NY state legislator Sheldon Silver faces unusual primary challenge

Analysts: Replacing Silver could set off "power struggle."

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT IN NEW YORK
sheldon silver 224 88 ap (photo credit: AP)
sheldon silver 224 88 ap
(photo credit: AP)
New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the state's most powerful politicians, spent a recent afternoon doing something he hasn't had to do in more than two decades: Ask his constituents, including his own mother-in-law, for their vote. After 32 years representing the heavily Jewish Lower East Side of Manhattan, Silver, now 64, is facing an unaccustomed challenge in Tuesday's Democratic primary by two thirtysomething neophytes who are hoping that the popular thirst for something new this election year will help them unseat Albany's kingpin. In any other district, replacing an assemblyman would mean little; here, replacing Silver with a junior legislator would set off a scramble for power in the state capital, still unsteady from the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer amid a prostitution scandal last winter and the retirement of state Sen. Joseph Bruno, Silver's opposite number in the power structure of state Republican party, over the summer. Losing Silver, a religious Jew who has given extensive legislative support to the Satmar settlement of Kiryas Joel outside the city, would be more than a blow to the state's political establishment, some observers said. "It's not irrelevant to the operation of New York government and its decision-making that there is an observant Jew in the room," said Gerald Benjamin, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at New Paltz. With nearly $3 million in the bank and the backing of local unions, tenants' groups and gay rights organizations, Silver is a formidable incumbent with deep support not only among his fellow Jewish voters but also in Chinatown, where voters approximate Silver's name as siu-hwa, or "glorious flute," according to the New York Sun. But his district is changing, with his aging base of conservative and Orthodox Jews giving way to the younger families and non-religious newcomers filling the new luxury towers of TriBeCa and Battery Park City. He ignited the simmering resentment of many when he emerged from a closed room in April and announced that Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg's popular congestion-pricing plan for Manhattan - which required state approval - would not even come for a floor vote, costing the city a much-needed revenue source for public transit. "I always helped him, but now I just can't do it," said Norma Ramirez, a former party district leader, who knocked on doors with one candidate, Luke Henry. She accused Silver of catering to developers who covet the area's grand old public buildings for conversion into fancy condominiums instead of worrying about school funding, inadequate access to healthcare, and a shortage of home nursing assistance for people living in public housing projects along the East River. Anti-Silver campaigners have also revived a sex scandal involving a Silver aide accused of raping two legislative staffers, sending out glossy flyers criticizing Silver for standing by the alleged perpetrator. Silver's campaign claimed Republican operatives were behind the mailing. But the biggest broadside against Silver came from New York's top three papers - The New York Times, the Daily News and the Post - which joined in a unified endorsement of challenger Paul Newell, a 33-year-old community organizer who was a delegate for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. The editorial boards left no doubt about their message: "Dump Sheldon Silver," wrote the Daily News. "The point is to break Silver's grip on power; one more liberal in Albany will make no difference," added the Post. "It becomes symbolic - he epitomizes everything, and people project whatever they want to project onto that," responded Jonathan Rosen, Silver's campaign spokesman. "But people recognize Shelly's unique ability to deliver for the neighborhood, to use his power as speaker." Newell, a former Yiddish archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, disagreed that the district would be worse off if it were suddenly represented by a junior legislator. "I would not be running if I lived somewhere else because I don't believe I'd be able to make a credible case to voters that things will change if I win this election," he told The Jerusalem Post. "Sheldon Silver is not a bad man but when you're that powerful for that long you only listen to other powerful people." Even with momentum behind him - Newell raised $40,000 heading into the primary, twice what Silver took in - the chances of victory remained slim in a race expected to draw only a few thousand voters. "The chances that a newcomer is going to knock off the speaker of the state Assembly are going to be, on the face of it, small," said John Mollenkopf, a professor of political science at the City University of New York. "But every politician is going to watch what happens." On Sunday, wearing a gray suit and walking shoes despite brilliant late-summer heat, Silver donned a blue cap emblazoned with his name and captained a parade of sign-waving supporters through playgrounds in cooperative apartment blocks along Grand Street to plead his case. He greeted his mother-in-law, who sat on one bench chatting into her mobile, and reminded her to vote on Tuesday, eliciting guffaws, and he stopped to say hello to Roz Ner, who said she remembered the speaker as an awkward teenager at her daughter's "sweet 16" party. "I guess he's lost some of his popularity," said Hilda Lederfajn. "But I like him, so I'm going to vote for him." Her son, Ari Paparo, shook his head. "He's dead to me," Paparo said, citing Silver's role in the failure of congestion pricing. "There's no chance of him not winning, but he deserves some heat at the polls."