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Wasn't there supposed to be a governor's race this year?
Despite two terms remarkably free of any significant accomplishment, Republican George Pataki's re-election looks as inevitable as George W. Bush using words like "revengeful."
That's largely because his two would-be challengers -- Democratic combatants H. Carl McCall and Andrew Cuomo -- have displayed all the passion of Michael Dukakis blended with the charisma of Al Gore.
It's not like Pataki doesn't have enormous, exploitable weaknesses. He unseated Cuomo's dad by promising to deliver on-time budgets and speedy executions. After nearly eight years in office, he hasn't overseen a single one of either.
And can anyone say, with a straight face, that the upstate New York economy is any better than it was in 1994?
But it's tough to teach old party hacks new tricks, and McCall has stuck by the Democratic playbook for statewide elections -- pile up the endorsements from professional party members, focus on New York City and pretend the state west of the Hudson River doesn't exist.
Thanks to Cuomo's similar lack of vision, along with lingering animosity toward his papa, McCall's game plan helped him wipe out the double-digit deficits of spring and build a 16-point lead among likely Democratic voters, according to last week's Quinnipiac College poll.
But winning in September and prevailing in November are two very different things, as shown by Pataki's even larger lead over McCall. To overtake the incumbent, or even make the race remotely interesting, McCall has to find an issue that resonates outside the five boroughs.
News flash -- taxing Native American sales of gas and cigarettes to non-Indians ain't it. When Cuomo I tried to wet Albany's beak in the reservation pond, he wound up with closed sections of the Thruway and tire fires. Pataki also realized quickly that, as tempting as those hundreds of millions of sales-tax dollars may be, they're ultimately uncollectable.
Even if there were a workable mechanism for racially profiling customers at reservation stores that wouldn't lead to lawsuits, smuggling and black-market sales, McCall's scheme suffers from the same flaw as those promoted by Cuomo and Pataki. All three bemoan the money "lost" by Albany from not collecting taxes. But you can't lose something you never had.
Either New York's Native American tribes are sovereign nations, or they're not. And if they are, Albany has no more right to tax their businesses than it does trying to collect a cut of the take from Casino Niagara. In announcing his money grab, McCall cited court decisions saying that states could tax reservation sales. No court has ever said that they have to, though.
One of McCall's biggest supporters, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, has shown similar disdain for both the concept of sovereignty and the economic fate of Western New York throughout the protracted casino process.
Both have blasted Pataki's gambling negotiations as superficial vote-mongering that won't actually help the region. That's fine -- casinos don't have a perfect record as engines for economic development. But what's the alternative?
More state agencies, according to McCall's "Plan for Progress and Prosperity," which proposes the creation of two such bodies -- the New York State Center on Manufacturing and Technological Competitiveness and the New York State Council on Higher Education.
Other than unsubstantiated promises of five-figure job creation, McCall's plan offers little beyond a fresh round of patronage jobs. As evidence, it cites the New England Board of Higher Education, formed in 1955.
"The Board has many significant achievements over the past 47 years," reads McCall's plan, available at www.mccall02.org. "However, most noteworthy is a quarterly magazine, 'Connections.'"
Really.
There's no disputing that New York's universities and colleges are underfunded and underutilized. But is the answer a bunch of party loyalists, unfit for real-world employment, publishing a public-relations tome of interest to absolutely no one outside the realm of higher education?
In an interview with the editorial board of the Niagara Falls Reporter published in the Jan. 29 edition, the candidate offered a bleak picture of a McCall governorship. A couple of excerpts:
"I think Niagara Falls, whatever situation we face here, we can't expect much help from the state."
"The state spends a lot of money every year for economic development. To try and attract businesses and to try to get businesses to stay here. And it hasn't been done very well. That money's been scattered all over. This city is going to have to tighten its belt. There's not a lot they can do."
Now, if that sort of ambitious vision doesn't get local Democrats fired up about getting to the polls on Sept. 10, I don't know what will.
As for Cuomo, he at least put together an 11-point "Economic Agenda for Rural New York," available at www.andrewcuomo.com, and has campaigned on more specific upstate issues. But his early momentum dissipated after his criticism of Pataki's post-Sept. 11 performance (even though McCall said the same things in stronger, more specific terms in that same interview with the Reporter) and he seems to have lost whatever traction he had in the primary race.
Unless Cuomo finds a way to reverse the present trend over the next three weeks, McCall's the Democratic candidate.
Anticipating a McCall primary win, Pataki's already landing body blows with criticisms of McCall's handling of state investments and questions about his professed upbringing (a New York Post story last week disputed the comptroller's oft-cited story of growing up in public housing projects in Boston). Since all three candidates accepted cash from companies embroiled in deepening corporate scandals, none can use it as a hammer against the others.
All of which points to something few Democrats envisioned eight years ago -- a third term for Pataki. Whether he deserves it or not.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 20 2002 |