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Shelly Silver, On the Couch First Spitzer Transition Team Meeting Set Socialist Won’t Socialize 10 Questions with Malachy McCourt GOP Challenger Says Bing Doesn’t Do Enough Tough Times for Local GOP Crowley on Malcolm Smith and Gay Marriage Paterson on Malcolm Smith and Democratic Strategy Krueger Faces a Challenge Political Transitions for Transit Workers The Money Trail: Loose Laws for Leftovers A Cabinet Stocked with Imports Instead of Political Curry For Alternate-Party Candidates, Winning Is Not Everything Slow Progress for Disabled Voting City’s Adult Literacy Programs Grapple with Funding Cuts Though the Competition is Over, the Campaign Continues
The October Poll: Which Council Member Would Have the Best Survival Skills on a Desert Island? Photos from the City Hall lauch/Rising Stars party The Hows of Political Activism at the Y Pastrami and Pickles with Rep. Anthony Weiner Editorial: When the Council Fears Debate The View from Albany: Rivalries and Détentes as Albany’s Old Guard Meets New Guard by Alan Chartock Read the Fine Print on Library Funding by City Council Member Vincent Gentile Observation: At the Empire State Pride Agenda Dinner, Highlights and Pitfalls by Allen Roskoff
Shelly Silver, On the Couch
Sheldon Silver may be the Assembly speaker, but there are not many people who ever hear his voice.
The man in the trench coat may be an unlikely leader, but as the top statewide Democrat during the 12 years of the Pataki administration, just about everyone agrees that he has developed into one of the most effective. Expanding the post’s official powers and melding them with what everyone agrees is an unparalleled mastery of the state legislative process, Silver is now arguably not only New York’s most powerful speaker ever, but the most powerful speaker in America. More powerful, within his realm, than the speaker of the House is in Washington.
Love him or hate him, he knows how to do his job. That he rarely discusses himself or his work only adds to the aura of control, and he knows that this only makes him more effective.
State Senate Leadership May Determine Silver’s Power
“Perceptions of power are greater than power itself,” he said.
The most important factor in the relationship between Eliot Spitzer and Sheldon Silver may be entirely out of either one’s control, outside their party and outside Silver’s chamber.
Though rarely vilified as harshly as Silver, State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R) has served for almost as long, and with a similarly iron grip over his conference.
Despite intense efforts to protect it, the Republican majority has begun slipping in recent years. If the Democrats do succeed in capturing the chamber, most agree, it will not be until 2008. Which means Bruno will have to be reckoned with in the new Albany power alignment.
As the new odd man odd, Bruno will have to emulate Silver’s efforts at blocking and barricading to thwart as much of the Democratic agenda as he can. But in doing so, he will have an additional card to play: the power to approve gubernatorial appointees.
And that, according to former Speaker Mel Miller (D), could make him even more effective than Silver at gumming up the works until he gets what he wants.
Then again, if the State Senate’s GOP majority slips in the November elections, Bruno might not be the Republican with whom Spitzer and Silver will be dealing. Losing the Westchester-Yonkers seat of Nick Spano and even one other to the Democrats could encourage Republicans to replace Bruno with Dean Skelos, the deputy majority leader from Long Island.
In this scenario, observers say, Skelos would do everything to hold up the Spitzer agenda as a way of demonstrating his power and reinvigorating the Republican base to strengthen their position going into the 2008 elections. Spitzer would count on Silver to fully sublimate the Assembly towards a united Democratic front, preventing Skelos from extracting major concessions.
And if the Democrats win a majority in the State Senate, an allied legislature could potentially overpower Spitzer.
“If the Democrats take the Senate,” Miller explained, “they could team up against the governor without any problem.”
— Edward-Isaac Dovere
So what will happen if Eliot Spitzer becomes the next governor, as all polls predict? What will happen when these two titans meet? Silver has a different take than most. And characteristically, he guards the answer very close to his chest.
As always, the mystery will only strengthen his hand—which is precisely why he encourages it.
“He’s one of those people in New York politics who’s almost eternally misunderstood and underestimated,” said Judith Hope, former chair of the state Democratic Party.
And the part that drives most people crazy, especially the reporters and others trying to deconstruct Albany’s inner workings: he does not seem to care.
Back from the Brink
Silver started in the Assembly in 1977, two years after an unsuccessful try for City Council. Leadership, he says, was not an original goal. But by working his way to become chair of the Codes Committee, and then of the Ways and Means Committee, Silver discovered that he liked it. More importantly, he discovered that he was good at it.
To some, the story of a shy Orthodox Jew’s methodical rise to become one of the state’s most powerful men would be one fraught with drama and intrigue. But when he tells it, sitting in his cavernous office overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge from the 23rd Floor of 250 Broadway, he barely moves his hands or eyes. He describes it in the same modest, bland tones and soft voice he uses to discuss almost anything, from the technicalities of school funding formulas to the time he spends with his grandchildren.
Ever since he became speaker in the wake of Saul Weprin’s debilitating stroke 12 years ago, Silver has slowly built up his power in the position. As for the public persona that might go with it, the actual speaking which some might associate with the title, Silver has steered clear.
When Silver took the Assembly’s reins, Gov. Mario Cuomo (D) was then in the midst of a losing fight for his fourth term. When Silver became the first Democratic Assembly speaker to be paired with a Republican governor in modern New York political history, he had only a few not unrepresentative months and a single budget negotiation under his belt.
That was 1994. The GOP had stampeded to power in Washington, Pataki had toppled Cuomo, Dennis Vacco had become the new attorney general. Pataki ally Joe Bruno had muscled his way to becoming the new State Senate majority leader.
Silver’s Democratic majority was solid, but his conference was dispirited and dejected, and his party organization was soon to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. The contrast to the state Republicans could not have been more stark: energized by the Pataki victory, they were eyeing about 30 Assembly districts where the new governor had outpolled the incumbent Democrats.
The Democrats’ days, and with them, Silver’s, seemed numbered, and he had no one to turn to for solid advice.
“Nowhere during my years has there ever been a situation where there was a Republican governor, so this was all a new process when I became speaker in a Pataki administration,” Silver said.
Turning inward, Silver looked to strengthen his coalition. He whipped members representing a wide range of geographical and ideological diversity into a single tool, which, depending on the situation, he wielded as either a scalpel or an axe.
Pataki and Bruno sometimes ignored him. The odd man out of the three in the room, Silver redeveloped his role around a new tactic. More than a standard bearer, he positioned himself as a roadblock.
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