Joe Bruno was holding up well during the first day of jury deliberations, although he became a bit flustered when a security guard held him up after his metal hip set off the detector at the court house entrance. Later, he started chatting with me, sounding wistful, but his press spokesman Kris Thompson insisted it was off the record. Bruno asked him about me, and Thompson complained I had in the past written too favorably about David Grandeau, the former Bruno protege who turned adversary as head of the state Lobbying Commission. Thompson then complained to me about another reporter, Jim Odato, one of the Times Union crew at the trial, who at the Capitol covered Bruno aggressively and was the recipient of the Spitzer administration leak which set off the Troopergate brouhaha. Bruno said he would prefer to keep his remarks off the record, because he doesn't want to seem to treat frivolously a serious situation. I don't take it that way when he jokes with reporters; it seems more like grace under pressure.
It was a beautiful late fall afternoon when I walked down to the court house from the Capitol, where legislators had gone home after accomplishing nothing despite the state's dire fiscal prospects. It was enough to make you miss Joe Bruno, but I can't make up my mind about his legacy. When I walk around Troy these days, the largest city in his Senate district, it seems in pretty bad shape despite all Bruno's pork (some of which, via Evident Technologies and creation of the Russell Sage College business incubator, was featured at the trial). People are more willing to tolerate conflicts of interest when they seem to be part of a well run machine, as in the cities where generations of immigrants were integrated successfully into American life. But the economic process is no longer working so well in upstate New York, and whether jurors see Bruno's way as more the solution or the problem may play into their verdict.
Comments