Razzle Dazzle: Debate's Unasked Questions

Razzle Dazzle
Debate's Unasked Questions

Midway through the Sept. 26 gubernatorial debate, Dominic Carter of New York 1 cited Eliot Spitzer's support from public-employee unions and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to raise doubts about the State Attorney General's pledge to end business as usual in Albany, asking how he could "take on the status quo when the status quo is behind you."

Mr. Spitzer never addressed those specific entities in replying, falling back on some innocuous rhetorical pablum. "I will choose the best regardless of political affiliation; the current administration makes people change political parties," he told Mr. Carter and those gathered in a Cornell University auditorium, as well as a statewide cable-TV audience.

What bothered Arthur Cheliotes about Mr. Spitzer's response as he watched the debate at home was his decision not to challenge the assumption behind Mr. Carter's question: that the unions were part of the gridlock in Albany that impeded meaningful state government.

'Thought He Understood Us'

"We had expectations based on his work as Attorney General that he understood the needs of working people, and that unions were a positive, progressive force for those needs," said Mr. Cheliotes, the president of Communications Workers of America Local 1180, during a phone interview the day after the debate.

AN EASY CHOICE: Eliot Spitzer (left) didn't attempt to defend unions when a questioner connected them to the 'status quo' in Albany during last week's gubernatorial debate, but union leaders like Randi Weingarten and Arthur Cheliotes believe he will bring a welcome change in the state's labor-related policies if elected. He added, "I'm troubled by any debate that focuses on not raising taxes [while] improving services and education."

That was the essence of the positions staked out by both Mr. Spitzer and John Faso, his Republican challenger, in outlining the sharply divergent ways that they intended to make the state a powerful force for good while not imposing additional taxes as part of the bargain.

Mr. Faso tried to hammer Mr. Spitzer over his plan to implement the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision, claiming that if it were applied statewide, "That is a 25-percent income tax increase right off the bat," referring to a potential cost he put at up to $10 billion a year to upgrade schools.

Mr. Spitzer countered that Mr. Faso's position on the matter suggested that he "would simply disregard a court order that says 'spend more money on education.' We know we have to spend it," notwithstanding the fact that Governor Pataki has managed to outrun the inevitable by continuing to appeal each ruling against the state, with Mr. Spitzer as Attorney General actually handling those appeals.

But if Mr. Spitzer was trying to bring reality to the table on education spending, he also seemed to invite fantasy to grab a chair when he spoke of providing universal health care without raising taxes. He proposed to do this through the purchase of generic rather than name-brand drugs combined with better preventive health-care that he said would allow for the closing of some hospitals because sicker patients would be treated before their illnesses reached crisis stages. Mr. Cheliotes said he didn't buy the calculations and that the prospect of hospital closings worried him.

The other labor-related question during the debate came from Jim Aroune of the upstate-based R News, who asked whether, with unions providing "the backbone of the support of your campaign," Mr. Spitzer was prepared to curtail the power of organized labor upstate as a way of helping the region to recover economically.

The Attorney General largely sidestepped the question, except to say that he would seek to reform the Workers' Compensation system and exempt 80 percent of state construction projects upstate from the Wicks Law.

Never Broached Taylor Law

The focus of the questions was as telling as the answers - and non-answers - they produced. None of the panelists asked about subjects like the legislation affecting those who worked at Ground Zero or possible reforms in the Taylor Law to make it less tilted against unions in contract disputes, something that has been a priority of the State AFL-CIO and its members since last December's transit strike. It was a glaring imbalance, one that seemed to suggest that the questioners were unaware that there are one million public employees and 2.3 million union members statewide, the great majority of them eligible to vote in the contest.

"We're dealing with the corporate media," Mr. Cheliotes said. He added that the skewed view of labor issues was also evident in a lengthy Daily News story the previous Sunday that raised the specter of a union gone wild in detailing some of the expenditures of Hospital and Health Care Workers Local 1199, then late in the piece finally provided some explanations that indicated the amounts involved were not outlandish. He noted that short of a criminal trial, the spending of corporations on employee-related events never comes to light, because the corporations, unlike the unions, are exempt from making public such information.

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that unions suffer from being equated with large corporations, as if they were both special interest groups that were just interested in lining their pockets. Those corporations and their supporters in both the political world and the media do much to invite that kind of lumping together, she said, noting, "There is so much money that goes into the political process today at the state and national level from people who are incredibly rich."

Faso Channels D'Amato

She contended that Mr. Faso - whose lack of union support is partly attributable to his call for the abolition of pensions for future public employees in favor of 401(k) plans that would be much more heavily funded by workers - was "doing a D'Amato," referring to former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato's losing 1998 bid for re-election in which he launched early attacks against the power of Teacher unions both here and in Washington.

"Faso's doing it more broadly because he's really far behind," Ms. Weingarten said, alluding to recent polls that have shown him trailing Mr. Spitzer by 50 points. "It didn't work for D'Amato; what it did was enrage ordinary schoolteachers to vote against him when they might not have. And it won't work for Faso because Eliot Spitzer has a reputation for independence. It's hard to tag him with any other kind of label."

The notion implicit in the panel's questions that organized labor is part of the problem statewide, Ms. Weingarten said, stands in sharp contrast to "the days after 9/11, when cops and firefighters and construction workers were all viewed as heroes because they didn't think twice about sacrificing themselves to save other people's lives."

Of course, one reason for the disparity is that those who hammer the unions tend to avoid pointing fingers at the police and fire unions. One example of this intellectual dishonesty came from Daily News columnist Bill Hammond in a Sept. 28 piece reacting to the debate. He took shots at the UFT on education and Local 1199 on Medicaid costs, then asked, "And why do taxpayers shell out more for government pensions than they can hope to collect themselves? District Council 37, the Civil Service Employees Association, etc., etc."

Costly 'Untouchables'

Maybe those etceteras stood for the police and fire unions, maybe not. But there's a good likelihood that Mr. Hammond didn't mention those unions specifically, even though their pension benefits are far more generous than those received by members of DC 37 and the CSEA, because they represent employees who are held in high esteem by the public. Bash them over pensions and it becomes a little bit tougher to gin up public indignation, particularly among politically conservative readers who are more inclined to buy the notion that civil servants have it much too good and the state is suffering as a result.

It is that kind of mentality, Ms. Weingarten said, that leads to labor being demonized or lumped in with "the status quo." "Blaming the influence of labor for what has happened in the upstate economy is ridiculous," she said. "Industries became obsolete and we didn't have alternatives for those areas. It's like we've just been doing a doggy-paddle in the state for the last few years," although it should be noted that the Governor she was implicitly criticizing had the UFT's endorsement when he was re-elected in 2002.

From her union's standpoint, Ms. Weingarten said, Mr. Spitzer is not the perfect candidate, given his support of charter schools and his commitment to expanding the number of them statewide. But placed alongside Mr. Faso, she said, "There is not a question about who would make the best Governor to bring New York State into the 21st Century."

Make Labor Heard

Mr. Cheliotes agreed, but noted that he has been urging Local 1180 members to vote for Mr. Spitzer on the Working Families Party line rather than as a Democrat as a way of making him understand the power that union members have and the respect their concerns deserve. The political dialogue today, he noted, is so geared toward promising tax cuts that even progressive candidates are reluctant to point out the role that tax dollars play in ensuring quality public services.

"There are many in this city and this state who aren't paying nearly what they should be while doing very well," Mr. Cheliotes said. "We need a more progressive tax structure of the sort we had under Rockefeller."

You won't, however, hear Mr. Spitzer talking along those lines when he and Mr. Faso debate again. And unfortunately, you're unlikely to hear any of their questioners raising such issues.