Dan Janison
Voter amnesia can be the incumbent's best friend.
Some politicians have run against their own records and won. Some won under indictment. Some won after admitting just enough wrongdoing to sound chastised. Some even drew votes while deceased, when death came too close to Election Day to reprint the ballots.
"You want reform?" the thinking goes. "Fine, I'm a reformer!" Like salesmen, they're a trend-tracking lot not much given to shame.
So when a new Quinnipiac poll suggests nearly half of New York registered voters want to send all state senators packing due to dysfunction, the first instinct is to avoid betting the 401(k) that many faces will disappear from the disgraced body come 2011.
Unless we all manage, somehow, to remember the bad stuff along with who got funding for the local ambulance corps.
The question posed by the pollsters seems to acknowledge the power of incumbency: "Which comes closer to your view about your state senator - there are a lot of problems in Albany but your state senator has done a good job and deserves to be re-elected, or almost everyone in the State Senate should be thrown out including your state senator?"
"Throw-em-all-out" got 49 percent, "deserves re-election" won 40 percent and the ever-crucial "don't-know-or-no-answer" faction garnered 11 percent.
The Senate deadlock of June and July that featured surrealistic dueling and back-to-back "sessions" in the same chamber proved dramatic and won instant attention. Dubious motives of the players were displayed, further shriveling the Senate's reputation.
We are in the midst of a very local election cycle this year and these Albany follies are fresh in mind.
But in November 2010 - when the Senate's 62 seats and the Assembly's 150 seats next come open - there will be a rare, milestone state election offering plenty to eclipse the memory of this past Albany session.
There will be major campaigns for governor, lieutenant governor, comptroller, attorney general and both U.S. Senate seats. Of the lot, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer will be the only statewide multi-term incumbent up for re-election. At least three of the statewide posts will go to someone who had never before been elected to them.
To the extent that Senate seats are in play, the partisan blame competition will continue. Democrats would claim that to avoid another deadlock, they will need more of their own in the chamber so that the defection of one or two cannot break the majority as it did this summer. Republicans will return to slamming Democrats as responsible for a shady, high-tax status quo. Each candidate will work to absolve himself and his closest colleagues of guilt for the collective breakdown. In at least some cases this will work.
Remember that legislative dysfunction has a very long tradition. Even before this republic solidified, Thomas Jefferson derided the assembly of 18th century Virginia - with its "endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversities, vexations and delays of lawyers and demi-lawyers."
In this state, in the here and now, the question becomes: Will we still hate them tomorrow?
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