Spin Cycle

Republicans cross-endorsed Democrat Norman St. George for county judge last night, while Democrats are endorsing Republican Angelo Delligatti for district court judge. This is the first break in Republican's ban against cross-endorsement since 1984, when Mondello took over as GOP chairman.

County Independence Party Chairman Bobby Kumar said St. George is carrying all five standing party lines. Kumar told Celeste Hadrick earlier today: “I took the case to (GOP Chairman) Joe Mondello and (Democratic Chairman) Jay Jacobs. I said, why don’t we do the right thing by the judges. Good judges should be reappointed and we should not put them through a process...I’m so honored that Jay accepted my proposal and I was very very humbly surprised that Joe said, 'I have no problem in doing the right thing by the right judges'.

"It impressed me -- there was no quid pro quo,” Kumar said.

Tony Santino, Mondello's spokesman, further emphasized there was no quid-pro-quo.

Republican Plandome Manor Mayor Barbara Donno was endorsed last night by the Nassau GOP for state Senate, to face rookie incumbent Democrat Craig Johnson in November.

In a statement from the party, she is quoted as saying: "My passion is education. I’ve taught elementary school, been involved in the parent association, served on the board of education and above all else I’m a parent. I think parents – and our children – need a voice in Albany and I believe I have the experience to be that voice.”

“What we see in Albany today makes us all angry," she says via the press release. "As a mom and former elementary school teacher some of the things I see in Albany – from BOTH parties – makes you think some of them would benefit from a ‘time-out!’”

UPDATE: Johnson defends his record in a statement issued from his spokesman Rich Azzopardi, posted below the "continued" bar.

Dan Janison

Nassau County’s Joseph Hand says he has decided against trying to challenge incumbent Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) in a primary for a seat that county Republicans would love to win back.

“I considered it, I threw a trial balloon, and I was getting set,” Hand said, but he had a talk with Queens party activist James Wrynn, who persuaded him otherwise “for the good fo the party and the sake of the Senate.” He said he may look toward a future run for the county Legislature.
Hand mustered 42 percent against former Sen. Michael Balboni in 2006.

Still no official word on whether Republican Barbara Donno will be nominated to face Johnson in the general election.

That was not just his political mentor sitting next to judicial appointee Robert Bruno on Wednesday. It was also his wife’s boss.

Mixing politics, government, justice — and perhaps nepotism — Nassau County Conservative Party boss Roger Bogsted spent much of Wednesday squiring Bruno through the approval process at the county legislature.

Bruno’s wife, Joann, is a $38,475-a-year “community service assistant” in the county’s Office of Consumer Affairs. Bogsted is the $119,820-a-year commissioner of the agency.

The Nassau County Legislature later approved the nomination of Bruno, 51, of Wantagh to the $122,700-a-year district court judgeship in what was seen as a political payoff to Bruno for running for county executive on the Conservative Party line in 2005.

The theory was that Bruno drained votes away from Republican contender Gregory Peterson, the main rival to Democratic incumbent Thomas Suozzi, who is Bogsted’s boss.

Bill Murphy

For nearly five months Barbara Donno, mayor of Plandome Manor, has been mentioned as the prospective GOP opponent to state Sen. Craig Johnson - who as noted earlier today may first face a primary against fellow Democrat Joseph Hand. So far, there's been no announcement, and those who watch these things seem to be in suspense. Updates as we learn them.

Nassau County's Joseph Hand, who got 42 percent of the vote for state Senate in the 7th district against Republican incumbent Michael Balboni in 2006, now is looking to run a primary against the Democratic incumbent who replaced Balboni, Craig Johnson (left).

Hand has been away and unavailable for comment, but we hope to talk with him when he returns. Senate Democratic operatives supporting Johnson say they are not worried given the difficulty of petitioning onto the primary ballot without party organization backing.

Here is one of the palm cards for Hand that has been making the rounds.

The race for mayor of Hempstead has lost one strong potential Democratic candidate, with Kevan Abrahams, D-Hempstead, at left, emphatically rejecting a possible run against incumbent Democratic Mayor Wayne Hall.

“Sure I was asked,” Abrahams, the legislature’s deputy presiding officer, said last week without naming who asked him. “But I don’t want the job. First, my wife is expecting, and, second, I don’t need that kind of headache. In addition, I support the current mayor.”

Village trustee Perry Pettus, a Democrat and local businessman who ran against Hall as an independent in 2005, has already declared he is seriously considering another try for the job. “I’m not even sure Wayne [Hall] will run again,” he said.

But Hall said he is definitely seeking re-election and has never indicated otherwise. “I intend to run — and win,” he said.

There are at least two potential candidates on the Republican side — it’s called the Unity Party in the village.

There is former 16-year mayor James Garner, Long Island’s first black mayor, who has all but announced....

Sid Cassese

Two losing candidates in last year’s local elections have landed jobs at the Nassau Elections Board — not an unusual outcome for loyalists who take on strong incumbents at their party’s request.

Elizabeth Faughan, a Republican Oyster Bay Town Board member who challenged the Nassau Legislature’s Presiding Officer Diane Yatauro (D-Glen Cove) last fall, was hired last month as a $50,000 fulltime administrative assistant in charge of the GOP board efforts to comply with the Help America Vote Act. Republican Elections commissioner John DeGrace said of Faughnan, an attorney, “She’s an outstanding employee. We’re very happy to have her.”

Also moving to the board recently was Democrat Kevin Gorman, who will be heading up the Democrat’s HAVA efforts for a salary of $82,500. Gorman, who previously worked at Nassau’s Off-Track Betting Corp., has been a perennial Democratic candidate who last year stepped in to challenge Hempstead Republican Supervisor Kate Murray when the party’s first choice dropped out of the race.

Celeste Hadrick

The annual spring dance of the crackdown bill has begun in Albany -- the kind of legislation that responds to the crisis or government fiasco of the season. As a result, for example, Sen. Dean Skelos and Assemb. Harvey Weisenberg, among others, are sponsoring fixes to the practice of off-payroll consultants hooking into the pension system of school boards, as covered in Newsday. Expect to hear more about this; here is some of the attention the snowballing issue is attracting elsehwere in the state.

Dan Janison

If Nassau Legis. David Mejias has interest in running for state Senate, he is going to have to wage a primary.

Jay Jacobs, Nassau Democratic chairman, said the party will be giving the nomination to Kristen McElroy, 38, a Garden City attorney and mother of three, making her first run to take on Republican State Senate veteran Kemp Hannon (left).

Mejias, moved into the Hannon’s district to qualify to run, was snubbed for the party’s nod after he angered Jacobs when he balked at backing a pay raise for county lawmakers.

Mejias, reached Friday, said that he will not challenge for the nomination, will support the party’s candidate and will “focus 100 percent on the Nassau Legislature.”

The party will also name Hofstra University ethics professor Roy Simon, 58, of West Hempstead to take on State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre).

The Democrats' convention is scheduled for May 29 at the Cradle of Aviation in Garden City.

Rick Brand

Not only did County Assessor Harvey Levinson challenge his own property tax assessment this year, so did two members of Nassau’s Assessment Review Commission, the agency responsible for deciding tax grievances.

Commission Chairman John Peguillan said “typically” several of the seven commission members each year challenge the assessments set by Levinson’s separate department. This year, he said, Commissioners Jeff Gold of Bellmore and Lenora Long of Hempstead disclosed they had challenged their property values.

Gold said Levinson’s office valued his home $60,000 higher on average than any other house on his street — although some are larger with bigger lots. “ARC encourages everybody to grieve their taxes when they think they are overassessed,” Gold said. Long could not be reached.

Peguillan said commissioners do not consider their own challenges. Instead, a computer analysis is run, to determine the probability of their property being over-assessed. If the assessment is in line, the challenge is denied, but if the computer flags it, he said, “we would farm that out to an outside independent appraisal company.”

Celeste Hadrick

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

Now it all becomes an episode of "Can You Top This"...

As Peddie and Laikin of Newsday have revealed, the Malverne schools produced a pension deal that even an expert or two found stunning. Read the details, and the defenses, here. Links to the rest of their accounts are available next to it.

The Long Island Regional Planning Board has received inquiries from four planning firms from as far away as California about competing for the $1.5 million contract to do the next regional sustainability plan 2030, said executive director Michael White.

The board last month signaled its intent to hire McKinsey and Co., the firm that did New York City’s plan — complete with the controversial congestion pricing. But the board permitted other companies to make their own proposals. McKinsey, however, has a leg up because local non-profits have pledged $500,000 to help fund the study, if McKinsey is chosen.

Michael White, the board’s executive director said those making inquiries “sounded very interested” but could not say whether they will make competing proposals.

Potential competitors have until May 7, the deadline for submitting proposals.

Rick Brand

Nassau and Suffolk Democratic committee members are announcing a regional caucus arrangement that -- at least according to those involved -- shunts aside past border skirmishes between the county organizations. According to weighted vote calculations based on the 2006 election results for governor, they say, the two Long Island counties now combine for a 15 percent share statewide. That's formidable when you consider it takes 25 percent to, say, put a primary candidate on a statewide ballot.

"Long Island for too long has been taken for granted, regarded as just a suburb that hangs off of New York," said Nassau chairman Jay Jacobs. "We are very determined to use that voting power to make sure attention is brought to Long Island issues."

Richard Schaffer, Suffolk chairman, said, "This is a great opporunity to make sure our statewide elected officials know just how critical Long Island has been to Democratic statewide victories."

New York City, by comparison, has declined in its percentage of the weighted vote from 47 to 34 percent, and Brooklyn and Queens combined are said to total about 17 percent. Schaffer, in his brief joint appearance with Jacobs before the executive committee of the state party here today in Saratoga, even invited Queens and Brooklyn to join, for geographic solidarity's sake.

Dan Janison

One Nassau County legislator is well traveled, you could say, on a bill that would impose a new fee on motorists. She has voted against it, voted for it, abstained on it, and, most recently, voted for it. And she intends to vote for it again.

Legis. Denise Ford (R-Long Beach) provided a key affirmative vote in the legislature on April 28, allowing committee approval of a bill that would impose a $15 fee on motorists who are ticketed for certain violations that they later correct.

This was the second time around for the bill, which would raise more than $1 million annually by imposing a processing fee on motorists cited for such infractions as driving without an insurance card, but later proving that the car was insured.

The same bill foundered in the full legislature on April 7 when one of the 10 members of the Democratic majority — Legis. David Mejias of Farmingdale — voted against it. The vote was nine Democrats in favor; eight Republicans and Mejias opposed, and Republican Ford abstaining. The bill died by a vote of 9-1-1 for lack of a majority.

Mejias had voted for the bill in committee in March, so his switch was a bit of a surprise but...

Bill Murphy

It’s hard to figure out the game plan of Nassau Leg. David Mejias, who has been feuding with his Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs. But he managed to anger all other nine county Democratic lawmakers during Monday’s legislative meetings.

Celeste Hadrick

That state advisory commission on property tax relief led by Nassau Executive Tom Suozzi may be interested in capping the levy -- but such a proposal would encounter heavy resistance from those representing New York state teachers, according to yesterday's Times item here.

Read the comment from NYSUT. How any interest group, from labor or business, can presume to suggest a pre-emptive veto of any proposal is worthy of discussion.

Turns out on checking this that Basil Paterson, who represents New York City teachers in their contract talks, quit the panel last month, once his son David Paterson became governor, to stem any appearance of conflict.

For some legislative leaders, it’s life on the edge.

The U.S. Senate is just barely Democratic. The New York state Senate is Republican, by a very slim margin.

In this same mode, you have the Nassau Legislature, where in early 2006, what was formally a 10-9 Democratic majority broke down in a rebellion against Presiding Officer Judy Jacobs.

Now PO Diane Yatauro has problems of her own — by the name of Democrat David Mejias, as recorded in this space in recent weeks by Bill Murphy and Celeste Hadrick. The Farmingdale lawmaker has been showing an independent streak that’s working against the herding instincts of leadership.

Who knows — there might be some rank-breaking on the GOP side too. Still, it all makes Suffolk PO Bill Lindsay look like he’s got it easy at an 11-7 majority (with the 11 including two WFP members who caucus with the Dems).

UPDATE: Meantime we have this announcement from Mejias -- click "continued" bar for its full text.

Just a bit more of an update on matters Newsday: As reported here, former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato has been calling around to Long Island public officials on publisher Rupert Murdoch's behalf, while the folks from Cablevision prepare what's described as an "end-around" bid to win the operation.

County Executive Thomas Suozzi (third from right, with sword) with local leaders of the Sikh community before the start of today's legislative session in Mineola, marking the celebration of the harvest festival of Baisakhi. (Suozzi staff photo).

Ray Bertolino says he's recorded a "very interesting chat" with Msgr. Jim Lisante of Nassau County that will air on Bertolino's radio show on WHPC 90.3 FM on Monday, at 12:30 p.m. covering the visit of Pope Benedict XVI and the political impact of religion.

Dan Janison

Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey and about 44 of the county’s 50 top cops ranked captain or higher had reservations at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk this weekend. They weren’t going for the beach or the spa, but for a two-day management conference arranged by Mulvey as a morale-building effort. Appointed commissioner ten months ago, Mulvey said
Friday he hoped the conference would help his managers understand his goals of department-wide efficiency and teamwork.

Mulvey was to open the conference at 10 a.m. Saturday, with work session until 7 p.m. and dinner at 8. After an 8 a.m. breakfast Sunday, Labor Arbitrator Martin Scheinman was to lead a two-hour discussion. “An overnight (conference) kind of fosters everyone to participate,” Mulvey said. “You kind of get the big-picture perspective when you have an off-site conference.”

The $10,000 cost for lodging, meals and conference facilities were paid from the police department’s forfeiture funds, Mulvey said. “There is no relaxation component; no fishing, no golf, no alcohol paid for,” he said. “I have great expectations that we’ll air out all of the issues and we’ll come away from this as better leaders, better managers...”

Celeste Hadrick

James Carver will take over as president of Nassau’s Police Benevolent Association in May. He received 70 percent of the vote in a recent election to replace retiring union head Gary DelaRaba (in photo above).

Carver, 46, has been serving as first vice president of the union since Jan. 2005. He was supported in his bid for the top job by DelaRaba, who retires May 17 after nearly 20 years as PBA president.

The son of a former Nassau police lieutenant, Carver said he started as a transit cop in Brooklyn in 1982, moved to the city force the next year and was appointed to the Nassau department in July 1986. He was assigned to the Fourth Precinct in Hewlett where he became involved in union activities. “Helping cops out is what interested me,” Carver said. “We come to this job to help people and there’s no better people to represent than cops.”

His goal? “To make sure the cops get the benefits they deserve and the public gets the service they deserve,” said Carver, who will finish out DelaRaba’s term, which expires at the end of next year.

County Executive Thomas Suozzi said, “I know I can work with Jim Carver, just as I have with Gary DelaRaba, especially over the past year.”

Celeste Hadrick

The partisan war for control of the state Senate is prompting maneuvers on several battlefields. Here is the latest news from two of them.

Local sources tell Rick Brand that Brookhaven Supervisor Brian Foley would be the state Democrats’ top choice to challenge veteran Sen. Cesar Trunzo. He has $200,000 in campaign cash on hand, but before you bet on his jumping in, be warned that Foley is considered quite cautious. There’s family history too: His father, John Foley, lost a bid to unseat Trunzo back in 1982, by 7,666 votes. Still, Senate Democrats were said to be testing Foley’s name in polls. And Foley has had a conversation about it with Bob Master, the Communication Workers of America regional legislative director who also is state co-chair of the Working Families Party, which partners with Democrats in Senate races, Brand reports.

Speaking of the WFP, the party plans starting tomorrow to target Trunzo and Sen. Kemp Hannon (R-Garden City) in an “issues” campaign, slamming the Senate GOP on paid family-leave. Which Democrat will face Hannon, though, also remains hazy. As Celeste Hadrick reported Friday on this blog, Legis. David Mejias (D-Farmingdale) agreed to rejoin the Democratic legislative caucus after talking privately with Nassau Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs, with whom he’d been feuding. But sources say the Democratic organization has not reinstated its support for a Mejias race against Hannon -- whose seat seems to have been a topic of perennial discussion from the opposing party for time immemorial.

Dan Janison

Although neither Nassau Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs nor Nassau Legis. David Mejias (D-Farmingdale) are talking to us about it, political sources say the two have talked to each other and Mejias has agreed to rejoin the Democratic legislative caucus.

The two had been at war after Jacobs said Mejias broke a promise to him to vote for a county charter revision that would allow legislators to immediately increase their salaries, which haven’t changed since 1996. In retaliation, Jacobs withdrew the county party’s support of Mejias planned challenge to State Sen. Kemp Hannon (R-Garden City).

Mejias denied making any promises. Angry over Jacobs' actions, he said he would no longer meet with the Democratic caucus and Democratic legislators could no longer depend on his tenth vote on the 19 member legislature. He then voted with the Republicans to kill a proposed traffic fee supported by Democratic County Executive Thomas Suozzi.

That vote led the state Senate Democratic Committee to drop its backing of Mejias’ bid against Hannon, we reported last week, because it showed he wasn’t a team player.
The state decision, as well as local Democrats dismay at Mejias’ tactics, helped bring him back into the fold, sources say.

They say he will rejoin the caucus by the Aug. 28 legislative meeting, but he will not return to his spot on the legislative Rules committee......

Celeste Hadrick

Much was made of the idea that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's conference bumped off the plan known as "congestion pricing."

But it was never made clear how many of his 42 votes the house's Republican minority leader had for the plan, or for that matter, the Senate's GOP majority leader, whose 8 Long Island members didn't exactly form a cheerleading squad for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal.

One Assembly member from Long Island said late last week: "I was very much on the fence. There are many pros and cons to this that we really need to continue take a real good look at... On one side issue, yes, the environment and global warming has to be adddressed -- for the enitre nation. On the other hand, on Long Island, if we want encourage to people taking the railroad, we should lower the fare."

But the stalled drive to charge motorists access to Manhattan below 60th St. was not so much an environmental initiative, but a project of the real estate elite which, if it really wanted to reduce congestion, would have agreed to curb the city's over-development craze, argues Paul Moses on Ron Howell's Brooklyn-based blog.

UPDATE: There is also this take in the Voice, which talks about how the GOP Senate came to duck a vote.

Dan Janison

For Long Island, one key question when it comes to this year's state Senate races is whether its communities as a whole will lose clout should the house change from GOP to Democratic.

Right now there are eight Republicans and one Democrat in the Senate delegation from Nassau and Suffolk combined. If you look at the way Democrat John Rennhack breaks out the most recent school-aid numbers here, the partisan argument could be one of current favoritism.

But there are also two houses, and the Assembly is overwhelmingly Democratic. So when it comes to regional competition for funds, there are a lot of sharp edges.

Dan Janison

Nassau's own Bruce Blakeman, the defeated GOP candidate for state comptroller in 1998, is setting his sights on another possible run a decade later, with even higher stakes: mayor of New York City, according to the publication City Hall, which also posted the photo above.

Blakeman these days is a commissioner at the bi-state Port Authority and a lawyer. “I have left the door open to the possibility of going back into a public life and [mayor] is a very interesting position where you could do a lot of good for people,” he told interviewer Andrew J. Hawkins.

As you'll see, he gets some supportive chatter from former Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari and current Manhattan GOP chairwoman Jennifer Saul Yaffa.

Before his comptroller run, and his appointment to the P.A. by former Gov. George Pataki, Blakeman was on the Hempstead Town Board and a Nassau legislator, where he served as presiding officer and majority leader in the late 1990's.

The floating of Blakeman's name for next year's race, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg departs due to term limits, was apparently too much for Democratic Nassau blogger John Rennhack to resist. He posts this on his Nassau GOP Watch site: "He did such a good job in Nassau that he was sent packing during the 1999 elections, moved to Manhattan and wants to re-enter politics a decade later."

Other possible GOP contenders in the Democratic-dominated city include supermarket tycoon John Catsimitidis and, some say, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Dan Janison

Richard Kessel, the former Long Island Power Authority chairman who continues to mull over several career paths, this weekend took on a new role: fatherhood.

On Sunday, Kessel, 58, and his wife, Diane, gave birth to their first child, a seven-pound, seven-ounce son, named Eli Bernard Kessel.

Bernard was the name of Kessel’s father, who passed away in 2006.

But what of Eli?

Was it just a coincidence that the boy was born and named the same month LIPA planned to announce a Kessel-inspired $1 billion energy conservation program called ELI (for Efficiency Long Island)?

Actually, says Kessel, "He’s a Superbowl baby." His son was named for Eli Manning, the Giants quarterback who led the New York team to victory at a Superbowl game Kessel and his wife attended this past February. During one critical march up the field, Kessel announced to friends including National Grid USA executive chairman Robert Catell, that if Manning scored, they’d name the child Eli.

The rest is history.

For those with a sinking suspicion the child was named for the LIPA program, Kessel says, "Sorry."

Kessel says he’s not sure what to make of fatherhood yet. "I’ll tell you when I bring [Eli] home and see how the cats react to him," he says.

He’s says also a little concerned the boy may be thrown by his father’s age. "I’m half expecting him to say, ‘Hey grandpa, where’s daddy?"

Mark Harrington

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has "sharply escalated" his probe of lawyers allegedly larding school board pensions, Newday's Bob Kessler reports here.

As a first-term AG, Cuomo has certainly ratcheted up his task list.

Just based on what's been announced so far, he's got investigations going into: potential misuse of state police for political purposes; insider middlemen who invested state pension dollars; circumstances surrounding the fatal fire at the former Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan; conflicts of interest involving student-loan operations, bank mortgages, you name it.

It'll be interesting to see how much depth each of these efforts achieves and compare them to the portfolio of his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer.

UPDATE: There is also this dimension: Cuomo probing town and village governments as well as school districts.

UPDATE: And as commenter Jim points out below, Cuomo in January was announced as taking on a role as prosecutor in the explosive Tankleff murder case. Here is how it was reported at that time.

Dan Janison

Gov. David Paterson named Nassau District Court judge Norman St. George of Freeport to fill a $136,700-a-year vacancy on the county court (above) through the end of the year. St. George ran unsuccessfully for an open seat on the countywide bench last November. In a move that had been planned before Eliot Spitzer’s resignation as governor last month, St. George now fills the spot vacated by Jeffrey Brown, who moved up to the state Supreme Court last year, reports Newsday’s Ann Givens.

Some say — maybe with the best intentions — that major-league Long Island attorney William J. Cunningham III will become Albany’s “No” man, in a capital city full of “Yes” men.

Insiders expect that as Gov. Paterson’s senior adviser, Cunningham will seek to keep the top man out of trouble by bluntly warning him of bad ideas when he hears them. With his precise duties in the $170,000 post still vague, those familiar are using labels like “sounding board,” “minister with many portfolios” and “confidant.” He won’t be in direct charge of any agencies.

He's had strong links to such famous Democratic family names as Paterson, Clinton, Suozzi --and Ickes (as in Harold, photo above).

Cunningham, of Bay Shore, is a longtime friend of Basil Paterson, the governor’s father. The two worked together until 2002 at the Long Island law firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, where Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi’s father, Joseph Suozzi, is a prominent partner and where Basil Paterson represents major unions on contract issues.

That's the firm officials said on Friday will ask the state's ethics commission for a ruling on its voluntary procedures presumed to keep the elder lawyer out of conflicts with his suddenly-powerful son in Albany, leaving a number of questions open.

“I’ve known the governor for about 15 years,” Cunningham said Thursday. “I got to know David through his dad. I’d say one of the things David and I have as a common bond is we both love his parents Basil and Portia... Our paths would cross frequently enough that on Inauguration Day he took me aside and asked to speak with me. I met with him the following week...”

Cunningham, 56, knows the look of a political crisis. After serving as campaign treasurer in Hillary Clinton’s first Senate run, for example, he was thrust into the limelight in a controversy over two men he’d been representing who were granted criminal pardons by the exit