New York Lawmakers Ditch The Dems

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

Now to New York State, where the politics of New York State Senate are causing plenty of heartburn for political leaders who are also trying to figure out budget issues. Last Monday, in a scene worthy of a Shakespearian play, two state senators in New York, Pedro Espada, Jr. and Hiram Monserrate, turned their backs on their Democratic colleagues and joined forces with the Senate Republicans. In return, Espada, whose last name in Spanish incidentally means sword, was made president of the Senate.

He is, for now, the second-most-powerful man in New York state government. The partisan about-face is being challenged in court, but here to tell us more is Steve Kornacki. He's the political columnist for the New York Observer, who joins us from our New York bureau. Thank you so much for being with us, trying to help us sort all this out.

Mr. STEVE KORNACKI (Political Columnist, New York Observer): Yes, good to be here.

MARTIN: Now I understand that there were reports today that Hiram Monserrate may be actually returning to the Democratic fold. Is that correct?

Mr. KORNACKI: Yeah, it looks like that's what's going to happen. That's now what he's saying, but you know, he's sort of been all over the map. So you never know what the next twist in this is going to be, but it looks for now like he is going to be back with the Democrats. He's come under a lot of pressure from organized labor, which is a big - constituency in his - and I think reality sort of hit him that, hey, listen, you know, if I want to survive in the 2010 election in my district, which is overwhelmingly Democratic and which not just overwhelmingly Democratic but is controlled by a Democratic machine that will be very hostile to me if I stay with the Republicans, you know, I better devise an exit strategy.

And the exit is based on the fact - he'll justify it based on the fact that Democrats basically, without actually removing his title, moved against Malcolm Smith, who is the majority leader, or has been the majority leader, the Democratic leader in the New York Senate. And there's a lot of personal friction between Malcolm Smith and Hiram Monserrate. And the Democrats basically decided, you know, over the weekend that Smith will be out as their leader, not in name, there are some technical reasons for that, but he's gone. And that's how Monserrate will justify his about-face now. He'll say, well, I got the change I wanted.

MARTIN: Well, so - so many things to figure out here, but where does this leave control of the Senate?

Mr. KORNACKI: Well absolutely in this awful middle area where, very likely, nothing can happen because there are 62 members of the New York State Senate. You need 32 to have a quorum to do anything. This will put the Senate at 31-31. You know, it had been 32-30 Democratic, up until last week, and that was the first time in four decades that Democrats have controlled the New York State Senate. So they were all very excited about this.

Then you had these two, Espada and Monserrate, flip over. So it became, very briefly, 32-30 Republican. Now Monserrate goes back, it's 31-31. Neither side will have a quorum, and there's not going to be elections until, you know, November 2010. So how you get from here to there, no one can tell. And the real X factor in this is ordinarily, if you're at 31-31, the lieutenant governor would break the tie, but because Eliot Spitzer, you know, the governor was forced out last year, and the Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, replaced him, there's no lieutenant governor.

MARTIN: There's no lieutenant governor.

Mr. KORNACKI: And there's no mechanism to select a new lieutenant governor between now and 2010…

MARTIN: That's a recipe for getting a lot done here. You mentioned Malcolm Smith. He is African-American, like David Paterson. Was this move by Espada and Monserrate, who are both Latino, is that - or Espada's from Puerto Rico originally - does this mean a breakdown in the Black-Latino alliance? Does this bespeak some sort of broader ethnic tension, or is it personal?

Mr. KORNACKI: There's some degree of that. It's worth noting that after last November's election there was uncertainty for a couple of weeks, really for about six weeks, about whether the Democrats would actually have 32 votes.

They had 32 Democratic senators, but would they all vote for Malcolm Smith to be, you know, the leader? And there were four holdouts originally, and then it ended up being three. They called them the gang of four at first and then the gang of three. Well, three of those four were Hispanic, and I think that is significant.

It's something you see within the Democratic Party. It's something you see in a lot of cities around the country, you know, as - where white leaders used to sort of dominate and, you know, minority groups sort of increased their clout, there was a lot of - there's been a lot of tension between, you know, the Hispanic side and sort of African-American side for, you know, which will be the first - who will be the first to sort of supplant, you know, the sort of tradition of whites leading, you know, areas where there are lots of minorities

You see that in a lot of cities, and I think you're seeing that in the New York Senate. And I think there is some, I don't know if resentment's the word, I don't know if friction's the word, but Hispanics look and they say, well now there's a Democratic governor for the first time. There's a Democratic - excuse me, there's a black governor for the first time. There's a black Senate majority leader.

MARTIN: Where's our guy?

Mr. KORNACKI: Yeah, and before Malcolm Smith, David Paterson was the Senate, you know, Democratic leader. So right, when's it our turn? I think there is something to that.

MARTIN: Steve Kornacki is political columnist for the New York Observer. He was kind enough to join us from our New York bureau. That was a masterful effort in keeping all that straight. Thank you so much.

Mr. KORNACKI: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.