Suozzi’s future appears to be in Albany
Dan Janison: Suozzi's future appears to be in Albany
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January 23, 2009
Today marks a crossroads in the life of 46-year-old Thomas Suozzi, now in the final year of his second term as Nassau County executive. Even though he did not make the cut for the U.S. Senate, his future still stands to be shaped at the state Capitol.
He is due to travel to Albany today along with hundreds of other Democrats for Gov. David A. Paterson's announcement of who will replace Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate.
Of course, he wanted it to be him. The onetime Glen Cove mayor shows no shame about his ambition. His 2006 campaign for governor, widely perceived then as quite lame and over-optimistic, looks less so in the post-Spitzer era. He had been practicing his pitch in private, telling others for weeks that he's the logical pick, with experience at the helm of a big county, fundraising ability, a feel for parsing issues.
Paterson has conducted his process a little like an unwieldy TV reality show, and in the wake of Caroline Kennedy's elimination, the drum rolls and the camera zooms in on the contestants and they bite their lips. Will Paterson hand someone a rose?
With Suozzi out this time around, speculation will soon center on his teaming up with Paterson in 2010 as his ticket-mate for lieutenant governor - the party balance of African-American and Italian-American, urban and suburban.
If Suozzi is chosen for any future state office, much would be made of the personal connection between his family and Paterson's. Their fathers are at the same firm, Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein. Suozzi's former deputy, William Cunningham III, once managing partner there, is now top deputy for Paterson.
If upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand is chosen, questions focus on her pro-gun-rights record and on her longtime lobbyist father, Douglas P. Rutnik, who was steeped in the machinations of the Albany Democrats in the 1980s before he was hooked up with the Alfonse D'Amato-era state Republicans in the 1990s.
This is a precarious time for politicians everywhere.
Nassau's budget is headed these days down the same financial drain as the ones they are confronting in Washington and Albany. That means Suozzi has company, but also that he or his successor confront what may be a record budget gap.
His record as fiscal savior in the early part of the decade can only undergo a battering. The county GOP this week was turning up the noise.
"The Republicans have been warning for years that the Suozzi administration has been overspending," Ed Ward, spokesman for the Republican legislative minority, told Newsday's Sid Cassese. "Now, we see that the miracle in Mineola has turned into an exorcism. We're right back in the days of Gulotta - layoffs, bond downgrades and cutbacks."
In the foggy final run-up to Paterson's announcement, the remaining contenders were making themselves scarce.
If the pick had been Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) - who, unlike Suozzi, has been a federal legislator - it would have surprised the chattering classes and set off a succession scramble in Suffolk for which at least eight Democratic names have been tossed around.
Today's event shapes a few political biographies - including several close to home, if only because some will have to wait to move up.
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