Do an experiment today: ask any New Yorker whom you know or meet randomly on the street who their state representatives are. The odds are very good that they won't know. This is because that knowledge makes little pertinent difference in their lives.

The ramifications of that simple fact are laid out in two Daily News pieces today that should make you cringe. One is headlined Ex-staffer says top Shelly aide raped her and Silver did nothing about it, the other, New York burns while Albany fiddles.

The first piece deals with an alleged rape incident in the State Assembly.

[Alleged rape victim Elizabth] Crothers, 32, was a young staffer for an upstate Republican assemblyman when she brought an internal complaint in 2001 with the Assembly that she was raped by Silver's then-counsel Michael Boxley.

Crothers and her boss met directly with Silver, who she said was callously eating pretzels as she recounted her story.

Boxley later in an unrelated incident pled guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault.

Back in January 2006 I had as my goals:

1.) defeating the Bush/Gingrich/McCain agenda nationally

2.) defeating the Pataki, Bruno and Silver Albany constipation

3.) defeating the local Brooklyn Vito Lopez machine.

Still working on #3 through several channels. And it remains to be seen whether indictments or ill health or Brooklyn fatigue with corruption bring down Vito Lopez. For my part I prefer indictments to ill health. But Charles Hynes, the Brooklyn DA, has pushed that aside and has focused on other, also worthy efforts. So we wait to see who will replace Lopez in time.

Goal #1 began to happen in 2006 with a massive take over of the House and an evening up of the Senate. And we have a damned good shot at continuing this in 2008 with MORE House seats, a REAL takeover of the Senate and a White House win by Obama.

Joe Bruno's retirement throws open the settled nature of New York politics, so it's worthwhile speculating on some possible developments.

His departure from the scene breaks the all-but-statutory requirement for GOP Senators to seek re-election as long as they're tolerably animate wide open. It's not unreasonable to expect Senators who have continued to serve at Bruno's request to now head for the exits; names being floated are Caesar Trunzo (born 1926), Owen Johnson (no birth date given, but first elected in 1972), Kenneth P. LaValle (no birth date given, again, but first elected in 1976), and Hugh Farley (first elected to public office in 1970, elevated to the Senate in 1976). It's an open secret in Albany that several of these lawmakers had wanted to retire for some time, but were kept in the fold by a majority leader anxious to preserve his majority. That's over, and no one would blame them for seeking retirement.

It's also reasonable to expect other Senators from the soon-to-be minority to seek greener pastures in other legislative bodies. For example, George Maziarz would probably be the strongest candidate for his party in NY-26, just as Andrew Lanza would be for the race in NY-13, where there is presently no GOP contender. I would take bets that the NRCC is on the phone with both Maziarz and Lanza right now to save something from the wreckage that republican fortunes in this state will likely become in November.

Frontpaged, and welcome. - Bouldin

Just about a year ago when I began volunteering with a political campaign for the first time, my candidate was considered a long shot at best. That candidate was facing the full weight of an overwhelming political establishment. Opinion makers quickly dismissed the upstart candidate as too young and too inexperienced, noting the primary would be nothing more than a formality or procedural obstacle on the way to the front runner's inevitable coronation [1].

(crossposted to dailykos)

Of course, that "incumbent" candidate was Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama, my candidate, the one pundits expected to implode into a cloud of inexperience under the crushing weight of the establishment with an audible 'poof', is now our Democratic nominee. There's still a great deal of work to be done before Barack Obama becomes our 44th President, but he's out of the gate with a strong lead, even with the wounds of our the long, contentious primary campaign still slowly mending.

New to politics a year ago, I entered the fray with only a passing familiarity with the candidates various policy proposals. Despite my indifference and apathy at the time, Barack Obama's commitment to good government policies -- specifically campaign finance reform, government transparency and ethics reform -- drew me into the campaign, and eventually into Democratic politics for good. I could go on and on about my admiration for Obama's dedication to these issues, how good-government, campaign finance, and increased transparency are the prerequisites for lasting change, but I imagine there's little need to trumpet Obama in a progressive place like DG (for the record, this post was originally written for a broader audience at dailykos -- I hope I my relative ignorance of state issues compared to the average DG reader doesn't spoil the message).

Well, once again I'm rooting for the reformer-underdog. Still, despite the overwhelming weight of New York's establishment machine bearing down on Paul Newell campaign, I'm more convinced than ever that Obama-style bottom-up Change is precisely what NY state so desperately needs.

NEWELLNYC.ORG

Wow. And on a Monday, too: Bruno won't seek re-election.

"He will not run for re-election. It's still open as to whether he will serve out the term until Dec. 31 or leave early."

UPDATE: Another GOP Senate source tells DN Capitol Bureau Ken Lovett that Bruno will definitely remain in the Senate through the end of the year because if he leaves, the chamber will be tied. The fate of his leadership, however, remains unclear.

This source told Lovett Bruno decided to tell his members today because it's the last day of session and he wanted to inform them of his decision when they were all together.

Bruno, who has served in the Senate since 1976 and has been leader since early 1995, when he took power from Ralph Marino in a coup with then-newly-minted Gov. George Pataki's support, has been coy of late about whether he would run this fall.

Here's what's fun: this morning, Albany Project noted that it sure looked as if Bruno was clearing the gangways.

Several people will have their situations drastically altered by Bruno's retirement. One, the older republican Senators, the Trunzos of the world, will now head for the exits. Bruno's kept them in office to preserve his majority. That's over, and this will not be the last retirement to come.

Two, Sheldon Silver in the Assembly, first elected the same years as Joe Bruno, 1976, now faces the near certainty of a Democratic Senate that will operate under different rules than Silver's own chamber.

Three, New York republicans might as well hand in the towel. It's over for them. Done.

Whenever I find myself thinking that the soap opera that is New York's electoral process can't get any more exotic - and one is tempted to think this quite often - along comes someone even more exotic. People do run for the oddest of reasons.

Today's award for noticeable extravagance goes to one Christopher Strunk, running as a republican against Democrat Velmanette Montgomery in the 18th District. This not because general republican policy positions seem outlandish on their own merits, but I'll let him speak for himself. Spelling is maintained as in the original.

On Jesuits:

The banning of the Jesuits is a matter of process that must start based upon existing law.

[...]Fr. De Chardin’s Liberation Theology mission was and is continued to transform USA sovereignty under Vatican domination over U.S. Government Policy, against citizen protections of the First Amendment, intended to replace all religious practice with one world Gaia worship. That Fr. De Chardin and the Vatican’s enterprise acts in conjunction with agents of the New York Chatauqua Assemblies, corporate members of the Kellogg Foundation and related entities complicit with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Hemisphere wrongly protected by segmented methods of secrecy.

Under Republican Party on the party's candidate's web site, we find:

The Republican party were it to survive must have a different slant on environmentalist treason and obstrurtion of human progress here in the State, the Greens and now the Dems are a tool of Big Oil and Big Religion that have covetted Big Government.

Did you know that New York State has Oil reserves? Yeah how about that. So lets drill for oil upstate and refine it here so we can drive the enironmentalists and BIG Oil nuts! Chavez has nothing on what we can do here in New York.

On the ongoing genocide in the 18th Senatorial District of New York:

The big talked-about piece of the day, even at this early hour, is clearly The New York Times depiction of what it calls Détente in Albany, between a mild-mannered Governor Paterson and an ebullient Joe Bruno.

The shift is noticeable in many ways. Mr. Paterson waved through pork-barrel spending bills that provided $350 million apiece to Mr. Bruno’s Senate and to Assembly Democrats. Mr. Paterson’s predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, held up the legislation for months. Mr. Paterson has also abandoned Mr. Spitzer’s insistence that Republicans agree to legislation limiting campaign contributions.

He consults regularly with Mr. Bruno, whom Mr. Spitzer had stopped speaking to altogether, visiting his office to chat about legislation and talking on the telephone with him several times a week.

In doing so, Mr. Paterson has changed the tone in the capital from one of combat and animosity to one that is joshing and affectionate, a marked shift from Mr. Spitzer’s rough-and-tumble approach in trying to overhaul one of the nation’s most reform-resistant statehouses.

That's roughly as naked a description of Senate republicans' raison d'être as you're ever likely to encounter in a family newspaper. Give them their member items, and you'll be surprised how quickly the rancor quiets down.

Well, this is awesome. With Eliot Spitzer's resignation expected today and effective Monday, we have a new governor: David Paterson.

We also have a new lieutenant governor: Joe Bruno.

The lieutenant governor fulfills the duties of the office of the governor whenever the governor is incapacitated or outside the state, per Article IV, paragraph 5 of the state constitution.

In case the governor is impeached, is absent from the state or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of governor, the lieutenant-governor shall act as governor until the inability shall cease or until the term of the governor shall expire.

Joe Bruno is now the lieutenant governor. And that means that a man currently under Federal investigation for corruption will be, at various points over the next few years, the acting governor of the state of New York, whenever David Paterson leaves the state, say, to give testimony to Congress.

We just wasted the biggest electoral victory in the history of the state of New York. It's totally okay to begin throwing up right about now.

As the murky facts of the Spitzer scandal become clearer, the question inevitably arises whether he can or should continue in office.

Leaving aside whatever personal feelings one may have about Spitzer's alleged conduct, it is not at all clear that the governor committed a criminal act; in fact, what is known suggests the opposite. Hiring a prostitute is not a criminal offense in this state or the District of Columbia. Transporting a person across state lines for the purposes of immorality is technically illegal under the Mann Act; however, that Act has not been used for purposes of prosecution since the 1950s.

Nor is anyone alleging that public funds were used in the escapade.

In short, we are not talking, presently, about public crimes, but about private sins.

Pity Fred Dicker.

No, really. Witness this:

November 16, 2007 -- ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer said at a private fund-raiser that he wants a Democratic-controlled state Senate to legalize gay marriage - a highly divisive and controversial issue - as one of its first priorities in 2009, a witness to the remarks told The Post.

"Everybody applauded when he said that," said the witness, who was among senators, Democratic activists and lobbyists at a fund-raising event for the Senate Democratic Committee. It was held in the library of the elegant West 13th Street home of HBO's "Oz" creator Tom Fantana.

Okay, look, I was there. I missed the speech - actually ran into the governor as he was leaving and I was coming, shook hands, winced from the pain of Albany's greatest handshake, mingled, chit-chatted with a lot of people, gay and straight alike.

Nobody said a word about a new top-tier front-burner legislative push for gay marriage. This because, for starters, we call it "marriage equality", and then, because no such push was announced.