As NY's incoming AG, Schneiderman weighs his options

Every New York attorney general creates a personal brand with the issues he chooses to trumpet. Robert Abrams put consumer cases out front. Dennis Vacco pursued Internet service providers over child porn. Eliot Spitzer invoked an old state law to broadly intervene in Wall Street regulation. Andrew Cuomo turned the spotlight to pension abuse and other issues of state.

Eric Schneiderman, a Manhattan state senator since 1999, takes over Jan. 1. Since his election, he's named a transition committee that includes attorneys with deep involvement in the office's past regimes - from Abrams to Michelle Hirshman, who was first deputy under attorney general Spitzer, to Eric Dinallo, who competed with Schneiderman in the September primary, to former federal prosecutor Zachary Carter.

"Legal excellence above all else," a spokesman proclaimed of the transition goals this week.

At one news conference, Schneiderman dismissed the prospect of a full "reinvention" of the office. Much of the work involves defending the state in lawsuits. But the office has a broad legal mandate, and clues abound as to how Schneiderman might shift emphasis when playing offense.

During the campaign, as in past campaigns, he invoked civil rights and progressivism. He's vowed to probe law-enforcement strategies for racial discrimination. He wrote in his position papers that he'd "fight business crimes that target minorities and immigrants," form an "anti-gun smuggling coalition" along the I-95 corridor and create an "actual innocence unit" to "discover the truth about wrongful convictions, and let the chips fall where they may."

Coming as he does out of the Legislature - which gave his campaign some extra baggage - Schneiderman has already defined himself politically on several fronts. He said as AG he'd sue to prevent hydraulic fracturing, a method of getting natural gas from the ground that raises environmental questions, and would fight for protecting abortion rights as well as for the rights of gays to marry.

Said one Democratic campaign strategist who wasn't allied with Schneiderman: "It looks like he'd be more involved in criminal-justice issues in terms of the fairness of the system, as opposed to criminal-justice under Vacco, which was from the enforcement end. Schneiderman's not really been a law-enforcement guy, and not really a Wall Street guy . . . "

During the primary, Schneiderman was widely perceived as running to the left of four rivals. In the general election, analysts saw him as tacking more to the center. Republican opponent Dan Donovan attacked Schneiderman's embrace of the Rev. Al Sharpton and declared: "A radical, left-wing attorney general is the last thing we can afford." To different degrees, Donovan backers Alfonse D'Amato, the former U.S. senator, and Michael Bloomberg, New York City mayor, also knocked Schneiderman as pushing a social agenda.

None of it worked in the end. Schneiderman, 55, lost both Long Island counties, for example, but won other key areas - particularly in New York City.

How Schneiderman's agenda may mesh with those of Cuomo and the Legislature promises to be interesting. There has been talk in the executive branch, for example, about a widely empowered, independent corruption-fighting office.

Are there concerns about separation of powers with the Legislature? Could it usurp the attorney general's role? Schneiderman spokesman James Freedland replies that the senator "ran on a platform of rooting out public corruption, and looks forward to working on a comprehensive approach to this pressing problem. But make no mistake, the issue isn't about protecting turf, it's about making sure we have the strongest possible tools to clean up Albany and give New Yorkers a government they can be proud of."

Given his time in at the Capitol, Schneiderman may have some inner sense of what's possible and what's probable.