A strategy for Tedisco

President Obama's popularity is on the upswing, which is a potential problem for Republican congressional candidate Jim Tedisco. It also underscores that his waffling on the stimulus bill, mocked as it has been by Democratic candidate Scott Murphy, was a smarter strategy than lining up behind the entire House GOP delegation in opposition to it. The national GOP is struggling to articulate an agenda (witness Bobby Jindal's failed effort to respond to Obama), and voters, here as elsewhere, are scared about the economy. Meanwhile, this week's Siena poll shows Tedisco still needs to shore up his Republican base. Murphy has better numbers with his Democratic base, and although the Republican registration advantage works in Tedisco's favor, independents are key. To woo the conservatives and keep a reputation for integrity, Tedisco needs to stick to his guns on social issues like abortion and gay marriage (although on the latter he could support civil unions). On the crucial economic issues, he can raise valid concerns about deficits and debt, and about dubious Democratic policies such as reversing welfare reform, but should not denounce Obama's tax-the-rich plan. Republicans can get away with Regan-Bush style tax cuts weighted to the wealthy if people think they are good for the economy, but that line of argument doesn't cut a lot of ice now with the average voter in the 20th Congressional District.

Tedisco is still a player at the state level as Assembly minority leader, and there he could stress the need for structural reforms to reduce mandates and cut costs. An obvious place to start is by implementing the mandate relief and other cost-cutting proposals of the Suozzi property tax commission. Gov. Paterson said he was going to introduce a program bill to do that, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle in the turmoil and confusion on the Capitol's second floor (or else it was killed by NYSUT and Shelly Silver). Tedisco could be pushing both for the Suozzi property tax cap and the cost-containment measures. He also could get behind Paterson's fiscally responsible pension reform proposal. I guess the only reason not to do so is fear of the public employee unions, which could throw their support to Murphy. Also lost on the second floor has been the governor's prior commitment to try to get a budget done by March 1, which he said would save a billion-plus dollars. Why doesn't Tedisco call for speeding up the process and saving at least some of that money? But if the "millionaire's tax" that some Democrats are pushing comes up, and which Tedisco has previously opposed, he should say as little as possible. There's no percentage for Republicans in being tagged as the party of the rich or supporters of trickle-down economics.

Tedisco can plausibly claim to be a reformer at the state level, and should resurrect and expand that agenda. Democrats will likely try to tie him to the indicted Joe Bruno, but Tedisco can say accurately that he is the only legislative leader with insignificant outside income, and demand that the others live up to their rhetoric about "transparency" by publicly revealing their private-sector income, and where it comes from. (It took a federal indictment to expose Bruno's.) Tedisco could include a requirement for that exposure in reform legislation, along with rules changes to open up both chambers of the Legislature. How about working with independent or left-leaning goo-goo groups like NYPIRG and the League of Women Voters? He has a bully pulpit in Albany.

Comments

[Brian]

" Tedisco can plausibly claim to be a reformer at the state level, and should resurrect and expand that agenda."

I'm not quite sure how he can plausibly claim to be a reformer. Reformer implies results. It may not be his fault that the Assembly (like the Senate) is rigged to treat members of the minority as worthless scum, rather than as the representatives of real New Yorkers. At the same time, minorities ALWAYS claim to be advocates of reform. We can see examples of how rarely they implement serious reform upon achieving power by looking at the Congressional and state Senate Dems. At best, he can somewhat plausibly claim to be a supposed advocate of reform.