New York State, conservatives, and gay marriage

Politics in New York State is different from what it is elsewhere. When the "one-man, one-vote" decisions in the Supreme Court came out a few decades ago, New York State happened to have a Republican State Senate and a Democratic Assembly. Both houses have managed to control their own redistricting in the follow-ups to the subsequent decennial censuses, so even now, with the State trending more and more Democratic, the State Senate is still narrowly Republican most of the time. And New York State's electoral fusion laws mean that extremists of the left and right do not necessarily stay in the two major parties, but form smaller parties that aim to swing the major parties in their directions.

It has always puzzled me that the term "conservative" is normally used to encompass both people who (as I mostly do) favor low-tax, more laissez-faire, economic policies (more individualistically oriented) and those who favor moralistic, even bigoted social policies (exactly the opposite of individualistic orientation). But in many states, the Republican Party has linked itself with both groups of people. And "conservatives," similarly, have tried to embrace both (to me opposed) sets of ideas. Barry Goldwater, who was an extreme conservative of the first kind, but very open to gay rights, would roll in his grave to hear the bigoted positions taken by many "conservatives" who revere him.

But in New York State, an interesting development has occurred. Prominent economic conservatives, rich ones who have supported the Republican Party with monetary contributions, are coming out for a gay-marriage proposal by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Hopefully, this (like Theodore Olson's defending gay marriage in California) may help disentangle the economic and social conservatives. They really have little in common, and I see no reason for them to share the "conservative" tag.

Postmortems - Part 2 (Maryland/California/New York)

A local weekly newspaper in this area printed a headline, following the election, saying "GOP Wave misses Maryland." Yes, it certainly did. As I said in yesterday's post, the most important observation to take from Tuesday's election is that every State is different. Maryland is sandwiched between Pennsylvania and Virginia, both of which were great states for the GOP this year. (Virginia was already so red that there was not much to go redder, but the GOP took 3, or possibly 4, House seats away from the Democrats there. I'll say more about Pennsylvania in a subsequent post.) But in Maryland, as I said in my October 12, 2010 post, the GOP made hardly a dent in the blueness of the State. One House seat, which should have been Republican anyway, but which went to Democrat Frank Kratovil in 2008 because of an internecine split in the local GOP, came back home. A few more seats in the lower house of the State's legislature went red, but in the upper house, a couple went the other way. And a good former Governor, Bob Ehrlich, certainly not a bizarre "Tea Party" type, lost by 10 percentage points to the sitting Governor, Martin O'Malley. In the Senate, one of the most liberal members of the chamber, Barbara Mikulski, had no trouble winning by a much larger margin, over a pretty uninspiring Eric Wargotz, who was pretty much unknown outside his home county. As I said in that post on Oct. 12, it seemed strange to see the GOP winning all over the place, while seeing nothing but blue here at home. It may be because so many Marylanders are Federal Government employees, and thus unsympathetic to a "smaller Government" GOP, and rather sympathetic to a President Barack Obama who the rest of the country was rejecting. As I said earlier, O'Malley even invited Obama into the State to campaign for him, something most Democrats were certainly not doing. Pretty dispiriting, though I'm happy for the rest of the country.

New York didn't look much better. As a native of that State, I tried to follow it; the GOP didn't help their cause very much by nominating a lame excuse for a gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino. They elected a Democratic Governor and two Democratic Senators; most of the time you don't see two Senate seats filled in the same election in a State, but here there was one term expiring and the other seat vacant because Hillary Clinton had left to become Secretary of State, with Kirsten Gillebrand only appointed to an interim position. Both Gillebrand and Chuck Schumer easily won re-election, and Andrew Cuomo, son of a previous Governor, won the gubernatorial office.

While New York State elected the son of a governor from the 1980s and 1990s, California was restoring a governor who had served even earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jerry Brown. Like New York and Maryland, California seemed to be bypassed by the GOP wave. And this one was even stranger, because in California, the GOP had some excellent candidates. Meg Whitman, running for Governor, and Carly Fiorina, running for the Senate, were well qualified, very desirable candidates, and both put millions of dollars of their own money into their campaigns. But Jerry Brown beat Whitman, and Barbara Boxer gained reelection to the Senate over Fiorina. I guess California voters just couldn't see what was best for them, but that's how democracy works sometimes.

Mixed emotions

The results of Tuesday's elections leave me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Nancy Pelosi gets to hand her gavel over to John Boehner, which is absolutely great, and the Republicans gained a significant number of seats in the Senate (though not a majority, but nobody really expected that) and a bunch of Governorships as well. These are the positives. But it seems that none of the specific elections I really cared about went right, except perhaps in Alaska where the results are not too clear yet.

In the State I live in, Maryland, it seems that Martin O'Malley won by a rather big margin over Bob Ehrlich. Certainly this was not a big surprise, but Ehrlich seemed to have a real chance, and so this result was a major disappointment. In California, there was an even bigger disappointment: both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seemed to have good chances to win, but neither one could pull it off. And in my original home state of New York, only one of the third party candidates got the 50,000 votes needed to keep his party on the ballot, and that was the Green Party candidate, the one I liked least. (The Libertarian, Warren Redlich, came very close: nearly 45,000, but close is not enough to do it. And the other third party candidates got no more that 20,000-30,000 each.)

Florida is another state I was looking at. That one was not too bad — I was very pleased to see the Democrat, Kendrick Meek, finish third! And while I would have preferred Charlie Crist to the actual winner, Marco Rubio, I think Rubio would be a reasonably good choice from what I've seen.

The worst of the results this Tuesday was in Nevada. I really thought that Harry Reid could be defeated. But this was not to be. Apparently, by nominating Sharron Angle, just like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, The Tea Partiers threw away a good chance to help throw the Democratic rascals out!

Advice to New York State residents

Though I've been living in Maryland for over 20 years, I still retain an interest in New York State politics, because I grew up there and first formed my political views seeing that Nelson Rockefeller was an outstanding Governor. And I've looked at this year's New York State Gubernatorial election, with the Republicans nominating the joke named Carl Paladino, and the Democrats nominating Andrew Cuomo, the son of a pretty far left Governor of the past. I want to repeat something I said in my previous post, more emphatically. If you live in New York State, vote this November. Don't vote for Paladino or Cuomo, though. Cuomo will win, whatever you do. But in New York State, the law says that any party that gets 50, 000 votes will have official status for the next four years. Fifty thousand votes in New York State is not a lot. So you can help a small party get a line on the ballot. There is a Libertarian candidate, Warren Redlich; a candidate whose party says "Rent is too damn high," Jimmy McMillan; a candidate of the Freedom party (which says that the Democrats are taking black voters too much for granted), Charles Barron; a candidate of the "Anti-Prohibition Party" (apparently for legalizing prostitution?), Kristin Davis, and a Green candidate. Some of these candidates may not be very serious, but if they can get 50,000 votes, there will be more voices heard in New York State politics the next four years. If you live in New York State, please vote for a minor party candidate for Governor, any minor party candidate for Governor, November 2.

The New York State gubernatorial race

Yesterday, on a trip to the drug store to have a prescription filled, I saw among the newspapers on display, the New York Post. And in big letters on page 1 was the headline announcing the Post's support for Andrew Cuomo for Governor of New York.

When I was growing up, in New York City, my parents' favorite paper was the Post, and it certainly would not have been unusual in those days to see it endorsing the Democratic candidate for any major office. In those days, the publisher, Dorothy Schiff, and the editor, James A. Wechsler, were far-left liberal Democrats, and generally if they did not endorse the Democrat for some office, it would be the Liberal Party candidate that got their endorsement (an example was Rudolph Halley who ran as a Liberal for Mayor of New York City.) The one exception I can think of was a gubernatorial election in the 1950s where publisher Schiff endorsed Nelson Rockefeller, and this led to an open split between editor and publisher, where Wechsler put in an editorial, signed with his name (a very unusual practice!) where he stated that he could not go along with the publisher's position.

But Dorothy Schiff sold the Post long ago. And it is now Rupert Murdoch who runs the Post, and Murdoch is known for being rather conservative. (Actually, this, in a way, returns the Post to its roots; the paper was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, known in his day as a leader of conservative politics!) So the Post's endorsement of Cuomo in 2010 is not the usual thing. And this implies one thing: Carl Paladino is so far off-base that he even repels normally-Republican conservatives.

If I were living in New York State, I certainly could not endorse Cuomo. But Paladino — with his misguided anti-gay remarks and his rather coarse threats to take a baseball bat to Albany — is not a great alternative. So if I were still living in New York I would do what I actually did in 1974, when I did live (at least officially) in the state — vote for a third-party candidate (in that year, Jerome Tuccille, the candidate of the Free Libertarian party, which is what the libertarians in New York State called themselves in 1974). (In 1974 I had actually considered voting for the Democrat, Hugh Carey, because when President Gerald Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller to the Vice-Presidency, Malcolm Wilson, who succeeded from the Lieutenant Governorship to the Governorship as a result, had been a singularly ineffective Governor, even with a Republican Legislature. What turned me off Carey was that he, in turn, campaigned as if the worst thing that could be said about Wilson was his support for Richard M. Nixon, who I then considered, and now still consider, a much better President than the reputation he has gotten.)

I don't know who is on the ballot in New York State besides Cuomo and Paladino, but if there is anyone else even vaguely acceptable, and you live in that state, that's the one you should vote for!

A blight on the Republican Party?

The Republican Party's candidate for the Governorship of New York State has been sounding off about gay people recently. First, he is quoted as saying "Don't Be 'Brainwashed' Into Thinking Homosexuality Is 'Equally Valid'," apparently to an orthodox Jewish group. Then he tried to backtrack on it, but seems only to have dug in more deeply. Finally, he later tried to claim to be for gay rights, but still could not disavow all he had said. This is a problem for the Republican Party. Because of homophobic candidates like Paladino, the party comes off as homophobic. And I can certainly imagine a gay voter in New York State, who shares Republican values on economic issues and other such things, being driven to vote for the Democrat, Andrew Cuomo, next month, against his feelings on those issues, because Paladino is against the rights that mean so much to such a voter.

The District of Columbia once had a gay Republican Councilman, David Catania. Because of anti-gay remarks by people in the 2004 Bush campaign, Catania left the party and endorsed John Kerry, though he did not become a Democrat formally because he has a Council seat reserved for non-Democrats. I am certain that Catania's endorsement of Kerry was purely because of the gay rights issue, since Catania had obviously good reasons for being a Republican at first.

It is "social conservatives" who are hurting the GOP by being a part of it! By making the GOP appear anti-gay, anti-abortion, and such, they are driving away those who belong in the party because they dislike the "socialism light" that the Democrats favor. The GOP would be better off without them. They are a blight on the party.