The Crossed Pond

Joseph Bruno, battle-scarred veteran of many Albany political pitfights and majority Leader of the New York State Senate, is locking horns with newly-elected Governor Elliot Spitzer, himself no stranger to ripping his opponents to shreds. Bruno, who might have an FBI problem, and Spitzer, who might have an ego problem, are basically accusing each other of the same thing; basically, each is fingering the other for using state resources for political campaigning. Now Bruno is accusing Spitzer of siccing the State troopers onto him:

In accusing Spitzer of using the State Police to conduct surveillance and in essence spy on him, Bruno said that “this should send shivers up the spine of every New York and raise serious questions about his fitness to serve in the state’s highest office”. Bruno says that Spitzer, former attorney general, “doesn’t negotiate, he intimidates and threatens”.

I’ve wondered about this general sort of problem, political use of state funds and resources, before. Jim McGreevey, the former NJ governor who had a bit of a “married man appoints his boyfriend to a plum state homeland security job for which he is not only unqualified but can’t, in fact, get federal clearance to do” problem, used to be all over billboards advertising NJ tourism. The state government justified this like so:

For every dollar spent advertising tourism, New Jersey receives $28 back in taxes.

Yeah, fair enough, but why were McGreevey and his soon-to-be-estranged family all over the billboards and television ads (which also ran in NJ, a fair chunk of which gets the NY and Philly television stations)? No one came to NJ to see McGreevey or his family, that’s for sure. It looked a lot to me as if McGreevey was putting himself in these ads to present a nice image to his own domestic electorate, on the public dime.

Well, as for Bruno and Spitzer, this could be an important fight for the state. Bruno is a grizzled machine politician and Spitzer is a firebrand hardcase. I suspect that public sympathy will be on Spitzer’s side, if only because Bruno offers more of the same and most residents of New York State have had enough of that; Bruno’s well-prepared for infighting, however, and Spitzer’s not exactly been the force for change he wished to be (in large part because of Bruno’s efficacy).