a principled, conservative Republican, John Faso.

But it soon became clear that Spitzer had no strategy for "fixing Albany" - nor any concept of what constitutes decent behavior in prosecuting such a fight.

Spitzer also seems to lack the will to address core issues: Standing up to the special interests, controlling government spending, ensuring a sufficient energy supply for New York's future . . .

Instead he's gone to the mattresses over a silly "campaign-finance reform" that would reform little while disenfranchising voters.

(Even though most New Yorkers couldn't care less about the issue - and even though Spitzer swiftly surrendered the moral high ground by personally undertaking many of the practices he's trying to outlaw.)

Now all that remains of the governor's ambitious agenda is a spiteful vendetta against Bruno - and Bruno alone.

Yet if Spitzer thinks his problems will be over should he make the majority leader disappear, he's badly mistaken.

The odds against Speaker Silver embracing any of the initiatives Spitzer says he considers essential - e.g., campaign-finance reform and Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan - are beyond prohibitive.

And that's just for starters.

The fact is, Silver won't ever be interested in real reform of any sort.

The masters he serves - labor leaders, tort lawyers, deal-makers, advocates of dependent lifestyles, pro-criminal sensibilities - like things just as they are.

Bringing Albany to heel will require effective strategic planning and mature, confident tactical leadership.

But these are the very qualities the Spitzer administration has lacked from the beginning - maturity most of all.

Is it too late to turn things around?

Perhaps not.

But Spitzer has squandered the reform mandate that swept him into office.

He always needed more than that, which seemed altogether to have eluded him at the beginning.

Now he knows better - or he should.

Time to start over.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07092007/posto...editorials_.htm

[Livyjr]

"Spitzer's top aide Baum chats about Eliot's empire - TH-R interviews former Orange lawmaker who heads governor's staff"

By Brendan Scott

Times Herald-Record

July 09, 2007

Albany – Rich Baum is a long way from Orange County now.

As secretary to the governor, this Town of Wallkill farmboy-turned-political whiz sits at the right hand of the state’s most powerful leader, Eliot Spitzer.

This is no glamor gig.

It’s Baum’s job to carry Spitzer’s ambitious and controversial agenda through Albany.

In other words, he’s the guy who has to sit down and cut deals with the same people his boss has vowed, alternately, to take out, reform or whip into action.

And, as Spitzer has struggled to enact his agenda these past months, some have laid the blame at Baum’s feet.

Not surprisingly, the former face of Orange County’s Democratic Party tries to keep out of the press these days.

But he made an exception for his hometown paper.

One recent morning, Baum sat down in the Capitol office suite he shares with Spitzer to share his thoughts on Albany, “the steamroller” and his not-so-intimidating job title.

Times Herald-Record: What’s it mean to be secretary to the governor?

No offense, it sounds like kind of a wimpy title.

Rich Baum: Laughs.

Everyone once a while, I’ll call some place and they’ll say, “Well, who are you?”

And I’ll say, “I’m secretary to the governor.”

They’ll put me on the phone with the secretary, which is fine, but, you know, not the person I was looking to talk to.

TH-R: It’s easier to be the attorney general politically.

You kind of swoop in, take out the bad guys.

Crowds cheer.

You don’t have to deal with a legislature, a check.

You don’t have to deal with everything being viewed through the prism of Republican and Democrat.

How did you adjust to that?

Baum: Here, we’re part of a political debate, where all sides have a valid point and are treated as valid participants.

Here, it’s a real debate.

There, it ended up, not always, but often, being more one-sided.

Even then, when you go after Merrill Lynch or other big New York employers, there is an enormous push back.

But, you’re right.

There’s a lot of valid debate and discussion here that you don’t have as much when you’re a prosecutor.

TH-R: As things have gotten messier, as people have tried to analyze what they see as missteps in the administration, they sometimes blamed you for it.

They say, “Well, this must be Rich Baum and that team of novices.”

What’s your response to that?

Baum: In this kind of role, there’s going to be a lot of second-guessing.

On balance, I feel we’ve done well.

He promised a lot of change and a lot of change as happened.

Some people don’t like the direction of it.

I think largely the people of the state do and I think the governor likes the direction of it.

TH-R: Why have you picked the people that you have?

It seems like a lot of great lawyers, some well-respected, well-known activists, some industry types.

There’s not a whole lot of veteran Albany people in the group.

Baum: You want people who are ready to go into action and also people who don’t do it with arrogance and self-importance and don’t do it at people’s expense.

Whether or not those people are old Albany hands, I don’t know.

Some have a lot of Albany experience.

Some don’t.

I feel we have a good enough mix and get enough advice from legislators, activists, people who are old Albany hands.

So, we’re not lacking really for advice.

TH-R: Is Spitzer really a steamroller?

Baum: I don’t think that people do want or should want a government that’s a club, where it’s fun to be a member and, at all costs, nobody wants to offend anybody else.

On the flip side, they don’t want someone to go in looking to offend people.

But he is willing to call somebody out when he thinks they’re not doing the public’s business.

That, to me, is the good part.

When people call him a steamroller, they’re saying they don’t like that.

TH-R: From the outside, it sometimes looks like the governor’s picking too many fights and burning too many bridges.

What’s he trying to accomplish with all this?

Baum: It’s not like people are unhappy with the state parks.

They’re unhappy with their health care, their education, their jobs and the performance of government.

I feel – he feels – there’s an enormous public desire right now for change and it would just be a lost opportunity not to take advantage of it, try and harness that to put pressure on the system.

I don’t just mean pressure on the Legislature, but also pressure our own bureaucracy and ourselves to create that change.

TH-R: That being said, a lot of people thought that the governor was ready to go further and throw down harder than he did at the end of budget negotiations.

Why did you choose to close when you did?

Baum: Every time he looked at it, he was like, “Does this budget get to where I want to get in people’s lives?"

"Is a kid going to learn better?"

"Is somebody going to get better health care?"

"Are people going to get more property tax relief?”

At that point, the answer was, “Yes.”

Sure, there are things we would’ve tweaked differently.

But he said it was going to be transformative budget and it was.

The fact that other people got a little bit of shaving around the edges, that’s OK.

That’s the legislative system.

TH-R: Explain how the governor makes his decisions.

Baum: He likes real debate internally and doesn’t want to hear that there was a dissenting voice after a decision is made.

He wants the dissent in the room and wants to hear about it around the table and make a decision from that.

TH-R: Compare your former nemesis, Orange County Legislature Chairman Roberta Murphy, and current rival state Sen. Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Baum: They were both perceived as top-down organizations, the Orange County Legislature and the state Senate.

But there is the reality that I don’t think the public and the press doesn’t always gets, that even the strongest leader is responsive to the members.

The second that the members smell distance between themselves and the leader, the leader is in enormous trouble.

Working with the Legislature from our perspective, I think it’s incredibly important to understand that.

TH-R: There’s been some pretty wild exchanges between Spitzer and legislative leaders over the past few months.

After these exchanges you actually have to sit down with his surrogates and deal with the real matters that are underlying the rhetoric.

How do you do that?

Baum: It’s a tough situation, because he came in promising enormous change and saying there was a lot wrong with the way the state has gone over the last decade.

And there are a lot of people here who have given their lives to the Legislature.

It’s hard for them to see his arrival as anything other than a reproach to them.

TH-R: Is this where the idea that this is an arrogant administration comes from?

Baum: Yeah, it’s hard for people not to see that as arrogant.

But from the governor’s perspective, from my perspective, the people voted for change.

We’re delivering on change.

That’s not to take away from the service people have given to the state.

TH-R: Any changes to your perception to Albany since you’ve come up here?

Baum: It brought me back to the Orange County Legislature.

The politics are more personal than you might expect.

Legislators care about the issues, but they also care about their treatment, and the way they’re viewed by the public and their treatment by the executive branch.

I remember that vividly as a county legislator.

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/...NEWS%2F70706008

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"SPITZER'S SPITE"

July 9, 2007 -- Indeed, if there were any coherence to Spitzer's efforts to break Bruno's grip on the levers of power, as part of a larger plan to bring true participatory democracy to the capital city, this page would be cheering him on.

Loudly.

As it is, Spitzer's campaign seems wholly ad hoc, a mixture of verbal vulgarity and abuse of police power aimed at one individual alone - as Bruno's co-conspirator in dysfunction, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is getting a total pass.

And that's just wrong.

None of this is the mark of a mature, trustworthy leader - which is what Albany needs now more than ever before.

But it soon became clear that Spitzer had no strategy for "fixing Albany" - nor any concept of what constitutes decent behavior in prosecuting such a fight.

Bringing Albany to heel will require effective strategic planning and mature, confident tactical leadership.

But these are the very qualities the Spitzer administration has lacked from the beginning - maturity most of all.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07092007/posto...editorials_.htm

THE ALBANY, NEW YORK CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

Say, downstate maven …

Did you happen to catch that TU article over the weekend entitled “Lawyers criticize workers’ comp streamlining - State efforts to quicken hearing process leave too little time to prepare cases, attorneys say” by ALAN WECHSLER, Business writer, first published Saturday, July 7, 2007?

I was thinking of you and our prior conversation in here about how Eliot Spitzer and the NYS Business Council and that AFL-CIO dude sold out the workers of the State of NY with that alleged “reform” of Worker’s Compensation in NYS that you correctly stated was nothing more than a sop to business and the insurance companies to lower business costs and to increase insurance company profits at the expense of the workers, who were not represented in that compromise …

And that is not surprising, actually …

In the NYS Business Council press release “Spitzer taps Council president, staff, board members to serve on transition committees” by
Claire Hazzard, Business Council staff (November 16, 2006) at:

http://www.bcnys.org/whatsnew/2006/1116transition.htm

It was stated as follows with respect to this AFL-CIO dude and his own relationship with “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer and the NYS Business Council:

Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has selected Business Council president and CEO Kenneth Adams to serve as a co-chair on one of several policy transition committees.

“The policy advisory committees are composed of a diverse group of leading experts and thought leaders from throughout the state,” a release from the Governor-elects transition office said.

“The committees will advise the Governor-Elect, Lieutenant Governor-Elect and the transition team on the major challenges facing the state.”

Adams was selected to serve as co-chair on the labor and workforce development advisory committee.

Adams, who met with Governor-elect Spitzer after last week’s election, said he was honored.

“This shows how serious Governor-elect Spitzer is when he says he will help to make New York a better place to do business,” Adams said.

Adams will serve on the advisory panel with Denis M. Hughes, the president of the New York chapter of the AFL-CIO.

end quotes

I think the key statement there, of course, is Adam’s statement that putting him and the AFL-CIO dude in charge of “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer’s labor and workforce development advisory committee “shows how serious Governor-elect Spitzer is when he says he will help to make New York a better place to do business” ….

As you yourself so cogently noted, in order to make NYS a better place to do business, it needs to become a worse place with respect to such things as public health protection and environmental protection and worker protection …

And so …

And it is interesting to also note from that same NYS Business Council press release that instead of having the NYS Health Department provide input on public health in NYS, as it is supposed to do pursuant to our Constitution and our laws, that instead, “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer turned that task over to this James R. Tallon, Jr. dude, who is president of the United Hospital Fund of New York and chairman of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the uninsured ....

Going back to the weakening of worker protection in NYS, the language that I found interesting in that TU article is as follows:

ALBANY — Some lawyers who handle workers’ compensation cases oppose a plan to speed up the often-lengthy process of paying for the medical care of injured workers.

Lawyers from both sides of the hearing room — those who represent injured workers and those who represent employers or insurance companies — say the new regulations could be detrimental to all parties.

They are worried they may not be able to prepare cases in the shorter time allotted and say they are concerned patients could be in a weaker legal position under the new rules.

end quotes

And all I can say is “of course, they are” ….

The patients, I mean ….

In a weaker legal position as a result of “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer’s COMPROMISE with the AFL-CIO dude ….

Because that is what you do when you compromise, as the AFL-CIO dude has done …

You sell somebody out ….

COMPROMISE: a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial; to make a shameful or disreputable concession ….

- Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary

And so …

Comment by John Galt — July 9, 2007 @ 8:20 am

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=4985#comments

[Livyjr]

"Spitzer, Bruno take tiff up a notch - War of words continues between Senate majority leader and governor over use of state services"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Tuesday, July 10, 2007

ALBANY -- The chasm between Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno widened Monday as Bruno demanded another investigation of the governor by the attorney general, and Spitzer called the senator a "superb public servant" who is causing distractions.

In a public appearance at a school, Spitzer said a July 1 story in the Times Union reporting Bruno's use of state helicopters to get to GOP fund-raisers in Manhattan had nothing to do with him.

He said Bruno's subsequent attacks on him and his staff, including repeated calls for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to look into the governor's actions, have "unfortunately been a distraction."

On Monday, Bruno's office released a letter dated July 5 from his Senate lawyer formally demanding that Cuomo investigate Spitzer's alleged use of State Police to tail Bruno during the Manhattan trips.

The assertion is based on police memos Spitzer's staff said were routine reports filed by investigators assigned to transport the senator, at the senator's request.

Bruno was not being spied on, Spitzer's office says.

Bruno, R-Brunswick, said he will make a new demand to Cuomo based on a report Monday in the New York Post, which cited unnamed sources who said staffers of the governor reached out to prosecutors weeks ago to spark interest in investigating Bruno.

Bruno said Spitzer was trying to get him indicted and that the alleged actions were "outrageous."

He said he told Spitzer in a conversation last week:

"With friends like you ,I don't know who needs enemies."

Meanwhile, Spitzer, in an interview Monday with The New York Times, defended his aggressive approach in Albany but also said the battling was taking a toll on his family.

He said his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, wondered whether the job was worth the public attacks that come with it.

"You know what she's been telling me?" Spitzer told the Times.

"She looks at me and says, 'Do you really want this stuff?'"

"And do you want this for your kids and do you want them to see this stuff?'"

"That's the hard part."

Despite the friction between the two men in recent weeks, they have made a few deals and say they can deliver more.

Both share a goal of passing a law to authorize hundreds of millions of dollars for capital projects they say will create jobs.

The Senate is scheduled to return Monday after a break of more than three weeks, but the Assembly has been unwilling to commit to a return to the Capitol.

The governor and Bruno said they can still work together despite differences.

But their trust in one another seems more than shaken.

"I have, from my perspective, a fine relationship with Joe," Spitzer said.

"I do not view any of these issues as personal."

"Where Joe and I disagree, it has always been at a substantive level."

He said that despite Bruno's belief that State Police were involved in some sort of political surveillance, it isn't true.

The Times Union report about helicopter use, Spitzer said, was the result of a Freedom of Information Law request.

The story reported that Bruno and his top aides also received State Police drivers to ferry them around Manhattan.

State Police were involved in standard operating procedures, he said.

"There's been a lot said and a lot printed," Spitzer said.

"We responded to a FOIL request and have done nothing more."

"We have acted in a way that is not only proper but is critically appropriate."

He said the State Police investigators were with Bruno at his own request, to render transportation services.

Bruno's office has said he has received threats and needed protection, although the usual threat assessment by police in such cases was not done.

Spitzer's office has now asked for one on Bruno.

Told of Spitzer's comments, Bruno said: "I don't believe that for a second."

Cuomo spokesman Jeffrey Lerner said the attorney general's Public Integrity Bureau is gathering information from Spitzer on Bruno's alleged improper use of state aircraft.

It also is honoring Bruno's request to probe Spitzer's potential misuse of state resources.

The Inspector General's Office also is looking into the matter, based on Bruno's public complaints.

Christine Anderson, a Spitzer spokeswoman, said comments must be limited because of the IG investigation.

However, she said it is untrue that the Spitzer administration is trying to get Bruno indicted.

James M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Spitzer, Defending Battling Style, Talks of Its Toll"

By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: July 10, 2007

ALBANY, July 9 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer, sounding by turns defiant and chastened, defended his aggressive approach in Albany on Monday, but also said the battling was taking a toll on his family.

In an interview, Mr. Spitzer said he believed that voters wanted his passion and hard-charging style when they elected him last November.

But he allowed that the fight with the Republican majority leader of the State Senate, Joseph L. Bruno, had become “ugly” and that Mr. Spitzer’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, wondered whether the job was worth the public attacks that came with it.

“You know what she’s been telling me?” Mr. Spitzer said.

“She looks at me and says: ‘Do you really want this stuff?'"

"'And do you want this for your kids and do you want them to see this stuff?’"

"That’s the hard part.”

He added, “She says, you know: ‘What was wrong with going into the family business?'"

"'That wouldn’t have been so bad.’ ”

(As a young man, Mr. Spitzer has said, he expected he would one day join his father’s lucrative real estate business.)

Even members of Mr. Spitzer’s own party have questioned his belligerent approach to the Legislature, privately suggesting that he is struggling to make the transition from zealous prosecutor to governor.

The feud has largely halted action in Albany, with veteran legislators saying it is among the most vitriolic they have seen in the Capitol.

Mr. Spitzer’s comments follow a tense week in which aides to the governor’s office sought an investigation into Mr. Bruno’s use of state helicopters and state police escorts, while Mr. Bruno called for investigations of whether the administration had the state police improperly keep tabs on his whereabouts.

Altogether, the two sides have demanded a half-dozen investigations into the matter.

Some Democrats worry that Mr. Spitzer, after being elected with a huge mandate, has unnecessarily alienated lawmakers and given ammunition to the state’s embattled Republican Party.

Mr. Spitzer expressed surprise that the traits he became known for nationally as attorney general — relentlessness and eagerness to take on high-profile opponents — could be viewed as problems in his new job.

He and his staff appear not to have anticipated that his battle with Mr. Bruno would eclipse all discussion of policy and legislation.

He said during the interview that he had no regrets about how he had gone about the job, recalling his campaign promise to “bring passion back to Albany.”

“I’ve not denied that in order to take apart an entrenched political status quo that had defied movement for decades, you need to come at it hard and persistently, and that is part of my persona,” Mr. Spitzer said.

“Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad, I won’t pass judgment, but that’s what the public saw and that’s what the public’s getting.”

At a press conference earlier in the day, he sounded a similar note:

“Everybody pointed out, ‘Gee, you used to be attorney general, are you still playing attorney general?’ ”

Mr. Spitzer said. “No."

"Let somebody else pursue that if they think it’s appropriate."

"That’s not for me to judge.”

A Republican senator on Saturday also accused the governor, 48, of using a vulgarity to describe Mr. Bruno, 78, and of calling him “senile.”

Mr. Spitzer’s aides later denied that he had used those words.

But, Mr. Spitzer, who was asked several times on Monday whether he had made the remarks, would say only that he would remain positive in his interactions with the Republican leader in the future.

The tensions have not entirely shocked people who have followed Mr. Spitzer’s career and heard of the many tense arguments and exchanges he has had with a variety of people.

In March, the governor was criticized in some quarters for cutting a deal with Senate Republicans during budget negotiations that many saw as overly generous.

After that, he began a more aggressive strategy, demanding that Senate Republicans pass his plan to overhaul state campaign finance laws and visiting Senate districts to personally chide senators for failing to act on a number of issues at the end of the Legislative session last month.

But some lawmakers say that he has overplayed his hand and that his staff was too involved in seeking an investigation of Mr. Bruno.

“He’s been very, very wrong, in terms of his style, if he wants to get things done,” said Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright of Harlem, who has had personal differences with Mr. Spitzer in the past.

“It’s crazy."

"In 15 years, I have not seen the Legislature like this."

"Eliot treats the whole Legislature with disdain.”

United States Representative Charles B. Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the governor and Mr. Bruno needed to end their fight.

“They both would receive so many accolades if they said they were burying the hatchet,” the congressman said.

“They’ve got serious things to think about.”

And no one really cares what the two men think about each other, Mr. Rangel said.

The charges and countercharges between the men continued on Monday.

Mr. Bruno, who was asked during a press conference on Monday afternoon how well he was getting along with the governor, responded with evident sarcasm.

“He’s my friend."

"He’s my best buddy,” Mr. Bruno said.

“What I said to him, I believe, last week was, ‘With friends like you, I don’t know who needs enemies.’ ”

It remains to be seen whether the governor and Mr. Bruno will even be on speaking terms when the Senate returns to Albany next Monday.

Asked on Monday when he had last spoken to Mr. Bruno, the governor paused and had to be reminded by an aide that it was last Thursday.

The governor said he had achieved a substantial amount in his first legislative term, including winning passage of huge increases in education aid and forging agreements on the civil confinement of sexual offenders and an overhaul of the state workers’ compensation system.

“We got all that done, not without some pushing, pulling and a few bumps,” he sad.

“Fine, I’ll take those bumps.”

But he paused at length when asked what his wife thought of the fights.

“This is harder,” he conceded, adding that his personal highs, like running in a public road race with one of his teenage daughters over the weekend, were tempered when “you pick up the papers and you see this stuff.”

“I’m happy with the choice, but that’s what makes it hard,” he said.

“Trust me, I’m not complaining."

"You get the downside risk that you become a target."

"Fine by me, you’re a grown-up, you know this going in, but it’s the collateral effect on other people that you worry about: Is it worth it for them?”

“Look, I don’t challenge my judgment about getting in, but that’s Silda’s view.”

Diane Cardwell contributed reporting from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

[Livyjr]

"Key Republican official flew with Bruno - Senate leader's staff won't say why Edward Lurie made April trip"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Wednesday, July 11, 2007

ALBANY -- The Senate Republicans' political director accompanied Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno on a state taxpayer-paid helicopter trip to Manhattan, state records show, but Bruno's staff won't say why.

Bruno's itinerary for days he used state helicopters remained a mystery Tuesday as Gov. Eliot Spitzer said his office approved the flights based on new procedures meant to provide some checks.

Bruno's nearly weekly trips to Manhattan on Thursdays during 2007 aboard a State Police helicopter typically included three top aides.

On at least one of the trips, on April 8, Bruno's foursome included Edward Lurie, executive director of the Senate Republican's campaign committee, according to flight records.

Lurie also had been scheduled to travel by helicopter on March 1, but was replaced on the day of the flight by another top aide to Bruno, flight manifests show.

Lurie also is director of legislative services, a senior majority central staff post.

Bruno's office would not discuss the reason for Lurie's attendance on trips to New York City aboard the state aircraft.

On three other trips in May, Bruno and three aides traveled aboard the State Police helicopters for major GOP fundraisers, two of which featured Bruno.

The trips are being examined by prosecutors, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The senator has said his trips involved state business and were legal and appropriate.

He certified that the trips, including the one with Lurie, were for legislative meetings.

But for the third week in a row, his press office has refused to release details of his events and meetings.

Spitzer, whose itineraries on the days he took flights were released to the Times Union under a Freedom of Information Law request, said Tuesday that Bruno mentioned to him of his interest in using state planes last year.

"I said: 'Wonderful, it's not ... the governor's private plane,' " Spitzer said.

He said his staff set up the new forms that require Bruno, and any other legislative leaders, to state that the use of the aircraft has a "public purpose."

Bruno is the only lawmaker who requested the aircraft.

Bruno's use of state aircraft to New York City has been the center of contention in recent weeks.

Bruno has accused Spitzer's administration of leaking flight records, and said the trips were made for official state business as well as fundraisers.

"Every time he has requested access to a plane, he has been given it," Spitzer said.

"We tried to create some rules, some guidelines to permit people to make some judgment calls."

Although Bruno has refused to publicly discuss details of any government business he had on the trips, The Associated Press earlier identified several people with business before the state who said they met with Bruno on days he attended political fundraisers in New York City.

Spitzer also stated that the Conservative Party several months ago complained about Bruno showing up at its political events with State Police in tow.

The Times Union reported July 1 that the senator gets driven to events in New York City by State Police investigators.

Bruno's staff has said the drivers are needed because of death threats against the senator.

State Police officials declined to discuss the arrangement, but noted that the governor, his family, the lieutenant governor and visiting governors are typically assigned security units.

Both Michael Long, Conservative Party chairman, and Shaun Marie Levine, party executive director, said they were unaware of any complaints.

According to a person familiar with the matter, complaints arose in 2005 and 2006.

James M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Spitzer, Defending Battling Style, Talks of Its Toll"

By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: July 10, 2007

ALBANY, July 9 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer, sounding by turns defiant and chastened, defended his aggressive approach in Albany on Monday, but also said the battling was taking a toll on his family.

In an interview, Mr. Spitzer said he believed that voters wanted his passion and hard-charging style when they elected him last November.

But he allowed that the fight with the Republican majority leader of the State Senate, Joseph L. Bruno, had become “ugly” and that Mr. Spitzer’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, wondered whether the job was worth the public attacks that came with it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

And speaking of those "ugly public attacks" on the credibility of NYS governor Eliot "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer, we have ....

THE NEW YORK POST

"KIDS MEET GOV. CLOWN"

By KENNETH LOVETT

July 10, 2007 -- Like the late Rodney Dangerfield, Gov. Spitzer can't get no respect.

Spitzer, who was at an Albany child-care center yesterday to read to preschoolers, told the kids they should call him "Eliot."

When one kid said no, the governor asked what he wanted to call him.

"I want to call you 'clown,'" the small-fry said, before three of his classmates chimed in agreement.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07102007/news/...neth_lovett.htm

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"A Mellower Spitzer Emerges, Playing Down Bruno Feud"

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: July 11, 2007

ALBANY, July 10 — It was not quite the display of a kinder, gentler governor.

But Eliot Spitzer continued to show something faintly resembling a softer side on Tuesday.

In what appeared to be an effort to lower the temperature of his feud with Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader, Mr. Spitzer radiated sunniness and optimism at his public appearances, sounding a note of deference to his partners in government.

Even Dean G. Skelos — the occasionally acerbic Long Island senator who is Mr. Bruno’s deputy — seemed half-convinced after listening to complimentary words from the governor during an appearance at Jones Beach early Tuesday morning.

“This is truly Kumbaya today,” Mr. Skelos boomed.

As on Monday, when Mr. Spitzer showed up to read “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” to a classroom of Albany preschoolers, he put on a sunny mien during his travels.

He played down his dispute with Mr. Bruno over the senator’s use of state trooper escorts.

He also soft-pedaled a comment he had made about the dispute — and news media coverage of it — being a drain on his family.

“It was meant to suggest only that there are moments when this type of business is not as easy as other lines of business might be,” he said at one news conference.

“And that’s fine.”

He also spoke of how he wanted to “invite” the legislators to pursue an agenda, and stepped gingerly around the question of ordering lawmakers to return to Albany for a special session, saying he did not want to do so “unnecessarily.”

And when he listed his legislative priorities, he led with those items most likely to find favor with the Senate: his initiative for healthful school food, new capital projects, and a bill to expand the state’s DNA registry.

Tucked in toward the bottom of the list was campaign finance reform, which was the focus of disputes that dragged the end of the legislative session into gridlock back in June.

“I’m encouraged that we will get there in a bipartisan spirit and in a bipartisan way,” Mr. Spitzer said during a noon appearance at an Albany summer program, where he chatted lightheartedly and played kickball with a group of children.

Mr. Bruno spent the day in Washington, meeting with federal officials regarding financing for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan.

But a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, John E. McArdle, noted that the Senate had already made plans to convene in Albany next Monday, suggesting that Mr. Spitzer should focus his pleas on the Assembly, which has no return scheduled.

“We are going to deal with priorities of this state, which is the upstate economy, which is needed capital investments, the senior rebates,” Mr. McArdle said, referring to a Senate proposal to give property tax rebates to the elderly.

But Mr. Spitzer continued to be pressed on questions related to Mr. Bruno’s travels with state troopers, which the governor’s aides last week asked the state attorney general and Albany district attorney to investigate.

Mr. Bruno has accused the governor of having the state police monitor his travel schedule in an effort to uncover politically damaging information, and has called for a counterinvestigation of the Spitzer administration.

In a morning appearance, Mr. Spitzer was asked about an article that appeared in The New York Times on Tuesday suggesting that concerns about Mr. Bruno’s use of a state police escort had first been raised during the Pataki administration.

Mr. Spitzer said he did not want to comment on whether or not he had been personally aware of those concerns, but added, “The facts as alleged in that story are absolutely, unquestionably, beyond anybody’s ability to not only disprove, but they are the case.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"AG EYES COP FILES IN 'SPY'TZER PROBE"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER and KENNETH LOVETT

July 10, 2007 -- ALBANY - Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will seek access to a wide range of State Police records, including e-mails and other correspondence with Gov. Spitzer's top advisers, as he investigates whether political espionage was committed against Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, sources told The Post.

"All the relevant records will be sought, and the expectation is that all the records will be provided," said a source familiar with the situation.

Cuomo will be looking to see whether there were any improper orders from Spitzer or his aides to the State Police to spy on Bruno by compiling detailed records of his travel and meetings that could later be used in an attempt to embarrass the Senate leader or pressure him.

Cuomo named his top public-integrity prosecutor, Ellen Biben, a 10-year veteran of the office of District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, to head the investigation into whether the governor and his aides were improperly spying on Bruno.

Cuomo's announcement came just hours after a furious Bruno, reacting to a string of disclosures in The Post, demanded that the attorney general probe Spitzer and his staff to determine whether they "engaged in a conspiracy in an effort to damage me."

He also released a copy of a letter to Democrat Cuomo requesting that he begin a probe.

Bruno, a Rensselaer County Republican, issued the call in response to The Post's latest disclosure that top aides to Democrat Spitzer "ginned up," or aggressively solicited, two investigations of Bruno, including Cuomo's, in an effort to embarrass Bruno.

Spitzer said he regretted Bruno's action "because I think it's going to be a distraction, a waste of time."

The Post disclosed last week that the State Police, which are under the governor's direct control, engaged in an unprecedented surveillance program aimed at Bruno, which included the preparation - at the request of Spitzer's office - of special documents on his travel activities.

Spitzer, in his first extended discussion of what has become a major political controversy, insisted nothing improper had occurred.

"Let me be very, very clear," Spitzer said.

"State Police have done what they have done on their own, done it pursuant to procedure."

"This has nothing to do with us."

"I leave it to the State Police to do what they do."

Cuomo issued a brief statement saying he would add Bruno's requested probe to an inquiry already begun, at the governor's request, into Bruno's possible misuse of a state helicopter to fly to Manhattan.

"Our public-integrity bureau is gathering info on all these issues and will proceed accordingly," said Jeffrey Lerner, Cuomo's communications director.

Meanwhile, Spitzer, who a Long Island Republican senator claimed last week had called the 78-year-old Bruno an "old, senile, piece of s- - -," insisted yesterday that he does "like" and "respect" Bruno, calling him "a superb public servant."

Bruno was having none of it.

"He's my friend, he's my best buddy," Bruno sneered.

"What I said to him . . . was, 'With friends like you, I don't know who needs enemies.'

"It's almost humorous when the governor says he likes me and he's my best friend."

"When you talk to some of my [Republican] members, he says some of the nastiest things."

"It's not very nice."

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07102007/news/...neth_lovett.htm

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Bruno slugs on - Spitzer makes nice, but Joe still hot on 'conspiracy' claim"

BY JOE MAHONEY

DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

Tuesday, July 10th 2007, 4:00 AM

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer said he doesn't want to fight anymore, but Senate GOP leader Joe Bruno kept punching yesterday, accusing the governor of "conspiring" to get him indicted for using a state helicopter.

"They were trying to get some law enforcement agency to indict me in some way [because] they thought, erroneously, we were using the state helicopter, the state police, to get us from one place to another inappropriately," Bruno told reporters.

Spitzer told the Daily News later that Bruno's assertions that he plotted to get the senator indicted are "entirely, totally false."

"I don't even want to respond to comments like that, which are really beyond the pale," he said in a telephone interview.

Spitzer said he wasn't going to counterattack.

"He can have a fight without another party," the governor said.

While Spitzer sought to cool things down, Bruno sent his chief counsel, Michael Avella, to complain to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo about the governor's "alleged misuse of state resources in connection with state police surveillance of Sen. Bruno's activities."

A Cuomo spokesman said the attorney general's public integrity unit was gathering information both from the Spitzer administration and Bruno about the crossfire of charges.

Those began last week with questions on whether Bruno used helicopter trips for political rather than official purposes.

Spitzer said he didn't ask state police to spy on Bruno.

Bruno scoffed at Spitzer's statements to the Daily News over the weekend that he considers the senator "a friend."

"It's almost humorous for the governor to say he likes me, that he's my best friend," Bruno said.

"When you talk to some of my members, he says some of the nastiest things."

Bruno added: "What I said to him last week was: 'With friends like you, I don't know who needs enemies.'"

"And I'm sorry to say that."

"I have no personal animosity with the governor."

jmahoney@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/10...slugs_on-1.html

[Livyjr]

And by way of some further background into this childish fighting between NYS governor Eliot "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer and "BIG JOE" Bruno of the NYS Senate, we have ....

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Air we go: Spitz seeking probes of Bruno flights"

BY ELIZABETH BENJAMIN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, July 3rd 2007, 4:00 AM

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer raised the stakes in his war with Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno yesterday, seeking two formal investigations into whether the Republican misused taxpayer-funded state helicopters for political purposes.

Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp said the case was referred to state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany County District Attorney David Soares.

The administration also planned to involve the Legislative Ethics Commission, but held out little hope the lawmaker-controlled body would take action.

The Spitzer administration also asked the state police for a formal assessment on threats against Bruno (R-Rensselaer) after discovering that one had never been done.

Bruno aides said the senator needed to use state aircraft and be provided state police transportation while in Manhattan because he has received numerous death threats.

They have not provided supporting documentation.

"I was told by the state police there were so many threats on my life they could not cover me," said Bruno.

A state police spokesman said the agency does not discuss lawmakers' security.

Bruno remained defiant, insisting he has done "nothing wrong" and accusing Democrat Spitzer of leaking the story.

"By the time these people get done throwing mud, they're going to find their hands are dirty, their faces are dirty; it's going to splash back on them," said Bruno, noting that state Republican Party Chairman Joseph Mondello is seeking Spitzer's travel records for 14 different days.

The Albany Times Union reported Sunday that Bruno stated in writing at least three times that he was flying to Manhattan for "legislative business meetings," but then appeared to attend only fund-raisers and other political events.

Bruno repeated previous claims by his spokesman John McArdle that he had numerous government-related meetings on the days in question - including a meeting with Mayor Bloomberg - but then refused to release his schedule.

He said he would do so to the "appropriate people" and at the "appropriate time."

Misusing state resources can result in a fine, removal from office and criminal charges.

That is what forced state Controller Alan Hevesi from office.

ebenjamin@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/03...f_bruno_-1.html

[Livyjr]

And by way of some further background into this childish fighting between NYS governor Eliot "STEAMROLLER" Spitzer and "BIG JOE" Bruno of the NYS Senate, we have ....

"Plane-ty of trouble for Bruno - But GOP says Spitzer's also guilty of using state aircraft for political biz"

By ELIZABETH BENJAMIN
DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST

Monday, July 2nd 2007, 4:00 AM

The Spitzer administration is poised to sic investigators on state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno for allegedly misusing taxpayer-funded state aircraft on three different occasions, a spokesman for the governor confirmed yesterday.

Darren Dopp, Gov. Spitzer's communications director, said the case could be referred to the state inspector general, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo or Albany County District Attorney David Soares.

Or all three.

Soares is best known for taking down former state Controller Alan Hevesi, who bilked the state by using a public employee as a chauffeur for his wife.

Generally speaking, the district attorney has jurisdiction over criminal investigations in Albany; the attorney general handles civil cases.

Bruno is already the subject of an FBI investigation into his outside business interests.

Dopp said Spitzer aides are researching whether Bruno violated the Public Officers Law, which could bring suspension or removal from office or a civil penalty, and if he even committed a crime by requesting - in writing - the use of the state planes for "legislative business" when he was really attending fund-raisers and other political meetings.

The Albany Times Union, which first reported Bruno's plane use yesterday, also revealed the senator was driven around New York City by state police, even when going to fund-raisers.

Dopp said the administration is required by law to refer cases for investigation "when any information of possible wrongdoing is made known," adding: "We're obliged to take action."

Bruno aides insisted the senator's use of the state fleet has always been on the up and up, noting that Spitzer himself at least once attended a Democratic county fund-raiser after traveling on the state plane to several government-related events upstate.

The governor also used state aircraft for his "Unfinished Business" tour last week, during which he railed at Republican senators for leaving Albany after the session ended with big issues unresolved.

Spitzer has made it clear he plans to help Senate Democrats take control of the chamber from the GOP in 2008 - or earlier, if possible.

"If they pursue this, they are going to find themselves subject to an inquiry based on the exact same things that they're alleging," said Bruno spokesman John McArdle.

State Republican Chairman Joe Mondello called yesterday for just such a probe.

McArdle also maintained that the senator needs protection from state troopers while in New York City because his life has repeatedly been threatened.

McArdle said he believed the state police have conducted several threat assessments to determine the degree of danger the senator faces, but conceded that hasn't been done recently.

State police won't discuss threats against public officials, a spokesman said.

One episode McArdle recalled occurred a decade ago, during a 1997 rent control battle.

Bruno, who wanted to abolish the regulations, was advised by law enforcement officials to either avoid the city altogether or wear a bulletproof vest on visits (he refused).

Bruno even considered exercising his license to carry a concealed weapon, McArdle said, but ultimately didn't.

ebenjamin@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/02..._for_bruno.html

[Livyjr]

Bruno even considered exercising his license to carry a concealed weapon, McArdle said, but ultimately didn't.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Bruno slugs on - Spitzer makes nice, but Joe still hot on 'conspiracy' claim"

BY JOE MAHONEY

DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

Tuesday, July 10th 2007, 4:00 AM

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer said he doesn't want to fight anymore, but Senate GOP leader Joe Bruno kept punching yesterday, accusing the governor of "conspiring" to get him indicted for using a state helicopter.

"They were trying to get some law enforcement agency to indict me in some way [because] they thought, erroneously, we were using the state helicopter, the state police, to get us from one place to another inappropriately," Bruno told reporters.

Spitzer told the Daily News later that Bruno's assertions that he plotted to get the senator indicted are "entirely, totally false."

"I don't even want to respond to comments like that, which are really beyond the pale," he said in a telephone interview.

Spitzer said he wasn't going to counterattack.

"He can have a fight without another party," the governor said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/10...slugs_on-1.html

And while we are on the subject of the genesis of this on-going childishness down in Albany in the CORRUPT EMPIRE of New York, we have ....

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

"Spitz: I'm gonna blitz the GOP"

BY JOE MAHONEY, DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

Saturday, June 23rd 2007, 4:00 AM

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer declared yesterday he will barnstorm the state to put a squeeze on Republican senators who have held up his campaign finance proposals.

"We're going to play hardball when it comes to getting bills passed and doing the people's business," said Spitzer.

Not the type to mince words of his own, Senate GOP leader Joe Bruno (R-Rensselaer) parried that the legislative session "ended with a whimper" and "the blame for that lies squarely on the governor's shoulders due to the fact that he still hasn't figured out how to govern."

Spitzer, insisting his beef with Bruno's crew was "not personal," vowed he will crisscross the state, asking "everyone who cares about good government to call their state senator and urge him or her to get back to work."

At the heart of the disagreement, at least from Spitzer's view, is the senators' "totally unacceptable" decision to pack their bags Thursday night and get out of town without completing work on many major issues.

Along with campaign finance reform, the unfinished business list includes proposed state investments in projects designed to spur economic growth, a measure aimed at countering growing childhood obesity and another that would streamline the siting of power plants.

State leaders have also taken only baby steps on what to do with the state thoroughbred racing franchise held by the New York Racing Association.

It expires at the end of the year.

Though the Bruno-Spitzer fight suggests more gridlock lies ahead, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) tried to accentuate the positive, noting lawmakers have improved the workers' compensation system and agreed to keep dangerous sex offenders confined and combat violent video games.

With the Senate slated to return to the Capitol July 16 and the Assembly to come back on a date to be determined, Silver said he was hoping "cooler heads will prevail" so stalled legislation can be advanced.

jmahoney@nydailynews.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/23..._the_gop-1.html

[Livyjr]

THE ALBANY, NEW YORK TIMES UNION CAPITAL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG:

And speaking of removing blemishes from others without thinking evil of them, in the THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS story : I’m gonna blitz the GOP” by JOE MAHONEY, Saturday, June 23rd 2007, 4:00 AM, the following was attributed to Sheldon Silver concerning the “STEAMROLLER’S” alleged “reform” of Worker’s Compensation in NYS:

“Though the Bruno-Spitzer fight suggests more gridlock lies ahead, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) tried to accentuate the positive, noting lawmakers have improved the workers’ compensation system ….”

end quotes

Now, there is a statement pregnant with meaning, alright - “LAWMAKERS HAVE IMPROVED THE WORKERS’ COMPENSATION SYSTEM” ....

WHAT A CROCK, SHELDON ….

YOU’RE TALKING THROUGH YOUR HAT, BUB!

And in support of that statement, I simply make reference to the recent TU article entitled “Lawyers criticize workers’ comp streamlining - State efforts to quicken hearing process leave too little time to prepare cases, attorneys say” by ALAN WECHSLER, Business writer, first published Saturday, July 7, 2007 …

That article reminded me of a lengthy conversation in here between Downstate Maven and myself about how Eliot Spitzer and the NYS Business Council and that AFL-CIO dude AND THE NYS LEGISLATURE AND SHELDON “CAN-DO-NO-WRONG-NO-NOT-ME” SILVER actually sold out the workers of the State of NY with that alleged “reform” of Worker’s Compensation in NYS that was nothing more than a sop to business and the insurance companies in NYS to lower business costs and to increase insurance company profits at the expense of the workers, who were not represented in that compromise …

And that is not surprising, actually …

In the NYS Business Council press release “Spitzer taps Council president, staff, board members to serve on transition committees” by
Claire Hazzard, Business Council staff (November 16, 2006) at:

http://www.bcnys.org/whatsnew/2006/1116transition.htm

It was stated as follows with respect to this AFL-CIO dude and his own relationship with “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer and the NYS Business Council:

Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has selected Business Council president and CEO Kenneth Adams to serve as a co-chair on one of several policy transition committees.

“The policy advisory committees are composed of a diverse group of leading experts and thought leaders from throughout the state,” a release from the Governor-elects transition office said.

“The committees will advise the Governor-Elect, Lieutenant Governor-Elect and the transition team on the major challenges facing the state.”

Adams was selected to serve as co-chair on the labor and workforce development advisory committee.

Adams, who met with Governor-elect Spitzer after last week’s election, said he was honored.

“This shows how serious Governor-elect Spitzer is when he says he will help to make New York a better place to do business,” Adams said.

Adams will serve on the advisory panel with Denis M. Hughes, the president of the New York chapter of the AFL-CIO.

end quotes

In reply to Sheldon’s statements in the NY Daily News, the key statement there is Adam’s statement that putting him and the AFL-CIO dude in charge of “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer’s labor and workforce development advisory committee “shows how serious Governor-elect Spitzer is when he says he will help to make New York a better place to do business” ….

As Downstate Maven so cogently noted, in order to make NYS a better place to do business, it needs to become a worse place with respect to such things as public health protection and environmental protection and worker protection …

To make NYS the best place to do BID-NESS in the world, a real CAPITALIST’S PARADISE, Eliot “STEAMROLLER” Spyzer and Sheldon Silver are going to make it into a THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY when it comes to public health protection and environmental protection and worker protection ….

And so …

With respect to the weakening of worker protection in NYS, the language that I found interesting in that TU article is as follows:

ALBANY — Some lawyers who handle workers’ compensation cases oppose a plan to speed up the often-lengthy process of paying for the medical care of injured workers.

Lawyers from both sides of the hearing room — those who represent injured workers and those who represent employers or insurance companies — say the new regulations could be detrimental to all parties.

They are worried they may not be able to prepare cases in the shorter time allotted and say they are concerned patients could be in a weaker legal position under the new rules.

end quotes

And all I can say in response to Sheldon Silver is “of course, they are” ….

The patients, I mean, which is to say, the injured workers of NYS …

Thanks to people like Sheldon Silver, who knows where his own pocket is when it comes to taking care of yourself first in politics, the workers in NYS are now in a weaker legal position as a result of “STEAMROLLER” Spitzer’s COMPROMISE with the AFL-CIO dude ….

Because that is what you do when you compromise, as the AFL-CIO dude and Sheldon Silver have done …

You sell somebody out ….

COMPROMISE: a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial; to make a shameful or disreputable concession ….

- Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary

And so …

Comment by John Galt — July 13, 2007 @ 9:13 am

http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/?p=5028#comments

[Livyjr]

THE NEW YORK POST

"BRUNO IS GIVING UP HIS 'SPIES'"

By FREDRIC U. DICKER State Editor

July 13, 2007 -- ALBANY - Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, fearful State Police have spied on him, will notify Gov. Spitzer's administration today that he no longer wants their protection - despite threats against his life, The Post learned last night.

Bruno, in a letter to acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton, will say that he will use Senate personnel and possibly a private security firm to assure his safety.

"Given what went on, we no longer want State Police protection," said a Bruno aide, referring to the ongoing controversy over claims that the Spitzer administration engaged in what Bruno (R-Rensselaer) has called "political espionage."

"The troopers were being asked to do things that haven't been done before, keeping records on Sen. Bruno, and that's not fair to them or the senator."

"So we're not going to be in a position where that is done any more, not now, not ever," the aide said.

Bruno - who says he's been the target of several death threats in recent years - will rely on Senate employees, several of whom are retired state troopers, for his security or perhaps use campaign funds to hire the security firm headed by Bo Dietl, the famed former New York City detective, the aide said.

Dietl told The Post he had already spoken to Bruno about providing protection, noting, "I told him, whatever he wants we will provide for him."

Spitzer's office late last month provided the Albany Times Union with State Police travel records suggesting that Bruno flew to Manhattan on a state-owned helicopter and then received a State Police automobile escort on trips for political, not governmental, purposes.

A few days later The Post disclosed that the records were part of an unprecedented State Police surveillance program of Bruno, with documents being kept or "reconstructed" for his travels but not for the travels of Spitzer or other senior state officials.

The Post also disclosed that aides to Spitzer plotted to generate investigations of Bruno by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany County District Attorney David Soares before the State Police records became public.

Spitzer's office has offered three conflicting explanations for the record-keeping, including claims that state Conservative Party leader Michael Long or his daughter, Ilene Long Chelales, had complained about Bruno traveling with a State Police escort.

Both Long and his daughter strongly denied making a complaint.

fredrick.dicker@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07132007/news/...tate_editor.htm

[Livyjr]

NEW YORK MAGAZINE

"The Steamroller in the Swamp - Is Eliot Spitzer changing Albany? Or is Albany changing him?"

By Steve Fishman

A few months ago, I asked Governor Eliot Spitzer about his temper, the most popular subject in Albany.

This was before Spitzer got into an all-out war with State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno, before Bruno called Spitzer “a rich spoiled brat” and his staff “thugs” and “hoodlums,” before Spitzer may or may not have called Bruno “senile,” before the machinery of government seemed to skid to a halt.

The day we met, Spitzer was dressed in his usual snowy-white shirt, firmly knotted rep tie, dark prosecutor’s suit, and black dress shoes.

“You have a talent for confrontation,” I ventured.

“Your signature tactic has been to confront people and show your temper.”

“The full Spitzer,” aides call his angry outbursts, which, in one form or another, were often on display in the early days of his term.

In the first weeks, Spitzer singled out one Democratic legislator who defied him.

“Bill Magnarelli is one of those unfortunate Assembly members who just raises his hand when he’s told to do so,” he told Magnarelli’s hometown newspaper.

Not long after, he famously shouted at Republican minority leader James Tedisco, “I’m a ****ing steamroller, and I’ll roll over you.”

“It’s a fair question,” Spitzer told me amiably, flashing one of his awkward horizontal smiles.

Spitzer described confrontation as a kind of sport.

“When you’re on the playing field, you fight as hard as you possibly can."

"You don’t give an inch because you’re both playing by those hard rules."

"Afterwards, you shake hands and you say, ‘That was great! Onto the next.’”

A good public pummeling.

How invigorating!

Spitzer is narrow and wiry; his forehead, framed by lettuce-leaf ears, slants back, and his chin pushes forward, as if, physically, he represents aggressive energy.

As we sat talking in his large bland office, it was clear that Spitzer reveled in the effects of his anger.

“Outrage helps both create a conversation to frame the issues and generate an understanding of the issues,” he told me.

Others view his temper as a liability, but as Spitzer sees it, it’s almost a political innovation, bringing clarity to an argument.

For Spitzer, a public drubbing of Billy Magnarelli was good sport and had the added benefit of demonstrating his high-minded principles.

“It fits into a larger rationale, which is that we believe in accountability,” he told me.

Anger, as Spitzer explained it, was linked to the best, most optimistic side of him.

It also marked him as different, part of the solution.

“The cliché is, ‘You went to Albany as one of us, you came back as one of them,’” said Spitzer.

“I’m not coming back as one of them.”

As attorney general, Spitzer had tackled Wall Street corruption; he’d tamed illegal practices in the country’s largest corporations, threatening to shut them down unless they cleaned up.

Now he intended to use the same “force of will,” as admirers call it, against Albany, and take no prisoners.

“Eliot is the reality they deny,” one aide says, and which he intended to impose.

For the Republicans, he reserved a special fate.

He was going to “take them out,” as his target, majority leader Bruno, put it.

That is, unless they take him out first.

On inauguration day, January 1, 48-year-old Eliot Spitzer, Princeton class of ’81, Harvard Law class of ’84, heir to a real-estate fortune, and the most famous state attorney general in America, stood on the steps of the state capital and declared that everything in Albany must change, as he’d repeatedly vowed during his campaign.

“Day One is now,” he told the crowd.

On that winter day, the new governor—coatless, JFK-style—tilted his jaw at his audience.

His breath turned steamy in the air.

A torch was being passed.

Albany’s sleepy days were over.

“Like Rip Van Winkle,” it slept, he said.

He said state government was dysfunctional.

(Privately, his people prefer a more colloquial term: a “cesspool.”)

“The light of a new day shines down on the Empire State,” he said, inviting the assembled to join him on his journey of reform.

In the audience, longtime legislators smiled tightly through the insults.

They’d lived in and run the dark place for decades, and many bridled at his professed monopoly on good intentions.

“People don’t realize,” says Democrat Sheldon Silver, 63, Speaker of the State Assembly for thirteen years, “my role was to stop bad things from happening [under Republican governor George Pataki].”

Silver professed to like Spitzer’s passion and to share his priorities.

As Silver sees it, they’re cut from similar cloth.

Like Spitzer, Silver is a lawyer (although of the public-school variety, Brooklyn Law class of 1968) and a liberal-leaning New York Jew.

Spitzer, though, is the assimilated Jew with the Fifth Avenue spread, Silver the religious relation in a modest apartment on the Lower East Side.

Silver looks the part: Dour, rabbinical, he disappears in a crowd.

Few know what he’s thinking—“an enigma,” Spitzer once called him.

Early on, Silver warned his enthusiastic landsman, “There’s no legislation by fiat,” as if to say, “Don’t ignore the Legislature.”

Then, he wondered, “Is he patient?”

As if to deliver an early lesson, shortly after the inauguration Silver broke a deal to replace comptroller Alan Hevesi, rejecting Spitzer’s candidates and selecting one of his own.

If Silver is an ally, albeit a tricky one, Joe Bruno, 78, seems a central-casting nemesis.

Not everyone is so “blessed” as to be born with a rich father, Bruno likes to say, and then describes his “miserably unhappy childhood”—no central heat, one toilet for eight kids.

Bruno, Skidmore class of 1952, is a Rensselaer County businessman, and breeds horses.

He’s a former boxer with a twice-broken nose, a real tough guy to Spitzer’s tough talker; a self-made man to Spitzer’s modesty-in-the-face-of-inherited-wealth act.

And he has, as he likes to say, “the common touch”—he’s never joked about overcoming “the disadvantage” of Yale Law school, a crack Spitzer makes about friends.

Bruno winks across the room at a press conference or merrily cups his hands to mime mud balls, which he accuses Spitzer of slinging.

An ongoing FBI investigation into corruption is said to focus on whether a business Bruno consulted for got favorable governmental treatment, but even a federal probe can’t dampen his high spirits.

Bruno always has a quick return.

Albany dysfunctional?

“Pure nonsense,” he retorts.

From the start, Bruno resented Spitzer’s condescension and barely concealed it.

“Spitzer has an attitude about him, he really does, like he’s kind of above it all."

"He thinks I’m a street kid that doesn’t know night from day,” Bruno told me.

“I’ve survived 31 years."

"I don’t pretend to be a genius."

"I have common sense, a lot of intuition.”

Even though Spitzer was elected by 69 percent of voters, to drain the swamp he’d have to work with Silver and go through Bruno, daunting challenges for a new executive.

As Silver put it, “How difficult it’s going to be to deal with the Senate will be the governor’s biggest surprise.”

The looming question was whether the same hyperaggression that had been successful in the attorney general’s office would work in Albany, where he must appease complicated constituencies, while not having subpoena power.

When I first talked with the governor several months ago, he had no doubts as to his tactics.

He relished the fight.

Taunting, as he saw it, was a part of the game.

I asked about the threat to kill the Republican majority.

The governor has a habit of sitting perfectly still, like Lincoln on the National Mall.

“There is some virtue in my saying to them, ‘Fellows, your hold is tenuous,’” Spitzer answered, and shot me one of his quick horizontal smiles.

Spitzer’s appetite for confrontation was nurtured early.

Perhaps every dinner table is theater; Spitzer’s childhood table was, as one friend puts it, a “Darwinian” drama.

Spitzer’s father, Bernard, now 83, presided over what another friend called “an ongoing argument that never stops."

"It was like intellectual professional wrestling, except it wasn’t staged.”

Bernard is the brilliant immigrant (he graduated college at 18) who built a real-estate fortune worth an estimated $500 million, supervising every detail.

One benefit of success was that the three bright Spitzer children didn’t have to waste their time in pursuit of financial gain.

Instead, as one friend observed, they were to compete, achieve, and serve.

At dinner, Bernard and Anne, his wife of 63 years, discouraged small talk—“Dull and redundant,” Bernard tells me one day.

“My dad didn’t want to get to dinner and gossip, though it probably would have been more fun,” Spitzer says.

“My dad is not a frivolous person."

"I don’t think I’ve heard him have a conversation about the weather."

"He has always been a rigorous intellectual who pushes himself and others to think with clarity.”

Bernard sometimes assigned the kids to bring a topic to dinner and lead a discussion, one topic per dinner, no wandering—“a rotating obligation,” Bernard calls it, in a characteristically formal locution.

Daniel, the middle child, the scientist, liked to discuss Antarctica and deserts—he became a neurosurgeon.

Emily, the oldest, was the family feminist—she later worked as a lawyer for the National Organization for Women Legal Defense Fund.

Eliot, the youngest, was a bookish teenager.

He loved sports and was good at them, and also carried a large Samsonite briefcase around junior high; in his free time, he leafed through foreign-policy magazines.

Whatever the subject, explains Daniel, “you needed to have something thought out and with gravitas and preferably with a couple of statistics thrown in."

"You couldn’t fake it.”

Bernard saw his role as challenging whatever argument was advanced.

“I tried to elicit the principle,” he says from his Fifth Avenue office.

His motto was “Challenge the premise.”

No one got a pass, including visitors.

William Taylor, Eliot’s Princeton roommate who later co-founded the magazine Fast Company, says, “I was never more relieved than when dinner was over and I’d survived.”

It was pretty good fun to beat up on Eliot’s soft-minded schoolmates, usually liberals if not lefties, which the Spitzers were not.

“Ideology is anathema to Bernard as it is to Eliot,” says Carl Mayer, a college friend who later worked for Spitzer in the attorney general’s office.

“It’s too imprecise.”

Eliot, like most of the family, was for the death penalty and against rent control, a subject he seems to have debated endlessly.

Once he and Mayer tackled it at Princeton, where Eliot was student-government president, a moderate counterweight to the college leftists.

(“He was more likely to be playing squash with the president of the university than on a picket line,” as one lefty friend puts it.)

The night Eliot and Mayer talked rent control, Mayer says, “people were stunned by the level of intensity, as most humans would be.”

For Spitzer, of course, the intensity was familiar from home.

At one afternoon barbecue in Rye—the family had moved there from Riverdale—the day had begun with tennis.

As Mayer was coming off the court, Eliot’s mother told him, “I hope you kicked Eliot’s ass.”

Then it was on to the meal and the main event.

Emily started the conversation, protesting that women didn’t get equal pay for equal work.

Bernard quickly ticked off four or five reasons why women should be paid less.

The battle was joined; that day, Eliot was on his sister’s side.

“There was shouting nonstop from all quarters, and this was just a casual lunch,” says Mayer.

For Spitzer the combat “bred rigor” and a belief in logic and reason.

As law-school friend Cliff Sloan, now publisher of the Website Slate, puts it, “Eliot had a feeling that no problem was too complex or too big to be solved by human ingenuity.”

Eliot enjoyed the debates, which were “fun in their own sadistic way.”

You could take the measure of yourself, your intelligence, your powers of persuasion.

“He may have been the youngest, but he wasn’t the least,” says Jason Brown, a friend and now a lawyer.

“The debates gave him an opportunity to show that he too was an intellectual force."

As governor, Spitzer quickly re-created the dynamics of the dinner table.

At his first meeting with his top aides, he told them, “It is absolutely your duty to disagree with me."

"You will not be doing your job unless you disagree.”

As governor, he’s the one challenging the premise.

“I think I almost finished my first couple of sentences before his first question,” says one aide.

“He’s pretty intense.”

Spitzer made a point of recruiting bright people; he’s a student of résumés.

“The reality is Spitzer does have the smartest people in the room working with him,” says one aide.

Of course, this ostentatious (and self-congratulatory) intelligence rubs some the wrong way.

Congressman Charlie Rangel, the powerful New York City Democrat, called Spitzer “the world’s smartest man,” which he didn’t mean as a compliment.

(Rangel also suggested he had an anger-management problem.)

In private, aides say, Spitzer is deeply respectful of others; he’s also long struck people as preternaturally assured of his own abilities.

When I asked Lieutenant Governor David Paterson “Who’s more self-confident than Spitzer?,” he paused.

“Muhammad Ali,” he half-joked.

Yet for a certain kind of person—male, smart, fiercely competitive—Spitzer is a magnet.

“There is a little lovefest some of us here have with him,” says Paterson.

Lloyd Constantine met Spitzer a couple of decades ago when the then-law-school student interned at Attorney General Robert Abrams’s office.

Constantine ran Abrams’s antitrust division.

“I told my wife the first day I met him,” Constantine recalls, “‘He’s already challenged me to tennis."

"He’s already challenged me to squash."

"He thinks he’s smarter than me.’”

In Spitzer, Constantine felt he’d found a kindred spirit, his “competitive other,” as he calls it.

“To some extent, we’re always in the process of trying to show who’s tougher,” he says.

With Constantine onboard as a senior adviser to the governor, Spitzer and his band of superachievers re-created another aspect of Bernard’s dinner table.

Governing shouldn’t merely be a clash of ideologies.

It requires that a series of problems be solved.

“We don’t have much ideological baggage,” says budget director Paul Francis.

They make “evidence-based” decisions, he says, like proud scientists of government.

As a first experiment, Spitzer assigned them workers’ compensation.

Everyone knew that the insurance program for injured workers paid too much to too few.

“A decade of screaming and shouting on either side, and no resolution,” says Spitzer.

Spitzer’s people examined every case for the past two years.

“When you get beneath the surface, the difference [with past approaches] is really in the depth of understanding of the problem, the depth of the diagnosis,” says one participant.

Spitzer brought labor and business together, opened the state’s books, a bold move.

But, as Spitzer tells me, “the data is what drove it.”

The Legislature quickly passed the reform; it was a fast and early victory—others rapidly followed: ethics reform and civil confinement of sex predators, both of which had also been stalled for years.

Spitzer drew key lessons from these early triumphs.

One was that belligerence worked—his people believed that the humiliation of Magnarelli, who’d gone against Spitzer on the Hevesi replacement, encouraged a hesitant Legislature.

Another was that there’s nothing wrong with Albany that Spitzer and his brainy staff couldn’t fix.

And then, of course, there was an implicit taunt—See, fellas, it’s not really that difficult.

“Spitzer wants to crush the other with his arguments,” says one upstate political hand.

“I’d never met anyone like that.”

But Bruno was happy to claim some credit for the early wins.

Spitzer, he said, was pushing Bruno’s own causes, particularly on law and order.

“Those are Republican things,” he said.

He complimented Spitzer for, as he put it, “rolling Shelly.”

By Albany standards, it was a warm and fuzzy moment.

“He knows how to compromise,” Bruno said.

“We like Joe,” Spitzer told me at one point.

Republican minority leader Tedisco even added, “Maybe you need a steamroller.”

Those were the good old days.

For all the dinner-table policy debates, a career in politics was almost an afterthought for Spitzer.

“People don’t realize what a U-turn politics was for me,” Spitzer says.

“I planned almost certainly to go into the family business.”

And yet when he thought about real estate, he hesitated.

“I’ve always had this deep-down hesitation about being viewed as, if not a caretaker, a recipient of something that was handed easily to one to embrace,” he says.

“My father began with nothing."

"I would have been given something wonderful with a great opportunity to screw it up."

"If I’d succeeded, I would have been, rightly, viewed as, ‘Well, look what you started with.’”

The family business was a game he could only lose.

His moment of revelation came in 1994.

Spitzer was then 35 years old.

He’d spent six years at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and a few years at the prestigious law firms of Paul, Weiss and later Skadden, Arps, when he was struck by a brazen thought.

One week before the birth of their third child, Spitzer had a brief conversation with his wife, Silda, in which he mentioned he might like to run for attorney general.

It seemed crazy.

Few in the public knew him, and those who did remarked that he didn’t have the typical political skill set.

“He was fierce and talented, very smart, hardworking, idealistic,” says his boss at the D.A.’s office, Michael Cherkasky.

“But he wasn’t smooth."

"He wasn’t sure of himself as a speaker."

"He wasn’t particularly funny."

"Now he has a self-deprecating humor."

"He didn’t learn that technique of being entertaining for ten years.”

Silda, a North Carolina Baptist who met Spitzer at Harvard Law, was stunned.

The notion upended Silda’s expectations for their life together.

“This wasn’t part of the bargain,” she later told him.

But Silda, who seems to view her husband as a fragile creature, decided it was important to be supportive, though she knew it meant abandoning her career.

“The decision was very difficult for me."

"It really was,” she told me.

Her mother was a homemaker who felt belittled by the term.

“It was difficult at a personal level and also I felt at some level I was letting down this bigger responsibility to womankind.”

But Silda eventually left her job.

“For me, with my family, and my children, and where we were as a family unit, this was the right choice for us,” she says.

If Spitzer lacked a natural politician’s ease, he did have one giant advantage: family money.

For the September 1994 primary, he poured more than $4 million into his campaign, much of it for TV ads, an astounding figure.

And, though he finished last, he won the endorsements of the Post and the News.

The defeat seemed to stir his ambition.

He jumped into the next attorney general’s race early, driving the family’s Plymouth minivan 70,000 miles around the state to meet people who were almost entirely dismissive then driving back.

“That was essentially purgatory,” says Spitzer.

“A rational person would say, ‘What am I doing this for?’”

The effort and the new strategy, though, paid off.

Spitzer easily won the 1998 primary.

In the general election, against incumbent Dennis Vacco, he spent more than $8 million, almost all of which he said he personally lent to the campaign.

Vacco suspected that the money from his first campaign and now this one really came from Spitzer’s father, which seemed to violate campaign-finance laws—a family member can’t contribute more than $260,000.

Spitzer claimed he’d mortgaged eight apartments his father had given him at 200 Central Park South, a building Bernard developed, and raised $5 million.

“No one else has guaranteed the loan,” Spitzer said in an affidavit.

And then, days before the election, Spitzer came clean to the Times.

His father had, in effect, financed the campaign.

Bernard was really paying off the co-op loans; Spitzer was supposedly repaying his father, which permitted Spitzer to claim the money was technically his.

Spitzer said the scheme was legal.

If so, he had lawyered election and tax codes close to the line.

Perhaps Spitzer’s clearer infraction, though, was that he misled—some said lied to—not only the public but also his closest campaign aides.

“People were disappointed and shocked,” says one aide.

Spitzer was remorseful—“He felt bad,” says the aide.

He won the election, but barely.

Later, I asked Spitzer, now the state’s ethical crusader, whether he regretted this deception.

“I just would have been completely transparent about it,” he tells me.

“I didn’t realize how necessary it was to be transparent about every personal financial transaction.”

It’s difficult to hear the word transparent and not think that the more precise word is honest.

Spitzer once told me that he’d learned at the D.A.’s office there are some fights in which, as he put it, “you can never concede errors because you just can’t do it.”

Maybe this is one of those.

Joe Bruno’s spirited jibes conceal a truth—power has been slipping away from him.

In the past four years, the Republicans have lost four Senate seats.

When Spitzer became governor, they held a bare three-seat majority.

Spitzer was determined to shrink it further.

He dangled jobs in his administration in front of a number of Republican senators, and one of them, Michael Balboni, from Nassau County, took him up on it, becoming Spitzer’s Homeland Security chief.

That put his Republican seat up for grabs in a largely Democratic district.

(Spitzer campaigned for the Democrat, who took the seat, a victory that made both Democrats and Republicans appreciate Spitzer’s electoral muscle.)

For Spitzer, as for every governor, the most important policy tool is the budget.

Spitzer had ambitious goals: Lower taxes, redistribute school aid, insure uninsured kids, among others.

As a top priority, he was also determined to rein in health-care spending, especially Medicaid, a program on which New York spends far more than any other state.

To do this, Spitzer took aim at perhaps Bruno’s most important patron: the powerful health-workers union Local 1199 SEIU, headed by Dennis Rivera.

The Republican organization statewide is very thin, and in the absence of effective field operations, the party has often counted on 1199’s manpower and wealth.

Every year 1199, with Bruno’s support, fiercely opposes any health-care cuts.

Spitzer’s interests—killing Republicans and cutting health-care spending—aligned nicely.

“It’ll be a tough fight, but it’s the right fight,” Spitzer told his staff.

Predictably, Spitzer got the fight going.

During the campaign, he had refused the union’s endorsement.

Then, at a March breakfast talk to the Association for a Better New York, Spitzer stood onstage at the New York Hilton with a favorite weapon, his PowerPoint presentation.

A slide appeared on a large screen.

GUARDIANS OF THE STATUS QUO, it said in giant letters.

To illustrate the concept, the logos of 1199 and its ally, the Greater New York Hospital Association, were shown.

“Now, my good friends at 1199 and Greater New York, I want to put your logos up here just so everybody will know who you are,” he said, introducing them to the crowd.

(It got worse; soon he was, in effect, calling them liars.)

It was a stunning personal assault.

He rubbed their noses in it, and his staff loved every minute.

“I have never in my professional life seen anything like that,” Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the hospital association, said.

At 1199, they were “horrified.”

“We’re true believers,” as one union official put it.

“We represent 200,000 health-care workers, a lot of whom make $7.15 an hour.”

Privately, Bruno had been telling Rivera’s team to go on the attack.

“If you don’t defend yourselves, we can’t,” he said.

Spitzer had already scheduled a meeting with Rivera, and even had a compromise in mind.

But two days before the summit, the union put up a series of powerful ads, part of a campaign that cost $4.5 million.

Hospital workers, many of them minorities, looked into the camera and said things like “I don’t know why Governor Spitzer is attacking me and my hospital.”

The union had used a similar tactic against Pataki to devastating effect.

In 2002, 1199 had previewed its ads for Pataki—“punched them into the VCR,” says one Spitzer aide.

That year, Pataki and Rivera came to a historic compromise, as it would later be known, earning Rivera’s workers millions and Pataki the union’s endorsement.

Spitzer’s people had deep contempt for the compromise.

“Pataki buckled,” said one.

Spitzer reacted to the ads by canceling the Rivera summit.

“Now that they have us under the gun, they want to come in."

"That’s not the way I do business."

"That’s not who I am,” Spitzer told me, as if it were a question of character.

To compromise on the heels of the ads would be a disaster.

“If they roll us, everyone rolls us,” one aide explained.

Spitzer launched his own ad campaign, paying with campaign funds, and when campaign money ran out, he wrote a $500,000 check from his own account.

(“I don’t like the appearance,” he says, “but it was an essential fight that we needed to win.”)

As part of this battle, Spitzer opened up another front, going directly at Bruno this time.

He targeted ten upstate Republicans in vulnerable districts.

One by one, Spitzer sat them down in his office and said, “Either make a deal, or I’m coming to your district.”

The tactic infuriated Bruno.

Soon, Bruno challenged Spitzer in his office, shouting that one senator “is so far up your ass he can’t even see.”

At this, Spitzer exploded.

“I won’t tolerate profanity or attacks on other elected officials in my office,” he yelled, to the delight of his staffers—who can tell when the boss is really mad.

On March 27, both men swallowed hard and, with Silver, announced a framework for a budget deal.

“Spitzer got a lot of what he wanted, we got enough,” said one union observer; the union let Bruno know he could close the deal.

The eventual agreement restored, depending on how it was counted, $300 million in cuts, but Spitzer got a historic $1 billion reduction in Medicaid spending, pretty close to his compromise number.

Spitzer seemed to be gliding toward an on-time budget.

Details remained to be finalized, but there were four days before the April 1 budget deadline.

Bruno, though, hadn’t played his final card.

Silver, happy to recede into the background as “conciliator,” as he liked to call himself, knew the game.

“The governor is dealing in a different league, a different climate, a different dynamic now,” Silver said.

“He’s used to dealing with assistant attorneys general who he appointed.”

Bruno stalled.

He knew Spitzer wanted to complete an on-time budget by the deadline; he didn’t want to eat up the legislative session.

“Bruno’s feeling is, if Bruno keeps dragging him out on the details, Spitzer will have to capitulate on more of the details,” explains one frustrated Spitzer aide.

The day before the budget deadline, the staffs negotiated all night.

At 4:45 in the morning, budget director Francis e-mailed Spitzer: “We better start lowering expectations.”

“Outrage,” Spitzer insisted, “helps both create a conversation to frame the issues and generate an understanding.”

When I next spoke to Spitzer, I asked him about that early-morning e-mail.

Spitzer wants you to know that he masters every detail.

He brings to the job a frightening energy.

He rises at five, reads four newspapers, runs a few miles (with a state trooper trailing on a bike), has three quick breakfast meetings.

One aide tells me that Spitzer has never taken more than seven minutes to return his e-mails.

I mention the story about his budget director’s 4:45 a.m. e-mail.

“He left out an important fact,” Spitzer says.

“I sent him one back at 4:46.”

That e-mail told the governor that negotiations with Bruno’s staff had collapsed.

The governor knew by that time that one crucial issue for Bruno was school aid.

Spitzer proposed a formula to distribute aid by need rather than political power; Bruno wanted a separate distribution for Long Island, which has eight Republican senators.

To satisfy Bruno would cost $200 million.

“We shouldn’t spend this much on school aid,” Francis told Spitzer, urging a showdown.

Spitzer likes to say that his unacknowledged strength is his pragmatism.

Spitzer picked up the phone and called Bruno, Silver, and the two other legislative leaders, Malcolm Smith, Democratic leader of the Senate, and James Tedisco, Republican leader of the Assembly, to a meeting that morning at 11 a.m.

“It’s now that people will put their hearts on the table or not."

"This is our last shot,” he told his staff.

Spitzer decided that it had to be a secret meeting.

“We’ll lock the doors,” said Spitzer.

Secret meetings, of course, are the disappointing way business has always been done in the swamp.

By all accounts, Spitzer’s performance in the meeting was a masterful exercise of mediation.

Even Bruno says, “It didn’t get done his way."

"He learned to compromise."

"And we got it done.”

Spitzer emerged after almost seven hours with a budget printed so hastily legislators didn’t have a chance to read it before raising their hands when their leaders told them to.

Bruno got his $200 million for Long Island schools.

Bruno also got Spitzer’s tax cut delivered as a rebate, he restored some health-care cuts, and bragged about his gains as if he’d wrestled Goliath to the mat.

Spitzer, on the other hand, seemed to have been dunked in the cesspool.

Good-government groups, Spitzer’s Day One cheerleaders, pilloried him.

Spitzer was frustrated that the press didn’t appreciate his statesmanship.

“The formula for education is of unbelievable importance,” he tried to argue.

He’d poured record amounts into schools, and got 400,000 kids insured, while lowering taxes.

But Spitzer sounded defensive, at pains to explain complicated formulas.

And the public—and the press, kept outside locked doors—focused on the process.

Spitzer had raised expectations.

He was the politician who’d promised to say no to Albany’s secrecy and made us believe he could.

“It was an incredible budget for us."

"We did one thing wrong, the secret meeting,” says an aide.

It was no excuse—Spitzer was supposed to impose his idealistic, intolerant personality on Albany.

In June, as the legislative session came to a close, Spitzer drew a line in the muck.

Usually, as one Democratic legislator says, “Spitzer’s people are so convinced they’re right that nothing they do is wrong,” but suddenly Spitzer appeared to feel he’d transgressed.

He seemed to hate being taken for a secretive compromiser.

He insisted that he’d get a campaign-finance-reform bill; he knew—from personal experience—the laws needed overhauling.

This put him, yet again, on a collision course with Bruno, this time mano a mano.

“I thought he learned as chief executive you negotiate in good faith and compromise and get results,” says Bruno.

“Then he locks up and goes on a tear over campaign-finance reform."

"I can’t for the life of me understand why.”

“There’s an unbelievable opportunity now to govern through the agencies,” says Spitzer, weary of the battle.

This time, Spitzer decided to do much of the fighting in public.

He dragged Silver and Bruno “kicking and screaming,” says Spitzer, to open meetings in Teddy Roosevelt’s old office.

He assigned them seats at a rectangular table with a handsome blue tablecloth, the whole dysfunctional family.

At the head of the table, Spitzer pushed campaign-finance reform as well as plenty of other issues.

And he made nice.

“We hold deep differences of opinion based on principle,” said Spitzer.

He courted Bruno.

“I was trying to keep him engaged,” he tells me later.

It didn’t work.

Silver didn’t care much for the meetings; all the fuss over “process” is naïve, he thinks.

And Bruno resented the meetings as if they were detention.

“It was simply Spitzer acting in charge,” says Bruno, who showed his displeasure by twisting in his chair, one leg pretzeled over the other, and railing against Spitzer’s positions.

People don’t care about campaign-finance reform, he said.

“When you get up in the morning, do your children ask you the status of campaign-finance reform?”

“Money does not buy elections; that is bull,” Bruno shouted, waving a hand.

His big white head shook.

He added, “If somebody wants to give me a million dollars because they like what we do, fine.”

Bruno had other reasons for not wanting to fix some of the laxest campaign-finance laws in the country.

(Currently, anyone can form as many corporations as he wants and give money through each.)

“It would be suicide,” he says.

Disarm when a rich governor is trying to destroy us?

Are you crazy?

Plus Bruno had to show strength.

He didn’t have the command over his colleagues he once enjoyed.

An investigation hung over his head, his majority was slipping.

Albany used to be a place where no one disagreed with a leader for fear of reprisals.

But no more.

On June 21, the final day of the legislative session, the two sides were at an impasse.

Spitzer had threatened to hold up a spending bill, filled with projects dear to Bruno’s senators as well as pay hikes for legislators, if he didn’t get campaign-finance reform.

So Bruno made a brash political calculation.

What was the upside of handing this self-righteous governor (whose staff, as one close to Spitzer acknowledges, considers legislators “hacks”) an end-of-session gift box?

A few weeks earlier, Bruno had come to Spitzer with a deal for a nonaggression pact.

Spitzer wouldn’t campaign against Republican senators, and the Senate would pass campaign-finance reform.

Spitzer refused to stand on the sidelines, though he offered to praise Republican reformers.

“That’s not good enough,” Bruno said.

Bruno didn’t return to meet with Spitzer.

His senators were in no mood for a compromise—they felt “jammed up,” said one.

So Bruno called a press conference and started a war.

“The legislative session that began with promise and achievement ended with a whimper,” Bruno told the press.

(The word whimper seemed chosen with care.)

He adjourned the Senate and with it the governor’s agenda.

Spitzer convened his own press conference to express disappointment.

Then he ticked off unresolved legislation—Mayor Bloomberg’s plan on congestion pricing, healthy meals for schoolchildren, DNA testing of criminals—listing their merits as a way, perhaps, of emphasizing his disappointment.

When Spitzer was attorney general, I’d asked him, “So the last thing someone should say to Eliot Spitzer is ‘**** off’?”

“Basically, yeah,” he said.

After Bruno told him to **** off, Spitzer seemed liberated.

He hadn’t liked being an accommodator; now he didn’t have to be.

He ran off to Republican districts delivering his beloved PowerPoint sermon.

“Where’s Waldo?” he mocked, referring to Bruno.

He claimed this fight wasn’t personal—just sports, you know.

“I’ll pat Joe on the back next time I see him,” he said.

“Not too hard.”

Bruno, liberated as well, threw a tantrum of his own.

Where Spitzer gave his valedictorian address—“fiduciary responsibility” are his two favorite words—Bruno called Spitzer a “thug,” a “bully,” and, for good measure, a “hypocrite”; as he was pushing campaign reform, Spitzer was raising money and offering special access to donors.

Bruno worked himself up as he spoke, his tone arguing that he was the real victim.

“The governor is proving he’s inexperienced in negotiating as a chief executive."

"He’s used to dictating as attorney general with subpoena power.”

Then Bruno called Spitzer a “rich spoiled brat”—a barb that particularly annoyed the governor.

For good measure, Bruno mocked Spitzer on his own terms.

“So Spitzer got no result on anything by being stubborn,” Bruno says.

“By thinking he’s the f-ing steamroller to roll over us."

"He had no steam.”

In the weeks following, Bruno kept scoring points.

A press story reported that Bruno misused state aircraft to attend fund-raisers, an apparent gift to Spitzer that Bruno turned on its head.

Bruno accused Spitzer of “political espionage,” saying the information came out of the executive branch.

Everyone started calling for investigations—Spitzer three; Bruno two, and Bruno added that he might hold Senate hearings and use its subpoena power to put Spitzer under oath.

Even some top Democrats were lately heard to join in the joke: “Maybe he’s not a steam roller, maybe a steam iron,” said one.

Indeed, some of the political class seemed delighted that, with his righteousness and his pride and oh, yes, his vast intellect, Spitzer had been taken to the woodshed by the likes of Joe Bruno.

When Spitzer was attorney general, he had always been, he once assured me, “right on the facts,” which was why he always won, he believed.

And yet Albany has never worked that way—and perhaps never will.

“The governor cannot just make the best case and always expect to win,” says Silver, as if explaining a harsh world to a younger sibling.

Silver said Spitzer had gotten more done in six months than other governors in four years.

Still, the news stories were mostly about the fight, which everyone agreed was Albany’s worst ever.

Bruno seemed giddy.

He’d made this governor of supposedly pure motives look like one of them.

It was sweet revenge.

“He has an attitude about him,” Bruno told me.

“Really, he does."

"He’s kind of above it all, aloof."

"He handles himself like some kid who’s used to getting his own way."

"I don’t believe he ever could understand me, one of eight kids, father shoveled coal,” Bruno continued.

“Let’s face it, we come from different worlds.”

I meet with Spitzer a week or so after Bruno shut down the Legislature.

We’re at Three Guys, a diner on Madison Avenue around the corner from Spitzer’s apartment.

Spitzer’s state troopers are nowhere to be seen.

He’s not an entourage guy.

Ordinarily, Spitzer seems unrehearsed and refreshingly upbeat.

He’s not conflicted, not introspective, “not deep,” as a friend says.

But today, he’s different.

Spitzer seems deflated. “You learn an awful lot,” he tells me.

In the long term, Bruno probably can’t win.

He’s on the wrong side of history.

Spitzer wants control, and the state is increasingly Democratic.

Bruno will be 79 the next time he’s reelected.

When asked if the Democrats will take the Senate next election, a Spitzer aide says simply, “Yes.”

Which also frightens some Democrats who wonder whether Spitzer’s next target will be Silver.

Yet in the short term, Bruno is schooling Spitzer, and pleasing the Republican base.

Suddenly, improbably, Bruno, king of the swamp, seems the victim, an impression that drives Spitzer wild.

“This fight has nothing to do with culture or class."

"Bruno’s answers are simplistic pablum,” he says with scorn.

But Spitzer is weary of the struggle on these terms.

“There’s a lot about politics I don’t recommend to people,” he says.

“You’ve got to deal with folks like you.”

I don’t take this personally.

It’s a grab bag of disappointment today.

Spitzer’s already run five miles and had one meeting.

“Dealing with Joe and Shelly, that’s a fun chess game,” he tells me.

“You scream, you shout, you battle.”

But what does it amount to?

Spitzer lets me know that he’s over it.

He’s going to go run the government.

“The legislative piece, you need the budget, but the rest of it … eh?” he says.

“Whatever they do … I don’t shrug."

"But … it gets more ink than it deserves.”

Spitzer has commissions going for improving everything from schools to public authorities to local governments.

He just engineered tens of millions of dollars for legal-aid lawyers—the Times editorial page caught that, he proudly tells me.

And he excitedly recalls staying up all night to nail down a settlement of World Trade Center insurance claims that had tied up construction for years.

There’s development deals to do.

Midtown, upstate.

He can push his environmental agenda without Bruno.

The list goes on.

“Governing for me now is more about the authority we’ve got to change policy administratively,” he says.

Spitzer is eager to get back to being idealistic and intolerant—back to being the smartest guy in the room, back to running the government without Bruno and Silver.

“There is an unbelievable opportunity now to govern through the agencies, and that’s frankly what I’m really looking forward to,” he says.

“At end of the day, that gives me a lot of comfort,” he says, though it sounds to me like he might mean consolation.

Lately, Spitzer has been steeping himself in biographies of great New York governors, Teddy Roosevelt and Al Smith.

They, he tells me, were initially scorned in the press—Roosevelt was “excoriated” for having compromised on reform.

History judged them differently.

Spitzer says he’s taking the long view.

“I can be patient,” he says.

To change everything Day One is no longer the imperative—he’s learned that much.

“I’ll build coalitions, I’ll get it done,” he says.

“I’ve got four years, I’m in no hurry.”

Spitzer checks the BlackBerry on his waist, pays the bill, and rushes out the door.

http://nymag.com/news/features/34730/