Razzle Dazzle
Steamroller Stung, Stymied

By RICHARD STEIER

In "The Sting," a con man played by Paul Newman foils an attempt by a big-time gangster to cheat him at poker by pulling a higher four-of-a-kind from his sleeve, prompting the gangster's crony to later rage that he must have switched his cards.

The gangster, played by Robert Shaw, responds, "What was I supposed to do - call him for cheating better than me."

So the gangster, Doyle Lonnegan, sets out to ruin the con man, only to lose a half-million dollars in the attempt.

Which brings us to Governor Spitzer, who has amply proven he shares Mr. Lonnegan's temper, if not necessarily his ruthlessness.

The elegiac campaign ads Mr. Spitzer ran last year promising a new world on Day One never figured on Day 38, when the State Legislature stung him by choosing one of its own for State Comptroller rather than one of the three candidates recommended by a panel of three former State or City Comptrollers.

Messing With a Higher Power

Mr. Spitzer, who had claimed to be playfully invoking a James Taylor song when he warned the Assembly Minority Leader prior to the vote that he was "a f------ steamroller," responded as if rewriting a Jim Croce tune so that it went: "You don't pull the mask on that old Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with Him."

STEAMED, AND NOT ON A ROLL: Governor Spitzer's righteous wrath over the Legislature's selection for State Comptroller got him a few favorable editorials but could make it harder to deal with the Assembly and State Senate on substantive issues like the budget, education and health care.

Where Joe Louis once fought challengers so lackluster they were called the "Bum of the Month Club," the Governor traveled the state to smack around a "Bum of the Day" contingent. His targets were Democratic Assembly Members who dared to raise a hand against him by voting with Speaker Shelly Silver to make Nassau Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli the new State Comptroller. (The revelation of a death threat against Mr. DiNapoli Feb. 13 prompted Mr. Spitzer to suspend his punching tour, at least temporarily.)

Mr. Silver, as is his custom, countered with his version of "Rope a Dope," praising Mr. Spitzer's passion until, by Day 6 of the feud, he called his comments "unfortunate" and urged him to move forward "and do the things that are important to the people who elected us."

Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno was less diplomatic, calling the Governor a bully and saying, "People who dictate, people who are tyrannical, they don't get results."

A poll taken during the dustup over the Comptroller might have seemed like good news for Mr. Spitzer: the Quinnipiac University survey found that 61 percent of 1,049 city residents responded in the affirmative when asked whether they approved of his "steamroller style." Then again, that's nine points worse than his showing in last November's election, suggesting the honeymoon with the voters might be cooling faster than his temper.

Mr. Spitzer could count on support from editorial writers who continued to flog legislators for defying him and purportedly casting a vote for cronyism over merit.

The general public, however, seemed to sense that the dispute wasn't quite as monumental as Mr. Spitzer made it out to be, and the heroes and villains weren't as clear-cut either.

Panelists Not Completely Pure

Start with the search panel. The former Comptrollers - Jay Goldin, Ned Regan and Carl McCall - were generally well-regarded public servants, but each had at least one incident in his career to remind us that they weren't always paragons of virtue. Mr. Goldin was the subject of both city and Federal investigations before being cleared of allegations that he helped steer a contract to build bus shelters citywide to a campaign contributor. Mr. Regan came under scrutiny after an aide wrote a memo suggesting that state pension fund business would be awarded to campaign contributors. Mr. McCall, who was originally elected Comptroller by the Legislature - oh unholy bossism! - to fill Mr. Regan's unexpired term, was later among the Stock Exchange trustees who signed off on an excessive compensation package for exchange chairman Richard Grasso when he stepped down.

In other words, all at some point had made clear that they were political creatures. None of them had overwhelming financial backgrounds at the point when they became Comptroller, but all were ultimately found to be capable of doing the job.

The ground rules agreed to by Mr. Spitzer, Mr. Silver, and Mr. Bruno stated that the panel would interview candidates and recommend as many as five be placed before the Legislature for final consideration. When the panel produced just three, and excluded the five Assembly Members who had interviewed for the job, Mr. Silver screamed foul, claiming they were obligated to produce five candidates.

Mr. Spitzer countered that the agreement merely stated that "up to five" would be put forth.

The press release issued when they made their initial agreement straddled the subject, initially using the phrase "up to five" but then referring to "five" as a hard number later on.

Suspected Spitzer Fix

Since the Governor and the Assembly Speaker are both attorneys who presumably know how to read a document, it might seem they would have taken care to clear up such discrepancies, unless one or both wanted the matter to remain ambiguous so as to help his political position later on.

There was suspicion among some legislators that Mr. Spitzer had secretly communicated to the panelists that he didn't want any of the Assembly candidates on the list. If true, that would mean the new Governor was trying to rig a game that he had no legal authority to be playing: the State Constitution gives the Legislature the sole authority to fill a vacancy for Comptroller.

Such suspicions offered all the rationalization needed by the legislative leaders and their supporters for ignoring the panel's choices and selecting Mr. DiNapoli, regardless of whether they made themselves ripe targets for a media bashing orchestrated by Mr. Spitzer.

There were others, however, who believed the legislators should have honored their commitment even if they suspected that they had been snookered by the Governor.

State Sen. Diane Savino was among those who considered it a mistake for Mr. Silver and Mr. Bruno to give the Governor a role in selecting the Comptroller. "This was our responsibility, and there were a lot of legislators who were very unhappy about it," the Staten Island Democrat said in the aftermath of the Comptroller vote.

She nonetheless believed they should have voted for one of the three candidates recommended by the panel, saying, "Once you make a deal, you've got to live up to it."

Panel's 'False Premise'

Her Republican counterpart, Sen. Frank Padavan of Queens, took exception, arguing that the panel had operated under "a false premise" that those whose careers had been spent primarily in the financial sector were more suited for the job than legislators. The state's two prior Comptrollers, Mr. Hevesi and Mr. McCall, both came to their jobs after serving in the Legislature, and nobody ever suggested they were either unqualified for the job or overwhelmed by it, he noted.

In that context, what ensued was not a struggle between the forces of reform and the guardians of business as usual so much as it was a political fight in which the Legislature wound up asserting what is, after all, its legal prerogative. Ethical questions about Mr. Bruno's outside dealings and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Silver's, make them easy villains in Mr. Spitzer's morality play, but it arguably was important for them to do what they did to maintain some balance of power in state government.

Mr. Spitzer has made clear that, in contrast to Mr. Pataki - who after cutting taxes and restoring the death penalty during his first year in office seemed to lose his zest for governing - he will be an engaged chief executive looking to expand the powers of his office.

While his campaign portrayed him as almost a nonpartisan crusader, immediately after taking office Mr. Spitzer began tipping the Senate toward Democratic control. First, he hired a Nassau County Republican Senator, Michael Balboni, to head the state's homeland security operation, then he got heavily involved in electing a Democrat to fill the vacancy. He campaigned in the district on behalf of Craig Johnson and sponsored a fundraiser for him - there were even reports that aides to the Governor were pressuring lobbyists to buy tickets.

Consolidating Power

Mr. Johnson won the special election, and rumors swirled that two Republican Senators were considering switching parties, which would leave the Legislature's upper house evenly divided and give the tie-breaking vote to Mr. Spitzer's hand-picked Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson.

Democratic control of both houses of the Legislature would certainly make it easier for Mr. Spitzer to push through his agenda, and there's nothing wrong with him working toward that goal; it's just that his tactics should remove any illusions that he's a white knight riding in on his charger. That's quite a bit of power to consolidate in one official's hands without also having a Comptroller who owed his or her job to Mr. Spitzer's machinations.

Bully in Rudy Mold

And so when the Governor, after the initial disappointment over the election result led him to rip the Legislature's "stunning lack of integrity," followed up by trying to demonize individual Assemblymen, he seemed like a bully hunting down and pummeling the smaller kids.

One former government official, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, said last week, "It's sort of reminiscent of the Rudy Giuliani approach, except that he didn't use that approach until he'd reduced crime and accomplished a few other things. I don't know what Spitzer's gaining, and going into various Assembly Districts and attacking individual members has all the potential to bring us into an even more dysfunctional situation. I don't see them passing an on-time budget."

The official continued, "He's ticked off Shelly and Bruno and brought them together. It took Pataki nine or 10 years to do that. And for all Spitzer's talk about everything changing on Day One, he did ethics reform by going into the room and doing the deal with Bruno and Silver, the same way Governors have always done business. The campaign is over. Now it's time for substance; I'm not sure the public sees the value in this kind of schoolyard spat."

Could Go Either Way

Mickey Carroll, the director of polling for Quinnipiac, dismissed the suggestion that his survey showed that a growing number of voters had reservations about Mr. Spitzer's style, noting that only 24 percent expressed disapproval, with 15 percent having no opinion. He said it remained to be seen whether Mr. Spitzer could govern effectively rallying public support by lashing out at those who oppose him.

"Either he's going to get a reputation as a loose cannon and lose, or convince people he's a very tough guy and he'll intimidate them," Mr. Carroll remarked.

If it goes the wrong way, Mr. Spitzer might find himself humming a different James Taylor song, the one with the line about enduring "lonely times when I could not find a friend."

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