Spin Cycle

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow, as Spitzer bares his plan for closing a multi-billion dollar state deficit, he could find himself in the bizarre position of expecting his allies to fight him. That is, Spitzer purportedly hopes for a Democratic Senate to be elected in November — yet he faces resistance to painful cuts from Democratic Senators, who are seeking re-election. Many eyes will be on Minority Leder Malcolm Smith (D-Queens).

Dan Janison

When Malcolm Smith of Queens won the scrum to lead the state Senate Democrats 15 months ago, he vowed to make 2008 the year they’d win a majority.

As the campaign builds, some in his party gripe privately about Smith, who succeeded Lt. Gov. David Paterson in the post. If the Senate goes Democratic, the minority leader isn’t the guaranteed majority leader, dissidents claim.

Strains are evident. At a recent meeting, Smith bluntly asked colleagues about potential insurgencies, sources said. At a retreat with colleagues, Smith raised eyebrows by urging support for indicted member Efrain Gonzalez (D-Bronx). And, fired Senate Democratic staffer Jean Pierre has publicly accused former boss Indira Noel of forging Pierre’s signature, misusing his Social Security number, and other misdeeds.

Liberal city Democrats have clashed with Smith, an ally of culturally conservative Rev. Floyd Flake. But Smith backers cite typical Albany rough-and-tumble, and he waxes optimistic. “If you look at national trends, voters are turning to Democrats for hope,” his spokesman Curtis Taylor said. “Our message of lowering property taxes, improving health care for the underserved, and creating good-paying jobs addresses the concerns of all New Yorkers, and will lead us to the majority.”

Dan Janison