Last time out , I took a contrarian position on the idea of what we should be expecting from our daily papers in the coverage of primary contests for seats in the State Legislature.
My answer was “not much more than what we are already getting.”
Today’s column moves from the news pages to the editorials.
What should we be expecting in editorial endorsements by our local dailies?
My answer is “quite a bit more.”
For starters, let me backtrack.
In any race where one of our local dailies has managed to muster enough resources to make an endorsement, we should probably have the right to expect that they’ve already dedicated just as much typeface to that race on its news pages.
However, to take just one example, the New York Times printed an endorsement of Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat for State Senate in the 31st SD, but a google search could not uncover one Times article which mentioned the name of Espaillat and all three of his opponents.
But this is not a plea for the Times to curtail its endorsements; it is rather mostly a plea that they expand them. As currently structured, they are full of puzzling inconsistencies and omissions.
Take their main endorsement editorial,, which appeared September 3rd.
After a bit of empty gasbaggery in the form of a paint by numbers intro, The Times handles the Maloney-Saujani race with limited passion and a bit of tongue clucking before endorsing Maloney.
Next, The Times makes a short but compelling argument against Charlie Rangel’s re-election, emphasizing the clear probability that re-electing Rangel will result in a special election in which party nominations will be boss-controlled, and then quickly dismisses the other frontrunner, Adam Clayton Powell, with far less derision than he’s earned. After that, the editorial barely acknowledges the four other candidates, including the one it endorses, Joyce Johnson.
The point is clear: “Just because both frontrunners are both unworthy, and it is not worth distinguishing between them, that doesn’t mean it ain’t worth casting a protest vote, and Johnson seems the most worthy way to make it.”
Good for the Times!
Next come the Republican race for Governor; the Times vents its spleen against crazy old Carl Paladino, rightly making the case that he’s a bigoted lunatic, but without using either word (although they do use the word “clownish“).
The Times goes on to endorse Rick Lazio.
To their credit, they first spank him for “his unseemly fulminating against an Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero.” To their discredit, they say Lazio, who “has focused on plans to create more jobs and clean up the ethical swamp in Albany,” when in reality he has spent the last two months doing nothing but falafel-bashing.
Rick Lazio has promised to stop the Young Men’s Islamic Association proposed for the Holy Mother Coat Factory by appointing to the Public Service Commission only members who will pledge in advance to rule that the part of the site owned by con Ed–currently leased out for non-power purposes for 51 years–is necessary for the State’ power needs.
Is this really any less clownish than anything proposed by Carl Paladino? Even the New York Post has called Lazio out on the issue of trying to throw legal obstacles in the way of the YMIA.
The message here though is arguably a worthy one: “The lesser of the evils is still the lesser of the evils, and the Times urges all the remaining sane Republicans [both of them] to hold their noses and do what is necessary.”
The problem is that they do not carry these points through consistently.
They are particularly damning about the State Senate:
“For state races, the best advice for New York voters is to vote against anybody who has done time in Albany. That is especially true in the State Senate, where a few Democrats have used their slim majority to hold up the Legislature, usually for petty and personal reasons.”
Naturally, the Times supports dumping Pedro Espada, citing, among other sins, “he forced fellow senators to give him a fancy title and padded his office with a fawning entourage.”
Yet the Times refuses to even acknowledge the race between Ruben Diaz and Carlos Ramos. This is so, even though few members have done more to “hold up the Legislature…for petty and personal reasons,” than has Mr. Diaz, often an active collaborator in the efforts of Mr. Espada to obtain his “fancy title and [pad] his office with a fawning entourage.”
While Mr. Diaz hasn’t had the brass cojones to carry out his extortion threats to the same brinks as has Mr. Espada, he’s done quite enough to merit his defeat by any metric the Times has ever articulated.
Moreover, the Times has been a passionate supporter of legalizing civil same sex marriages in NYS. Mr. Diaz has been that proposal’s most passionate opponent, and has sometimes made it a condition in his periodic efforts to tie up the Senate to make it yield to his “petty and personal” will.
The Times is passionate for same-sex marriage,. but refuses to use its endorsement to make it happen, even when it would be endorsing the removal of a member it disagrees with on practically every effort it supports to reform the way Albany runs.
Why?
Is it because Carlos Ramos is a long shot?
Far less so than Joyce Johnson.
Is it because Carlos Ramos, though running against a lunatic (and arguably a bigot) is somehow imperfect?
I’ve little evidence concerning any disqualifying imperfections on Ramos’ part, but could those imperfections, should they exist, be any more glaring than those displayed by Rick Lazio?
Well, actually, I can’t really answer those question by reading the Times, since it has never reported on the race.
What it really comes down to is that the Times’ supposed passion for same sex marriage does not extend to actually taking any steps which have an actual impact upon a vote by the legislature.
One must also wonder about the failure of the Times to endorse Wellington Sharpe against Kevin Parker.
Perhaps someone needs to slap the Times Editorial Board one upside the face. By the Johnson/Lazio criteria, the Parker-Sharpe race should be a no-brainer.
Almost as bad is the relentless willingness to substitute sloganeering for thought in its treatment of the State Assembly (and implicitly in most of the rest of the Senate).
Says the Times:
“In the Assembly, there are not enough real contests. And in New York, that means one thing: the Democratic Party has given some of Albany’s worst legislators a free ride. Here’s the only solution: vote against the incumbents.”
I know there is something to be said for this argument. The defeat of a bunch of Assembly incumbents, for any reason, will be seen as a message for change, and that is not such a bad thing.
But the Times obviously doesn’t really believe it.
If it did, why then would they be endorsing for State Senate, Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, a candidate running largely on the basis of ethnic cheerleading who uses his member items to finance a local development corporation which essentially functions as his political clubhouse and extended family (sometimes literally)?
Likewise, in such an anti-incumbent context, the Times endorsement of Eric Schneiderman, who helped to find a way to give Espada his “fancy title” without a vote, and is endorsed by virtually the entire Senate Democratic Leadership the Times so disdains (among other Times villains), and is complicit in so much else the Times rails against on a regular basis, is similarly unfathomable.
Further, if the Times really wanted to drive a stake into the Albany establishment, why did it fail to endorse or report upon the race in eastern Queen for an open Assembly seat where the Democratic establishment, in virtually all its factions, has rallied to support Edward Braunstein, a nephew of mega-lobbyist Brian Meara and a former aide to Speaker Sheldon Silver?
It’s one thing to tell people to say “no” to every incumbent, but are there not times you are obligated to say who else they should say “no” to? And (Braunstein has three opponents) who they should say “yes” to instead?
Elsewhere in Queens, Hiram Monserrate, not merely a convicted criminal, but an active collaborator with Pedro Espada in his successful effort to “[force] fellow senators to give him a fancy title and [pad] his office with a fawning entourage,” is running for an open Assembly seat, but the Times cannot bring itself to endorse his opponent.
But the Times’ blanket vote “no” on the Assembly is a disgrace for other reasons.
There are 150 members of the Assembly of varying quality. Arguably, some of the worst are facing primaries.
But so are some of the best.
In Manhattan, Jonathan Bing, a smart, independent, reform-minded liberal faces a primary almost solely owing to his willingness not to march in lockstep with public employee unions.
By any objective analysis of the positions articulated by the Times Editorial Board, Jonathan Bing deserves re-election. Yet, if ever there was a place where the Times’ blanket call for defeating incumbents will hurt an incumbent, it is in Bing’s district.
Moreover, the defeat of Jonathan Bing will send a loud and clear message that will surely quash any further acts of independence by any other state legislators.
Yet the Times has pretty much, by the use of its blanket, called for Bing’s defeat.
But, it is not merely independent Manhattan reformers who suffer. In Queens, Jeff Aubrion , one of the Assembly’s smartest members, whose for years fought the good fight for Rockefeller drug law reform and other battles supported by the Times, faces an ethnically based primary in his changing district from Anthony Miranda, a Monserrate protégé otherwise most notable for using his not-for-profit organization for campaign purposes.
Perhaps they see him as a budding Espaillat.
By calling for dumping all incumbents, The Times is telling people to support Miranda.
Could they really mean this?
Elsewhere, The Times’ “dump the incumbent” editorial serves as a de facto endorsement of self-proclaimed celibate renaissance man Andre Soleil, a future soul restaurant entrepreneur (in his mind’s eye, where he is also a Broadway producer) whose currently menu is clearly a few Big Macs short of a Happy meal.
I could go on. What public purpose beyond comic relief would be served by replacing Joan Millman with Doug Biviano?
The Daily News does do a bit better than the Times, deigning to endorse Francisco Moya against Monserrate, but falls into a different trap.
Instead of endorsing in most races, it merely prints where the candidates stand on two metrics–whether they support Ed Koch’s “reform proposals,” and whether they voted for cuts to the MTA and then decried the fare hike.
The problem is at least three-fold.
First, issues, before they come to a vote, are often more complicated than “yes” or “no.” Few Assembly members have been more committed to process reform than Jim Brennan, but Jim Brennan refuses to sign Koch’s pledge.
Does this really make him an enemy of reform? Does it really make Pedro Espada a “hero” for signing it.
Secondly, even if one agrees with the News, there are other issues.
But most importantly, the metrics mostly give voters little help. They might figure out Ruben Diaz is not preferred, but it would be nice if someone told them outright.
Moreover, it serves to put Ed Braunstein on the same level as his reform-minded opponent Steve Behar and the two other candidates in the race. Does the News really take Ed Braunstein at his word that he is a "hero of reform"?
Wouldn‘t it have been better for the News to pay a bit more attention to some important races than to put down two metrics, which often provide little distinction, and sometimes provide outright confusion (“Hmm, do I vote for the ‘hero of reform’ who’s also a ‘fare hike hypocrite’ or the guy they couldn’t reach?”)?
When it comes to improving Albany, the Daily News can sit at its barstool and shout all winter and spring, but when it comes to actually recommending action to implement what it fulminates about, the News is all hat and no cattle.
As to the Post, it’s the Post.
The Post divines the conservative choice where it can, and otherwise complains about Obama. The implicit message is “it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same anyway.”
Can the NY Post really believe that Gustavo Rivera and Pedro Espada are moral equivalents requiring it to not endorse? Surely, if it could bring itself to endorse super-liberal Paul Newell against Shelly Silver, it could endorse dumping Espada.
Unlike their failure to cover these races on its news pages, the failure of our dailies to provide adequate guidance on its editorial page does not stem from commercial considerations.
It is merely an abdication of what vestiges remain of their sense of civic duty.