Knickerbonkers

There was a "red wave" in one part of the United States - ultra-Democratic New York, where bad decisions and plain damn hubris may have been instrumental in giving control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans.  The two top Katzenjammers responsible for the Empire State Screw-Up were former governor Andrew Cuomo and future former U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney.

Cuomo (above) set the stage by appointing justices to the state Supreme Court in a transactional move to reward those who had done favors for him or who had been loyal to him.  Many of these judges were center-right, appointed by Cuomo in an effort in get back at progressives in the state legislature.  It was these same justices who ruled a redistricting map for the 2022 midterm elections unconstitutional because it created gerrymandered districts favorable to Democrats - but liberal justices might have ruled it constitutional for correcting excesses of Republican gerrymandering from the previous redistricting.

Even worse, Cuomo allowed a U.S. House district to be eliminated when the 2020 census count came of 89 people short - 89 people! - of the minimum number of residents needed to preserve that seat.  The governor could have asked for a recheck on that count that could have saved that district, but he couldn't be bothered. 

Maloney screwed things up just as much - if not more so, in part because he pushed for the gerrymandered House district map that got overruled.  Stingy with his support for Democratic House candidates as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the name suggests a committee aimed at all of Congress, but it just concentrates on the House), he was generous to his own campaign while collaborating with New York Republicans to further his own political career.  (Alexis Grenell explains it in The Nation better than I could.)   

To hold on to power, he chose to run in another district rather than his own, forcing Democratic Representative Mondaire Jones out of the way.  Alessandra Biaggi, a New York state senator who is the granddaughter of a revered New York congressman, challenged Maloney as a progressive but lost to the dyed-in-the-wool centrist incumbent.  Maloney had hoped to take advantage of liberal voters in counties east of the Hudson River.  The problem was the district's constituents who live west of the Hudson River - in Rockland County.  To give you an idea of how conservative Rockland County is, I have a friend who lives there and grows her own vegetables, has supported the Green Party, sent her kids to a Waldorf school, and keeps chickens for fresh eggs.  She's practically an organic-farm hippie.  She's also a Trump fan.  

Oh, yeah, Rockland County is also known for being home to New York City police officers and ultra-Orthodox Jews.  It was this conservative bloc that helped Republican House candidate Mike Lawler defeat Maloney in the general election by a narrow margin.  By all accounts, Biaggi - who was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - could have saved the seat for the Democrats by arousing their base, but the Democratic base in this district was clearly cool to (to, not with) voting for Maloney for his past conniving.

Andrew Cuomo and Sean Patrick Maloney lied and cheated to get to the top.  They now know what a downfall looks like.  Hopefully a certain developer from Queens will find out as well.

A Wiser Republican Party?

Having returned from my Easter hiatus, I comment once again on the body politic in America, such as it is.

It seems that the Republican party, much to the chagrin of its many detractors, might regain enough of its collective sanity to, if not get President Barack Obama voted out of office, hold on to the House and take the Senate. The battle for the Senate is the easy part; they only need to gain four seats from the Democrats, and they are defending less than half as many seats as the Democrats - and those ten Republican seats are all considered ultra-safe, even Scott Brown's in Massachusetts. The House is less clear. Democrats only need 25 House seats to retake control, but added seats in Republican states at the expense of seats in Democratic and swing states - many of which happen to currently be under Republican governors and have Republican majorities in one or both houses of their legislature - could give the GOP an advantage in the redistricting based on the 2010 census, which is handled by elected officials in the states. But Paul Ryan's Medicare "reform" proposals could complicate things for the Republicans. The Democrats' chances of re-taking the House should become clearer once the redistricting is finalized.

Two Western Republicans, realizing the stakes, have reacted for the good of their party. In Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer wisely vetoed a bill that would have required presidential candidates to present their birth certificates to be allowed on state ballots. Calling it "a bridge too far," and obviously wanting to dissociate herself from the GOP lunatic fringe, Brewer would have none of this. She clearly wants the party to focus less on the "birther" theories circulating about Obama in Republican circles and concentrate on the issues.

She also vetoed, by the way, a bill that would have allowed students at colleges and universities to carry concealed firearms, calling it "poorly written." In the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson in January, it was poorly proposed as well. Brewer has her faults. Many of them. But fanaticism is not of them.

Meanwhile, Nevada senator John Ensign announced his resignation over the weekend regarding corruption charges referred to earlier on this blog. Nevada's Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, will likely appoint U.S. Representative Dean Heller to the seat. Heller, who had already planned to run for Ensign's seat when Ensign announced he would not seek re-election next year, now has the power of the incumbency and should be able to secure an already safe GOP seat. But maybe not. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com crunched the numbers, and he declared that appointed senators of either party historically have only a 50 percent chance of winning a term in their own right.

It looks to be an exciting election cycle next year . . ..