BY JOSH ROGERS | So who is going to be picking the successor to Shelly Silver, the former Lower East Side member of the State Assembly — for 21 years, its speaker — who was convicted last month on corruption charges?
If you are following the story, you already know it won’t be voters. Members of the Democratic County Committee from Silver’s 65th Assembly district will effectively crown the next legislator early in 2016 when they select the nominee for the April 19 special election.
But at least the public can easily see who the committee members are, right?
Well, no.
The city’s Board of Elections quickly sent Manhattan Express its most complete list when asked this week, and presumably would do the same for anyone else, too, but the list is not readily available online. Even more disturbing than that, however, is that the names of members who will fill what are now cited as committee vacancies may stay hidden from the public before the anointing.
Express Ourselves
Cathleen McCadden, executive director of the Manhattan Democratic County Committee, said it is up to the local Democratic district leaders to fill vacancies, and many prefer not to release the names.
“It’s the only power that they have,” she told Manhattan Express.
Indeed, one Downtown Democratic district leader, who was inclined to furnish the most up-to-date list, said there was resistance from fellow district leaders. But the County Committee’s leaders could also give the names out to the public if they wanted.
They don’t.
There are 39 listed vacancies for the district’s 196 seats on the County Committee. Most members are not well known, with the highest profile person on the committee being Judy Rapfogel, a former Albany power broker who was Silver’s chief of staff for about two decades while he was speaker — and whose husband was convicted in 2014 of taking kickbacks while executive director of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
There have been many calls over the years to let voters play the central role in filling legislative vacancies, but McCadden argued there’s nothing wrong with the current system, particularly in this case since the new incumbent will likely face a Democratic primary next September, only five months after taking office.
“They’ll only be in office for a hot second,” she said, explaining that in Albany, “it takes a long time to amass any kind of power.”
McCadden did acknowledge that the April winner will be able to reach his or her new constituents with taxpayer-funded mailings.
Susan Lerner, executive director with Common Cause New York, which has long backed more democratic ways to fill vacancies, said “even a short [term] incumbent is able to arrange things within their district for an advantage.”
The current system “denies voters a real choice,” she added.
Lower Manhattan is overwhelmingly Democratic, so the Republican nominee stands little chance to win.
One of the reasons there has been no reform, Lerner said, is that so many state legislators first get into office through a special election and are reluctant to change a system from which they benefitted.
Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal from the Upper West Side is the exception. She won the political insider game in 2006, but saw the problem with the system.
“When I did run for the vacancy, a lot of people were disgruntled by the process,” Rosenthal, a former County Committee member, said this week.
Soon after taking office she sponsored legislation that would require a primary and special election to fill a vacancy but it went nowhere. This session she and State Senator Daniel Squadron, who represents Downtown Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn, are sponsoring similar bills that would set up non-partisan special elections to fill Assembly and State Senate vacancies. Candidates would have to collect signatures to get on the ballot.
“It’s a big concern that the process to fill vacancies is so complicated and obscure, especially after the year Albany’s had,” Squadron said in a statement, making a clear reference to the federal convictions of two of Albany’s Three Men in a Room — Silver and former Republican State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.
The new bills would certainly be less costly than holding a primary and then a special election, and it might attract a higher turnout rate than holding two elections, but Rosenthal did not hold out much hope for passage in 2016.
It may just be a matter of time, as more beneficiaries of the current system acknowledge the problem.
Two of the four candidates to replace Silver, Paul Newell and Jenifer Rajkumar, have an advantage in the race since they are district leaders and helped form the committee that will decide their fate. They will also likely fill some of the remaining vacancies, but both said in interviews this week that they supported a more democratic way to fill vacancies. (As Manhattan Express’ sister publication the Villager has reported in recent weeks, Yuh-Line Niou and Don B. Lee are the other two who have so far expressed strong interest in running.)
Both Rajkumar and Newell said the winner would likely have an advantage when she or he runs for reelection in September, but neither thought that was definite.
“On the other hand, that’s four days [a week] in Albany and less time speaking with Lower Manhattanites,” Newell said.
That’s an artful way of justifying a rigged system, but it’s no way to run a democracy.
