Schumer tries to avoid third-term blues

Third terms often signal political doom, as former New York governors, senators and mayors can tell you.

Sen. Charles Schumer, nearly a year into his own third term, knows it. He alluded without name to another senator, now seeking re-election, who visited a significant city in his home state in the Midwest -- where the same-party mayor said he hadn't seen him in six years.

"That ain't happening to Chuck Schumer," he said of himself on Monday.

New York's senior senator, a Democrat, was standing at the LIRR's Ronkonkoma station. He'd just appeared with Islip and Brookhaven officials, talking up funding and investment prospects for a major development project.

"The best way to stay on your toes is stay amidst the people, don't get ensconced in Washington or far away. So yesterday I spent two hours at the Massapequa festival. I talked to a thousand people. I found out what was on their minds. And I get invigorated by it.

"Then I had to go to an appointment in the city and I came back out and I spent another hour in Lido Beach," he said. That morning, he'd dropped into Nassau to discuss high-tech job creation.

Schumer established a high Washington profile long ago. With Schumer leading the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in 2006, his party regained a majority. He now chairs the powerful Rules Committee and doesn't face re-election until 2016.

Every longtime incumbency shows wear and tear. Early last year, Schumer's approval ratings hit their lowest point in a decade. But 10 months later he won re-election -- against a marginal, out-funded, first-time Republican candidate. And Tuesday, the Siena poll found Schumer viewed favorably by nearly three-quarters of Democrats, and half of independents, and unfavorably by Republicans, 49 to 40 percent. Combined, that's a strong 59 percent "favorable."

Schumer may not boast at street fairs of his massive Wall Street fundraising -- or the input deregulation drives may have once had in his actions as a lawmaker. Schumer does tout the consumer staff work -- such as challenging OnStar's tracking of non-client cars. "Even as you move up the ranks in Washington as I've been lucky enough to do, you better stay in touch with the people," he said.

Hours later, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo swept into Suffolk, for a very different appearance with a very different purpose: a fundraiser for county executive candidate Steve Bellone. Cuomo, nine months into his job, rallied the faithful with a booming partisan speech at the Huntington Hilton.

"We showed people that this exercise in government and democracy can actually be done well," he said. "The other side wants to argue we can't do it. . . . Their argument is, government doesn't work. So don't bother trying. We can't help one another. If you're born poor, you're gonna die poor. And if you're born rich, you're gonna die rich. . . . We can't figure out how to educate children, we can't figure out how to provide health care, we can't do it -- that's the other side's argument."

One could almost hear Gov. Mario Cuomo tell the 1984 Democratic National Convention: "The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail."

The elder Cuomo then was a year and a half into his elected tenure -- which, for the record, lasted three terms.