Friday, June 19, 2009
Pedro Espada
With things deadlocked 31-31 between Democrats and Republicans in the New York state Senate, newly imposed Senate President Pedro Espada, Jr. (D) announced on Tuesday that he should be given two votes to end the legislative gridlock. Even though Espada is from the same party, Democrats are united in their opposition to the two-vote proposal—because Espada only became president pro tempore of the Senate after he jumped ship and allied himself with the Republican caucus, which voted Espada into power.
Espada justifies giving himself two votes because as the Senate president, he also serves as the acting lieutenant governor (which has been vacant since David Paterson took over the governorship in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal and resignation); ordinarily, the lieutenant governor is given a vote to break ties in the Senate. Legal experts say there is no known legal precedent to justify giving a state senator two votes.
If history is any indication, the future does not bold well for Espada after turning his back on his party to assume power. In the mid-1990s, a similar power play occurred in the California legislature, in which Democrats tried to stop Republicans from assuming control of the state Assembly by convincing several GOP members to switch allegiances. One of the Republican turncoats, Doris Allen, made history by becoming the first female Speaker of the Assembly, thanks to Democratic support. Allen and the other renegade Republicans were subsequently voted out of office after the state Republican Party launched fierce campaigns to have them ousted.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
'I Can Have 2 Votes' Espada's Deadlock 'Solution': Gimme Senate Superpowers (By Brendan Scott and Fredric U. Dicker, New York Post)
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