Born, as I was, in 1969, I didn’t initially have much occasion to learn civics lessons through real-world examples. When Nixon resigned, I was more than a month away from my fifth birthday. My first encounter with anything that might be called a constitutional crisis was the Iran-Contra scandal, when I learned what the separation of powers really meant in a foreign policy context. But, right around my twenty-fifth birthday, things began to change.
In 1995, Gingrich’s government shutdowns gave me a glimpse of what it really means that the legislative branch holds the nation’s purse strings. In 1998-99, I saw what the impeachment process looks like. In 2000, I saw how the judicial branch can decide a contested election. In 2004, I got a further education on how state and local election officials can use their power to alter the result of elections. In 2005, I saw how the federal government acts (or doesn’t) with state and local officials in a major natural disaster. In 2008, I learned how the nomination process really works in the Democratic Party. Since Obama’s 2009 inauguration, I have been forced to learn Senate procedure to help me understand how the minority can obstruct the majority. In 2011, I was introduced to the concept of the trillion dollar platinum coin, as the GOP seriously contemplated defaulting on our sovereign debt.
This year, my lesson is in dirty dealings of politics in New York and New Jersey. Over the next several months, we will peel the onion that explains how New Jersey Governor Chris Christie managed to convince dozens of state Democrats to endorse his reelection, and how he dealt with those officials would declined to endorse him. Across the river, we will witness the challenges that Mayor Bill De Blasio faces in enacting reforms in New York City. And upstate, we can watch the evolving rivalry between Governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has asked people if they think Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York State, wears eyeliner.
Mr. Schneiderman has told people that he believes Mr. Cuomo’s administration is Machiavellian and is out to undermine him.
A little backbiting by the officials and their aides, who occupy power suites at opposite ends of the State Capitol’s second floor, might be chalked up to the kind of rivalry that is an unseemly but unsurprising fact of life atop the state’s political food chain. But this relationship, as described in repetitive detail by many in New York Democratic circles, has gone from bad to toxic.
“The two men are like oil and water,” said one Democrat who knows both of them well, “and lately fire seems to have been added.”
Right now, these two gentlemen are fighting over control of a $613 million “slush fund” that Schneiderman obtained in a settlement with JP Morgan Chase. Will that money go to fighting foreclosures and battling financial fraud, as Schneiderman wants, or will it go into the general fund to help pay for De Blasio’s universal pre-kindergarten and other programs?
We’d like to think of the New York Attorney General as the cop of Wall Street, but that do-good image is muddied by his role as a revenue-generator for the state. Meanwhile, over in Jersey, we’ll be digging into the doings of the Port Authority and how it interacts with powerful developers, influential law firms, and state lawmakers.
Don’t let yourself ever believe that you’ve learned everything there is to know about American politics.
