Text size:

Casting backward glances can throw you off balance

Dan Janison | dan.janison@newsday.com

May 26, 2008

Looking backward for clues to the future has its limits.

Earlier in the presidential race, the Hillary Rodham Clinton candidacy seemed to echo the 1968 campaign of Republican Richard Nixon. Like her, Nixon left a secondary role in the White House nearly eight years earlier and had high negatives. Yet he acquired an aura of inevitability and won.

By last week, the chatter about a Democratic ticket headed by Barack Obama, with rival Clinton for vice president, better echoed 1960 - when a forced partnership emerged from the party convention between the younger, more charismatic Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy and the Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson. Their mutual suspicion became legend.

Suddenly Friday, word broke that New York's junior senator cited the murder 40 years ago of a previous New York junior senator, as she clumsily explained to the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader why she was refusing to withdraw. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," she said. She issued an explanation, of course, but by then, our historic attention was redirected to 1968.

ABSENCE OF BALLOTS: Kristen McElroy, the Garden City attorney tapped as Democratic challenger to state Sen. Kemp Hannon in November, has not voted since the 2004 election, Nassau election records and officials indicate. Attempts to reach her for comment Friday were unavailing. A state Democratic operative stressed that McElroy represents a new face on the scene, and "This is not someone whose career has been focused on politics." Contacted Friday, Hannon declined to comment.

BATTLED LINES: Sounds like Nassau's Conservative Party may be balking at endorsing Barbara Donno, the abortion rights Republican opposing Democratic Sen. Craig Johnson. Her interview Thursday was the subject of conflicting accounts. Nassau's Independence Party interviews hopefuls this week.

PENSION ATTENTION: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's pension-abuse hearing last week earned positive reviews. His steady questioning of Nassau and Suffolk BOCES officials, conducted alongside senior Long Island legislators at Farmingdale State College, brought out the essential point that approvals of pension double-dipping by school administrators have become the rule, rather than the exception as clearly intended under state law.

KING N' THE HIL': Republican Rep. Peter King's May newsletter features a photo alongside Sen. Clinton, trumpeting enactment of a law they sponsored requiring federal evaluation of safety devices that help prevent drivers from backing into children. Would the photo be there had the presidential race turned out to be Clinton against King's first choice Rudy Giuliani? King aide Kevin Fogarty said the answer is yes, and that she also was in the April 2008 and June 2007 newsletters ... anyone heard rumors about John McCain considering King as his running mate?