The Fig File for 01.08.09 by: Mike Figliola

The Fig File for 01.08.09 by: Mike Figliola

The Fig File: Queens Kid In The Majority - no joke.

Hey New York, you have a new Majority Leader in your State Senate: he’s a proud Queens native - one of the few home grown legislators here in New York, African American, a first as Senate Majority Leader, he’s a 20 year friend of Governor Paterson, a huge fan of the John Gambling Show and will now lead half of the Legislature in Albany during the worst fiscal crisis in New York’s history.   

And he was still able to crack some jokes. That was the Queens in him.

During an interview on the John Gambling Show today, the brand new Senate Majority Leader was definitely brandishing a smile behind his phone when he quipped ‘I wasn’t elected - I want to stand up and stand for something, let me lead!’. I love this: a man born and bred in the working family frame who, before the interview with Gambling obviously went outside and had Albany mud rubbed into his palms, wants to do the job he was selected to do and do it well. Hey, Mr. Smith being a Queens guy sweetens the political pot for this Maspeth resident even more. But my paranoia drags me to ask the question: why has Albany’s oldest farts given the nod to Malcolm Smith? Was this just part of the plan that started with whispers and snickers that hissed ‘benign choice’ by the long time ranking members of the legislature? Did they think he would just joke, jest and collect checks while business as unusual continued on it’s merry way, as it has for at last 40 years in our Capitol?

In his first radio interview, Senator Smith labeled his analysis of dialogue between The Democrats and Republicans as ‘some productive friction’. I think that is a real idea and I believe Assemblyman Tedisco would be on the side of my rational. Here’s the pitch: when bills are proposed to the Legislature in Albany and one of it’s members, high profile or not, respond with one of their finger pointing mudslinging horse crap outbursts, the penalty should be some productive friction: I. E. large Indian burns placed strategically on the arms by an underpaid, devoid of health care, school taxed, Vitamin D deprived Kerouac reader. The event should be televised on Public Access or NY 1 - whichever will broadcast the most gory details.

I think Senator Smith can get his mud stained hands around Albany’s neck if he doesn’t drink whatever is in the St. Lawrence River or taste the sediment at the mouth of the  Hudson - that which seems to brewed as the political rhetoric tea in the Assembly and the broken up former Senate Majority. He is from Queens. He has been brewed along with the rest of blue collar broth enough to get my vote. .

Hey, they don’t have to get anything done up there in Albany as long as there was some productive friction.         .