Last week, Representative Carolyn Maloney, whose district covers the East Side of Manhattan and parts of Queens dropped her bid to challenge Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary. Borough President Scott Stringer also abandoned his exploratory efforts into running for the Senate seat. No matter what your thoughts are on Maloney, Stringer or Gillibrand individually, this all begs the question: when did New York get a government-by-appointment?
Clyde Haberman’s July 13th column for the New York Times points out:
There are six statewide elective offices. Four of them are now filled by politicians who were not the people’s choices. They fell into their positions by virtue of someone else’s malefaction or ambition.
The governor, as noted, is unelected. He has now named a lieutenant governor, an appointment whose legality is uncertain. The state comptroller was handed the job by his Assembly colleagues after his elected predecessor resigned in disgrace. The junior United States senator is also an appointee, selected by the unelected — dare we say accidental — governor.
So much for democracy, right? New Yorkers certainly deserve to have a choice when they head to the ballot box and while Gillibrand may very well have won in the end anyway, it was nice to think that there would at least be some competition. Even if Representative Maloney was not favored to win, she should still be recognized for her efforts to imbue a litte more democracy into our state.
