Special interests are in eye of the beholder

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's well-oiled campaign organization recently sent out this fundraising pitch, touting his goal of restraining spending and taxes:

"We need to raise money once again so we have the resources to fight this battle. We cannot allow Governor Cuomo's positions to be misrepresented by special interest campaigns . . . "

"Special interest" has evolved into one of those magical political phrases, adjustable to the moment, that anyone can use against anyone else. In the last campaign, it was flung at Cuomo's contributors.

As president, Theodore Roosevelt described as "special interests" what were then called "interstate corporations," and he assailed their influence on government officials. Later, Harry Truman applied the term to Wall Street speculators, and Dwight Eisenhower, to the weapons industry.

Bill Cunningham, savvy coordinator for the business-backed Committee to Save New York, which supports Cuomo's fiscal goals, acknowledges how circumstantial the phrase may be.

"You could define almost anybody as a special interest," he says. "Labor will define real estate developers that way and business will define labor that way. And some parts of labor may define other parts of labor that way. Everyone can be lumped in."

The committee puts up TV ads in anticipation of critical slams from public employees, health-care institutions, school advocates, or other interest groups looking to fend off cuts purportedly at the expense of the people in general.

Of course, those bracing to fight what they see as destructive cuts view themselves not as special interests but as legitimate popular constituencies.

On Saturday, for example, the Long Island Progressive Coalition gathers at Molloy College in Farmingdale to discuss childhood education. Scheduled to address the group is John Jackson, the president and chief executive of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which seeks to bridge race and gender gaps in schools.

"I don't think we as an organization stand in the way of cutting budgets or cutting spending," Johnson said. "The message is that in our country, education is a civil right. The president said it, Gov. Cuomo has said it. New York has to assess what is necessary to provide students a fair and substantive opportunity to learn - and ensure that the resources necessary to do that are protected."

"Special interests" were undoubtedly in the eye of the beholder at a breakfast in Albany this week. Some Assembly Democrats there reportedly challenged Cuomo on his intent to let expire a multi-billion-dollar tax surcharge on high-income New Yorkers. He's insisted he's opposing all tax hikes.

Take your pick as to who gets the "special interest" label on this one: Is it Wal-Mart, which seeks to open for the first time in New York City, or supermarket chain owner John Catsimatidis, who says Wal-Mart would "have an unavoidable anti-immigrant impact"?

Last fall's campaign for governor was special for its overuse of the "special interest" label. It got to the point where Warren Redlich, the Libertarian candidate with a flair for satire, proclaimed: "While Andrew Cuomo is bought and paid for by special interests, Carl Paladino cuts out the middle man. He is his own special interest."

Barbs aside, many will be watching the upcoming crisis-time budget process for signs of which interests might be the most special, at least to state lawmakers as a group.