Spin Cycle

More than a century ago, Justice John Marshall Harlan became the U.S. Supreme Court’s “great dissenter.” Last week, in a much more modest forum, rookie Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) did a lot of dissenting — though any claim to greatness will be subject to debate.

Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith chose Johnson last year for the 15-member local-efficiency commission to explore merging special tax districts and other government entities. In its 71-page report, endorsing “big changes” and issued last week, Johnson’s name appeared in footnotes as objecting or abstaining on no less than a dozen of the panel’s 33 recommendations. That’s more than any other member, including Nassau Comptroller Howard Weitzman, who objected to seven.

“I have to be frank,” Johnson says. “There are several flaws in commission’s final report that I think, as my dissents showed, cannot be overlooked.”

He said there was “almost no analysis of the cost savings of any of the initiatives,” and little recognition of differing government structures by region.

That said, Johnson also cited bills he has introduced to help change special-district arrangements for the better.

The report shows that Johnson, Weitzman and three elected upstaters opposed steps bulleted by the commission toward countywide management of fire protection services. Another member, Assemb. Sam Hoyt (D — Buffalo) told Newsday’s Liz Moore: “Frankly, I think there are too many elected officials who simply pander to the fire departments and the volunteer firefighters.”

Johnson treads warily on local turf; Long Island Republicans would love to win back his seat in November. Most objections scattered through the reform report came from the panel’s 6 elected officials. One exception: Chairman Stan Lundine, the former lieutenant governor, joined Johnson, Weitzman and ex-Troy Mayor Mark Pattison objecting to a proposal in the report to make government and school-district employees pay at least 10 percent for individual health coverage, and 25 percent for dependents.

For the full report, click here. Note: Harlan's famous dissent was in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the majority of the court upheld racial segregation as constitutional under the concept of "separate but equal." More here.

Dan Janison

The reported focus by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo' office has been on former state police Col. Daniel Wiese, whose kept close relations with back-to-back governors Pataki and Spitzer and now has a $180,000-a-year Power Authority job.

Now Fred Dicker writes of a private security contract through the authority that he suggests lies at the heart of suspected political surveillance of legislators. Plausible enough, in theory, but there are no specifics -- so far.

When Wiese was up for the Power Authority post in 2003, Assemb. Richard Brodsky obtained this gushing praise from then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, as the Times writes here. The same nugget brings up the mystery of exactly what Sen. Dale Volker was talking about at that hearing last week.

Dan Janison

The upcoming retirement of Judith Kaye, after 15 years as top judge on the state’s highest court, has sparked intense speculation over a successor. And a back-chamber battle for the prized appointment may be brewing.

When David Paterson became governor last month, Jonathan Lippman, at right, had widely been considered the favorite. He’s served since 1996 as the chief administrative judge running the massive court system — the longest tenure to date in the post. A Kaye appointee, he’s credited with many initiatives, including the introduction of specialty courts and rule reforms.

But state sources say Theodore T. Jones, Jr., at left, is emerging as a leading contender to succeed Kaye in leading the 7-member Court of Appeals. Jones joined the court in February of last year, an Eliot Spitzer nominee. Before that he served for many years as a state Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn.

If tapped, Jones would be the court’s first African-American chief judge.

Some suggest another name in play may be Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, an appointee of Gov. Mario Cuomo, who’s served on the court since January 1994. She’d be its first Latina chief judge.

Kaye reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70 this year. A Cuomo nominee, she became the court’s first female judge in 1983. Today, four of the judges are women, two chosen by Republican Gov. George Pataki.

Court watchers note that Paterson’s counsel is James Yates, who’s served as a state Supreme Court justice — and has himself been on lists of envied eligibles for the high court.

Dan Janison

When he took over the governorship after being elected in a record landslide, Eliot Spitzer brought with him a mostly insular cadre of advisers, mostly lawyers, from the state attorney general's office, under the aegis of the law-man and reformer.

Lt. Gov. David Paterson, elected on the same ballot, was different -- steeped in legislative comptromises, neighborhood assistance grants, and the city's and Democratic Party's leading African-American power circles.

Now, in the month after Paterson was suddenly thrust into the top spot, his different sensibility and life experience is reflected in his cabinet picks. And in a notable Capitol micro-trend, an unusual proportion of them have election experience of their own.

The experience ranges. Jim Yates, counsel, was elected to the state Supreme Court in the late 1990's, but is mostly considered a top jurist. On the other end, Carl Andrews, inter-governmental affairs director and a former state Senator, has been involved in U.S. Senate and other campaigns, has run for Congress, and served as a political lieutenant to the since-convicted former Brooklyn Democratic boss Clarence Norman Jr.

Dr. Jon R. Cohen, special adviser, a Democrat from Nassau, comes from the medical world but ran as a health-care candidate for lieutenant governor in 2006 until Spitzer picked Paterson for the slot. And Bill Cunningham, now the governor's senior adviser, ran for Suffolk County executive five years ago.

This reminded one wag at the Capitol of the old, facetious slogan often cited by Gov. Mario Cuomo: "Integrity is no substitute for experience."

Dan Janison

Two state boards created to resolve disputes involving labor unions have been hindered by vacancies that have prevented valid votes from taking place -- and therefore backlogged their caseloads. Before departing, Spitzer nominated for the Public Employment Relations Board Rosemary Queenan, but her past professional ties could conflict with participating in a pending case involving the state troopers' PBA.

The Times union describes the situation here. There also has been coverage in the Chief-Leader (subscription only).

Given new Gov. David Paterson's more extensive direct and indirect union ties than his predecessor, unsexy but important PERB doings might draw more attention than usual from the news media in general, at least for a little while.

Dan Janison

As posted on Friday, Gov. David Paterson revealed a party personnel change in a conference call on Friday with Democratic county leaders.

So far, downstater David Pollak quits as state co-chair and upstater June O’Neill stays as sole chair. Paterson reportedly told the party leaders that it was dysfunctional to split authority between two co-chairs, a concoction of Spitzer's, who had little use for the party apparatus.

Sources say candidates have been interviewed to replace Edna Ishayik as executive director.

Dan Janison

The six-member State Investigation Commission, probing earlier probes of the disgraced Eliot Spitzer’s Choppergate farce, is supposed to include no more than three members of the same political party. But ex-Gov. George Pataki was able to appoint his longtime aide, Republican John Cahill, to the panel because Alfred Lerner, a longtime Republican, re-registered as an unaffiliated voter. So the real mix is 4-2 Republican.

Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s report on Choppergate last summer didn’t make the SIC’s publicized critique list. But the SIC would seem likely to chat with the Cuomo team once it hears outgoing Spitzer Inspector General Kristine Hamann’s story about how her probe was supposed to link up with his. Stay tuned.

Dan Janison

As a man of so much spite and so little irony, Eliot Spitzer could scarcely have guessed that his clearest economic legacy as governor would consist of turning himself into a public-works project for government investigators.

Now a gaggle of paid inquisitors from a half-dozen public agencies is rushing in to carry off trophies and teach lessons from the downfall of the Sheriff of State Street. Even an investigation of three other investigations has been announced — by the state Investigation Commission, a model of bureaucratic survival first created to take on organized crime in the 1950s.

The bipartisan panel has set its sights on the performance of the Albany County district attorney, the state inspector general — who quit yesterday — and the state Commission on Public Integrity — and their roles in probing the Spitzer farce known as Choppergate.

This scope of SIC interest happens to fall on executive offices occupied by one-time Spitzer allies and appointees. In this uber-prober role, the panel bears the clear stamp of Albany’s waxing power center, the legislature, whose leaders appoint four of the commission’s six members. These include three former assemblymen and a former counsel to state Sen. Cesar Trunzo (R-Brentwood). There’s a businessman who once was New York Mayor John V. Lindsay’s campaign manager and then his deputy mayor, as well as a former top aide to Gov. George Pataki.

So Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno — who got to choose two of the three Republican members......

Dan Janison

Given the charged responses by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and his Investigations Chairman George Winner to Albany District Attorney David Soares’ explosive “Troopergate” report, you can bet Republicans are looking to squeeze the disgraced Eliot Spitzer’s misdeeds for an electoral edge.

But nobody seems to have pinned down how much the Spitzer administration may have helped advertise the ongoing federal probe of Bruno’s business affairs. One insider suggested Spitzer’s office kept close contact with U.S. officials, but another noted the investigation started by 2004. By all accounts, Bruno loyalists remain nervous.

Dan Janison

Roger Stone's latest self-promotion, a letter purportedly sent to the feds in November telling of Eliot Spitzer's prostitution procurement, might or might not be authentic -- "Forget it Jake -- it's Stone town" -- but one federal official tells Newsday that the probe began before the missive's reported date anyway.

Some of us are still waiting for Stone to proclaim the results of his O.J.-like phone-bill probe that he suggested at one point would indicate that someone somehow set him up on that crank call from his apartment to Spitzer's father a few months ago.

Now that he's put in the paperwork, maybe he can send a bill for back expenses to Joe Bruno, who retired him when that embarrassing episode broke.

Which raises that same question posted earlier: Who's government is this? The people or the intriguers?

Dan Janison

Why don't we just suspend democratic elections in the style of a South Asian dictatorship and have Roger Stone choose our leaders? That way you don't have to be elected with 70 percent of the vote. Between this and Hevesi, elections are getting nullified in New York. Talk about a democratic republic in crisis. Here is the latest from the Miami Herald which tells us how the master of Democratic disaster tipped off the feds, which if it holds up blows up the workaday narrative about how alert bank employees heard this and that and activated red flags etc....Then again, in Stone's world, you really have to have proof. Was the letter authentic?

Dan Janison

Beware, pornography fans. After the latest series of sensational disclosures, the main occupation of the Capitol in Albany remains political power. And that's what this drama is about, even if sex provides a major pastime.

The ascension of a substitute governor leaves Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno secure in their clout. They may never enjoy as much status as they do today.

Gov. David Paterson spent part of his first week in office responding to questions about his past conduct. That tempest goes on - keeping heat over any such conduct off the lawmakers for the moment.

Even if Paterson finds himself jammed up, which powerful state player would regret the loss of Eliot Spitzer and move to oust his successor before the term is out?

Top legislative guns will prefer a struggling but collegial former peer in the executive chamber any day to a self-righteous rookie who won the job in a popular landslide on a vow to rattle the status quo.

Before Paterson's dalliances became front-page news....

Dan Janison

Some of us citizens feel that Spitzer's swift-enough resignation last week was a good and healthy thing for the state, but there remain a couple of mattters for which the people of New York might prove grateful. We might appreciate it if he refrains from any type of, say, born-again religious conversion that requires him to inform the public about his journey to faith -- and if he spares us a book about the road back to mental health or any such thing.

Dan Janison

No, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi wasn’t offered the Lt. Governor’s spot to back off his plan to run a primary for governor against then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer more than two years ago.

The rumor was all over Nassau last week that Suozzi again had missed his chance after the man who did take that ballot spot, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, became the governor designate following Gov. Spitzer’s resignation.

But sources close to Suozzi and his dealings with the Spitzer camp back then said the offer — which they described as very hypothetical — was for attorney general: Would Suozzi consider backing off his planned primary for governor if he were to be offered the attorney general nomination?

Suozzi turned it down flat, the sources say. Suozzi announced for governor Feb. 2006 and lost badly.

And a fellow named Andrew Cuomo became Attorney General.

Celeste Hadrick

Events overtake other sensational events. The horrid fatal crane disaster in Manhattan eclipses today's aftershocks from the still-breathtaking Spitzer case, as Paterson, who went to the site on Saturday, prepares to take the reins in Albany Monday. Some of the continuing coverage:

The use of the century-old Mann Act to prosecute members of the prostitution ring that Spitzer allegedly procured, discussed in this space before, is reviewed here by the Associated Press.

The New York Times dependably pursues campaign-finance angles. The significance of this one is unclear, but the paper's story today outlines an unusual arrangement between the Spitzer campaign and a consultant who dealt with some of the now-scrutinized travel arrangements.

There's this dramatic development: Spitzer walked the dog near his Manhattan apartment and got in the blue mini-van to take the family upstate to the summer house. Photos were taken. He asked for more room to get through on the sidewalk.

Liz Benjamin summarizes and posts the Spitzer take on Saturday Night Live here.

The city press spoofed the Spitzer scandal in its Inner Circle revue Saturday, with the song “Love Client No. 9” and an “E Harmony” style video ad featuring ersatz hookers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg avoided it in his own response sketch, which had a walk-on by Giants QB Eli Manning. Paterson quickly dropped in; Nassau Executive Thomas Suozzi attended.

More on the satire here .

Just a query: What do you do when you suddenly become the governor of New York and your father, a veteran lawyer, represents some of the state’s most influential unions in labor negotiations with their employers?

David Paterson has been lieutenant governor since last year. Before that, he was a state senator and leader of the house’s Democratic minority.

But with Paterson suddenly set to become governor Monday, the role of the elder Basil Paterson (above), at the firm Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, draws new attention today.

The state’s latest version of an ethics commission, the Public Integrity Commission, can issue guidelines aimed at avoiding conflicts for the Patersons — or simply cite general rules. It was not instantly clear yesterday which will happen.

Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for the governor’s office, stressed that Basil Paterson is not a lobbyist. But one ethics expert who requested anonymity posed this point: that the Meyer Suozzi firm has numerous lobbying clients, and that as governor, David Paterson could come to appoint members of the integrity commission, which in turn regulates lobbying.

This kind of discussion is, of course, far from exotic. Details always differ. For disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer, questions arose about his father’s real estate holdings, a family foundation, and campaign loans and contributions. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s giant New York-based business has drawn extensive....

Dan Janison

Some guy has written pieces of a musical on Spitzer. It's here, but be careful -- the language is salty (very salty) in spots. On the other hand, it's pretty funny:

"SILDA WALL SPITZER
You'll be back home soon.
See you in a day.
Kids are all fine.
Don't be lonely, OK?

(ELIOT SPITZER hangs up the phone.)

ELIOT SPITZER
Now that she says it,
I guess I am lonely,
For, as it turns out,
I am the only
Man who is as smart as me—
Or should it be "as smart as I"?
An average man might well not care,
But higher standards here apply."

Or, this, following his session with "Kristen":

"ELIOT SPITZER
How was I? Great?
It must be late.
Consider our intercourse a kind of tutorial
From a man who is brilliant and gubernatorial."

Via Andrew Smith and Dan Janison -- whose favorite line, by the way, comes from an evil mini-Eliot with horns and pitchfork:

"Once you go demon
You never go back."

Sure, they were running mates. Sure, both are Democrats. Sure, they worked mostly in tandem as governor and lieutenant governor.

But it would be hard to find men with more different personal styles than Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson. It is a contrast that goes deeper than obvious facts of race and disability.

Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president who was the party's 2005 candidate for New York City mayor, knows them both.

"Monday night, I said a prayer for two guys who are friends of mine," said Ferrer, now in private life. "Both are blazingly smart, in different ways. One is impulsive, the other is thoughtful."

Paterson, says Ferrer, is "thoughtful and deliberate, and thinks things out a number of steps." As for advice, Ferrer adds, "the thing he will need to do - and it's easy to say now that I'm out of politics - is curb his natural tendency to be witty."

Say what you will now that he's done, but nobody ever accused Spitzer of being a schmoozer or a raconteur. The Albany crowd knows that in private.....

Dan Janison

Unlike the lap-up-every-leak approach of parts of the NY press, the WSJournal continues its admirable efforts to point out the uncertainties in some of the loose talk about financial crimes. From today's paper:

"Mr. Spitzer may be vulnerable to charges that he sought to evade federal banking laws in extracting cash from his bank accounts to pay the Emperors Club, but the evidence for such a crime is far from clear-cut. Mr. Spitzer may have made some effort to avoid federal scrutiny of three wire transfers totaling about $15,000 by dividing his withdrawals into pieces, people familiar with the matter said. Still, the transactions were ultimately executed under his name and in accordance with other regulations.

"In addition, a prosecution for violating the banking regulations would require proving his intent was to break the law rather than just avoid embarrassment, one former prosecutor said."

The paper also points out, as others have, that while Spitzer seemed to have clearly violated the Mann Act, clients are almost never prosecuted under that statute. Which is why you wonder exactly who became obsessed with using wiretaps and FBI agents to try to prove that he was seeing a prostitute.

If the evidence of criminality involving money movements turns out to be ambiguous or weak, the conclusion will become fairly inescapable that someone in federal law enforcement decided that it was their job to pursue the non-statutory offense of criminal hypocrisy.... and then behave like a hypocrite by leaking.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer just asked former Gov. George Pataki about the matter of state troopers' constant presence with governors and what may have happened in this case.

"I don't understand that," Pataki replied, recalling now the police were "always nearby" when he was governor. "That's something for others to answer."

"Today was a sad day but a necessary day and now we move forward," Pataki said. "This is a tragedy."

He said he was shocked, and spoke of incoming Gov. David Paterson as "a person of intellect and integrity."

And so Eliot Spitzer is gone, delivering the same type of condemning speech to mark the departure that he dished out for years.

Only this time he inveighed against himself.

As the state's attorney general, Spitzer always liked the fast plea deal followed by the big press conference that announced its conclusion.

Then he could move on to the next task.

Spitzer, never one for going to trial, held the biggest press conference of his life -- like Gloria Swanson* at the end of Sunset Blvd. -- and tried to show as much ordinary humanity as he could for a broken, sick individual.

It has been two days since cheers erupted on the trading floors...

Give the man this much credit: As ill-mannered, overprivileged and impatient as Eliot Spitzer has been in his life, he does possess the kind of mind that explores both sides of a situation.

The soon-to-be-former governor found himself in hot water last summer after his aides directed state police to create records reconstructing the out-of-town trips of his political nemesis, Sen. Joseph Bruno.

So then we learn Spitzer went out of town - presumably with state police - and got into the biggest trouble of his life, evidently without any help from Bruno or the reconstructions of any state records.

Part of the logic in this tawdry drama seems to be that if you're going to suspect someone else of breaking rules, why not break them yourself? After all, it's you doing it, not the other guy. And his semi-contrite resignation statement earlier today did little to dispel that this was his thinking.

While Spitzer was talking in undoubtedly Freudian terms about his fall and his rise, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, at a press conference in Washington, was giving a public benediction to incoming Gov. David Paterson. And we suspect he could not resist what sounded like a parting shot at a governor he was never comfortable with: "He (Paterson) shouldn't expect on Day one that he can know everything and do everything...."

Dan Janison

There is nothing less media-friendly, especially in this instant-video-gratification age, than behind-the-scenes talks between lawyers for a targeted public official and law-enforcement authorities -- in other words, a certain type of human reality -- as one Eliot Spitzer might know.

That's what we suspect is occupying the time between yesterday's "I'll report back shortly" from the disgraced governor and this minute, as aides confirm the prospect but not the timing of his resignation.

At the moment this story takes place on the law-enforcement beat. Questions and rumors run through the political circuits as TV folks do stand-ups that add up to a lot of air guitar and drum roll. Is Lt. Gov. David Paterson up to this, health-wise? Will he be working well with Sen. Joseph Bruno? Are the prospects for Democrats to win the Senate dead once and for all?

Patience may be a virtue today.

Dan Janison

Since folks are still sorting out the shocking scandal, some perspective:

Eliot Spitzer, a.k.a. Eliot Savant for his high-functioning status as your basic pompous lawyer, has won a place in the history books for giving reform a bad name.

Good government ... Ethical government ... Clean government ... Transparent government ... Day one, everything changes ... Steamroller for the people.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

In his elected time he talked, he pointed the finger, he preached, he denounced, and he called up others and threatened. Now that he has evidently earned the designation "Client 9" in a federal affidavit involving prostitution charges, Spitzer's political life is over.

Those power brokers who once saw Spitzer as a threat, as the sheriff of Wall Street, the steamroller against those corrupt embodiments of the status quo, can all breathe easy and raise a posthumous toast to reform.

For now, the prostitution allegations to which Spitzer is tied suggest he may have taken more earnest care in procuring the services of the Emperors Club VIP ring than he has in negotiating this year's state budget.

Maybe even now you could argue a point in Spitzer's favor. He avoided adding to the hypocrisy of his actions by supporting New York business. After all, the Emperors Club job creation seems to have been local - according to the feds, the company's representative was sent from Penn Station to meet him in Washington, D.C.

One name on the lips of shocked observers yesterday was Jim McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor whose incumbency exploded with the same suddenness less than four years ago, after he admitted an extramarital affair with a male employee.

But Hank Sheinkopf, the New York Democratic consultant who has handled such crises, made a salient point. "This is worse because McGreevey was never seen as a guy who would dictate what moral behavior was.

"Having been through the meltdown of public people, I can tell you...

Dan Janison

The governor has just apologized briefly to his family and the state. But he said nothing further. The latest word is that Lt. Gov. David Paterson is being sworn in as we speak, but once again -- the administration is operating in the shadows and telling us nothing.

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FOUR DAYS AGO:

Four people were arrested Thursday and accused of organizing a prostitution ring that charged wealthy clients in Europe and the U.S. thousands of dollars for prostitutes rated by diamonds.

The conspiracy charges against the man and three women accuse them of running the Emperors Club VIP ring from at least December 2004, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said.

On its Web site, the company displays photographs of the prostitutes' bodies, with their faces hidden, along with hourly rates depending on whether the prostitutes were rated with one diamond, the lowest ranking, or seven diamonds, the highest.

A three-diamond prostitute would cost $1,000 per hour, while the Icon Club allowed access to the most highly ranked prostitutes at $5,500 an hour, prosecutors said.

Authorities said the defendants arranged connections between wealthy men and more than 50 prostitutes in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, London and Paris.

All four were charged with conspiracy to violate federal prostitution laws:

The questions burning up phones and e-mails:

Will David Paterson be the first African-American governor?

Was Spitzer supposed to have been a client or a promoter?

Was it the federal sting busted last week in several cities?

Will this become the biggest hypocrisy story since Jimmy Swaggert?

Stay tuned.

Bitter regional rivalry surfaced in last week’s special Senate race in northern New York that could set a tone in the Capitol's partisan wars. While Democrats charged that GOP state funding of Long Island’s “wealthy” school districts bleeds their own, Republicans kept more to tradition by bashing their foes as beholden to New York City.

Cathy Calhoun, a state Democratic committee official who managed the successful Darrel Aubertine campaign — thus narrowing the Senate GOP’s majority to 32-30 — hurled 11th-hour zingers about Nassau and Suffolk school money at Assemb. Will Barclay, the Republican candidate.

“I would just tell all our school officials to lock up the safe for the next few days, because the same people who have taken our school funding away for years are here to help Will Barclay,” she said in a news release.

Calhoun cited GOP Long Islanders who traveled to the snowy burgs of the 48th Senate District to help Barclay. GOP volunteer Rose Marie Walker, the Oyster Bay board member, was quoted by Newsday as saying Long Island and the 48th “share a common bond.”

“The only common bond is that we’re both paying taxes to support wealthy Long Island school districts,” retorted Calhoun — calling Walker a “card-carrying member” of Nassau’s “infamous (GOP) machine” and listing among her partisan connections that she’s the mother of Assemb. Rob Walker (R,C,I,WF – Hicksville). Calhoun quoted Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean Skelos as “gleefully” saying after last year’s budget, “What the Republican senators did was to drive aid to the suburban school districts.”

Tom Dunham, Skelos’ spokesman, on Friday said Calhoun had.....

Dan Janison

Predictably, Senate Republicans denounced the Spitzer administration's internal probe of the Public Service Commission as a "whitewash." Yet details in the recent report of Inspector General Kristine Hamann (right) could stymie any GOP efforts to milk the administration's early PSC fiascoes as a scandal.

The full report is here.

From several angles, probers douse Republican PSC member Cheryl Buley's initial claim of an improper threat by a Spitzer aide to remove her if she didn't act as desired in a Con Edison inquiry. Also, Long Island Republican Patricia Acampora of the PSC gives crucial testimony that both the aide, Steve Mitnick, and Buley were "unfortunately ... nuclear." The IG even links the blowup's timing in part to Buley's own search for a another patronage post. The 84-page report does harpoon actions by Mitnick and Angela Beddoe, Spitzer's first nominee for PSC chair, but both are gone from the scene.

Dan Janison

In Albany tonight, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem), a supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, issued a passionate call for Democratic Party unity, saying "the people’s will is what’s going to prevail at the convention and not people who decide what the people’s will is."

Speaking at the New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators' annual conference, Rangel said the party’s superdelegates shouldn’t decide whether Clinton or Barack Obama’s name will appear on the November ballot for president. Rangel also warned against party bickering, which could hand the White House to Republican John McCain.

"That’s going to be our job to make certain that this great opportunity is not taken away from us because of differences," the congressman told more than 1,000 people packed into the Albany convention center. "Not to allow them [Republicans] to snatch this away from us."

Rangel didn’t mention Clinton or Obama by name but made his opposition to superdelegates clear. "It’s the people [who are] going to govern who selects our next candidate and not superdelegates."

Speaking to reporters later, Rangel said it wasn’t clear which candidate would get a majority of the superdelegate votes so "it’s time that they get their act together now." He suggested a meeting of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton and Obama. "We should make certain that they [the candidates] don’t hurt each other and decide how they are going to resolve it," Rangel added.

Earlier, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Clinton superdelegate, downplayed the delegates’ role, saying the nomination likely would be decided in future primaries. "The likelihood is there will be a nominee," he told reporters after speaking to the conference.

James T. Madore