Pataki's victory is thin, and in essence shows the weakness of the Republicans in New York. The Republicans were right to be glum at their gubernatorial victory meeting. D'Amato, as head of the Senate Finance and Banking Committee, was able to play kingmaker of Pataki because he was able to shake the Wall Street money tree both for himself and for the New York party. National political isues could be used to manipulate a consolidation of state-level power. With him gone, the Republican committee will have a harder time raising funds, while the federal money raising advantage will shift to the two democratic US senators.
Pataki's victory is circumscribed by the re-election of Carl McCall and the probable election of Spitzer as Attorney General. Leading at present with 99% of the vote counted, Spitzer needs 44% of the remaining 185,000 absentee ballots to win. Even if Vacco wins the AG spot, the narrowness of the victory, combined with the election of McCall and the defeat of D'Amato, show that the only paying statewide strategy is not the "run to the right" which works in Gingrich type districts but a "run to the democratic center"--the old Rockefeller style Republicanism. With Democrats winning statewide posts and the federal spots, you have to be a very cautious Republican.
Part of the dynamics can be seen with regard to the teacher's unions. Pataki won the endorsement of the statewide teacher's union because he came across with increased funding at all levels. Most of this happened after the Clinton 2:1 landslide in 1996. For example, the University Professors worked without a contract in the first two years of the Pataki administration. After the Clinton landslide a deal was quickly worked out and money also started to flow into other elements of education. This, combined with the inherent strategic weakness of the Democratic primary--too many viable candidates, leading to a non-endorsement at the primary statge, and subsequent weakness of the Democrat, leading the teacher's union (but not the professors' union, btw) to endorse the incumbent Republican.
Pataki also played a conspicuous role in adding to the Adirondacks park and putting some money into cleanup bonds, while the Attorney General did the essential task of non-enforcement of environmental laws (combined with a sit-on-the-hands Department of Environmental Conservation). He also pushed hard on court actions to implement the "radical version" of the California electric vehicle plan (one from which California itself had backed away, making it utterly unrealistic) in court. This was a headache to Detroit but not to any essential NY interests, save for auto dealers who really had nothing to worry about.
By contrast D'Amato was much less visible on environmental issues and played the popular national Republican game of teacher bashing, which got mass mailings and phone banks activated by thousands of teachers across the state who are, of course, pretty much evenly distributed (as a ratio of population) geographically. It was an attempt to get votes by "running to the right," and it failed.
In short, Pataki won because of the two he is the better Democrat: supporting some key environmental issues and winning support or neutrality of major unions. In part he can do this for what the French call "conjunctural reasons": the budget surplus allows him to buy union support which Cuomo lost in 1992. For Cuomo, by contrast, had implemented a "10% for 10 tweeks" pay cut for all state workers which affected the statewide employee unions (but not the locally paid teacher's salaries). This cost him a lot of state worker votes in a narrow election.
This analysis is somewhat parochial in that it ignores the subtantial Democratic achievement in motivating minority voters to come out in a mid-year election. This is a separate component of the equation of putting together a winning coalition, and I am dubious that Pataki did much here to get support. But he didn't need to do so, having the higher-yield middle income vote by making overtures to the teachers, professors, and other unions that suck off the New York teat.
Pataki's victory can therefore hardly be called the triumph of a Republican of the ilk of the current Republican national leadership. His stances on abortion, coziness with unions, increase in government spending (sparking the entertaining and acerbic one-man revolt of I-hate-taxes Golisano) are not the mark of someone that can win nationwide in Republican primaries. Moreover, without D'Amato to shake the money tree for him, he is crippled, and may find himself hedged in on the policy front by small-arms fire from McCall and Spitzer (McCall regularly embarasses the administration on various budget issues, and Spitzer as AG could do likewise by enforcing consumer protection and environmental law that Pataki does not want enforced), who diminish the sense of Republican dominance in the state capital. Possibly Pataki could be a VP draft by a Texas-bush type, essentially a historical reversal of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket (South-North instead of North-South).
If it may be objected that some Democrats are so conservative as to be Republicans in disguise, Pataki's effective policies are those of a Republican in Democratic guuise. Perhaps he will be willing to alienate his middle of the road constituencies to make a national bid. But if he does so he will be making it difficult to groom a successor candidate, and it may be hard to conjure one up without d'Amato to pay the bill. Quite to the contrary, it is Schumer who will be playing the role of D'Amato to the state's Democratic party, perhaps setting the stage for statewide Democratic gains in the next election.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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