NY Same-Sex Marriage Equality: Tuesday Morning Memo – This Explains Everything

The New York same-sex marriage equality bill is one part of a trifecta of trouble for the New York State Senate, its leader, Dean Skelos, Governor Cuomo, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Like everything in New York State politics, nothing is ever what it seems — or what you expected.

It’s now clear that those three key players — Cuomo, Skelos, and Silver — each have a horse in this race, and which finishes first determines everything.

Cuomo wants his marriage equality bill passed. Skelos, a Republican, wants a property tax cap passed, and Silver, a Democrat, wants rent regulations passed. And all three are intertwined: “I don’t get what I want, neither do you.” We’ve seen this play out time and again in New York, and it rarely ends well.

Bill Hammond at the New York Daily News sums it up perfectly by saying, “When those three men [Cuomo, Skelos, Silver] get in their room, it’s all too tempting for one or more of them to start treating the basic rights of New Yorkers as bargaining chips.” He explains:

“It’s increasingly obvious that the state Legislature’s potentially history-making decision on same-sex marriage – an issue of conscience if there ever was one – is getting sucked into the swamp of Albany’s back-room horse-trading.

“The word leaking from behind closed doors yesterday was that Gov. Cuomo and lawmakers are mushing all of their major unfinished business into a single, messy megadeal.”

“This last-minute linkage is an all-too-familiar scenario when late June rolls around in Albany – and lawmakers scramble to clear their agenda for the summer. In Capitol parlance, it’s known as the “Big Ugly” – and for good reason.

“This year, the Big Ugly apparently means that lawmakers won’t take action on same-sex marriage unless and until they also cut deals on two other issues – extending price controls on 1 million New York City apartments and imposing a 2% cap on annual property tax hikes upstate and on Long Island.

“In other words, the ability of gay and lesbian New Yorkers to wed the person of their choice – a question of fundamental human rights – is being held hostage in a game of political brinkmanship.”

While I disagree with Hammond on his “an issue of conscience if there ever was one” — it’s a civil rights issue — he’s spot-on everywhere else.

“Welcome to the new dynamics of New York lawmaking, where Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has the power to cut the deals that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver want – or to just go home without them,” Adam Linsberg at The Capitol writes early this morning.

Liz Benjamin, an expert in all things related to New York politics, writes this morning, “There will be no gay marriage vote in the Senate until there’s a rent control deal the GOP feels doesn’t overly protect rich downstaters.” She adds,

“Everyone agrees in concept, that we’ve talked to, that we should do whatever we can to protect religious expression,” said Sen. Andrew Lanza on the ongoing gay marriage talks. “Finding the language, I believe, will ultimately not be a problem.”

Sen. Mark Grisanti on whether he has made up his mind on gay marriage: “Not as of yet. Really.”

 

For those in Albany today, there’s a rally at noon today West Capitol Park.

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