I’m pretty sure it can’t get any worse than this, even in New York politics.
Expelled and now-former New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate, who was convicted of, yes, domestic abuse, after dragging his girlfriend by the hair through his apartment building lobby and driving her miles out of the way to a hospital — because he had slashed her face with a broken glass — where he would not be recognized, and who actually has the balls to be running in a special state election for the very seat from which his now-former peers voted to throw him out of, has just, as a campaign platform, thrown his support to embattled Governor David Paterson, who is accused of personally and in conjunction with the New York State Police, interfering in, yes, a case of domestic abuse.
Monserrate, you will remember, was the first Senator in almost one hundred years to be expelled, and just one month after he voted against the gay marriage bill that he initially supported, the very bill that his cohort Pedro Espada co-sponsored. Monserrate and Espada were the two Senators who brought the Senate to a one-month halt last summer.
On top of all this, now that Monserrate has done a one-eighty against the gays, he is now being endorsed by, yes, you guessed it, members of the Church. Yes, various members of New York’s clergy have actually banded together to support an unmarried, living-in-sin, expelled, girlfriend-slashing, by-the-hair-dragging, former politician. Classy.
Next on their list, Albert Fish?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the orgy of incompetence, the cornucopia of corruption, that is New York state politics.
And now, just hours ago, the Superintendent of Police of New York State, Harry Corbitt, resigned, or rather, “went back in to retirement,” amid a growing investigation into his part of the case in which members of his police force interviewed a woman who was trying to press charges against Governor Paterson’s senior advisor. The Governor himself called the woman the night before she was to appear in court. The next day she did not show for her hearing. Just last week, Corbitt’s boss resigned in protest, claiming Corbitt had told her the State Police were not involved in this scandal.
Yesterday, the National Organization for Women demanded the Governor step down. Paterson, however, said, “I would think [resignation is] off the table. In terms of authority of power, I have the power.â€
Responding to questions about why he has not resigned, Paterson said, “I don’t think I’ve been accused of anything.”
Given New Yorkers’ own voting record, it’s not surprising that 66% of New Yorkers think Paterson should finish his term, and only 28% think he should resign.