In a purely partisan, anti-democratic effort to hamstring Speaker Mike Johnson, Gov. Hochul and Albany Democrats are scheming to keep soon-to-be UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik’s current House seat empty for needless months — maybe even through November.
Barring some bizarre turn of events, a Republican is sure to win any fair election in the North Country district; it’s also Trump country: Stefanik won with 61% of the vote in November.
With a narrow and fractious GOP majority (218 to 215 at the moment), the speaker needs every seat filled just to get on with the nation’s work, and of course the district’s residents (15 counties’ worth!) will be ill-served by having no House rep at all.
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, eager to gum up the works in Washington, has his Democratic allies in Albany working to keep the seat empty in what Johnson rightly calls “an open display of political corruption.”
State law now requires Hochul to act within 10 days after Stefanik resigns her House seat, by calling special election to fill it within 80 days, or no later than mid-May — but the drive is on in the Legislature to drag it out until at least late June.
Reality check: Everyone’s known the seat was coming open for weeks, ever since Trump named Stefanik as his UN pick. The gov should set a election date within a month.
The pretext for delay is that it would save a bit of cash by avoiding a special election, holding the vote when the polls are already open for the statewide June 24 primary — oh, and also give possible insurgents a better chance at winning.
Horse puckey: When have New York Democrats, who’ve goosed state spending into the multi-hundred-billion stratosphere, ever cared about saving a few bucks? Or about giving challengers a shot against the political machines?
And Dems didn’t even suggest such “reforms” last year to “improve” the two special elections (in Buffalo and Nassau) where they held an edge over the GOP.
Instead of shutting down the hypocrites in her party, Hochul notes that other states have left House seats open for even longer — as if that justifies disenfranchising New York voters who happen to be her constituents, too.
It’s close enough to political racketeering that Hudson Valley GOP Rep. Mike Lawler says the Justice Department should open a RICO probe of this plot.
At the least, it’s yet more proof that all Democrats’ noise about “protecting democracy” is really just about protecting their own partisan power.
