Taking on Tish James

February 4, 2022

Daily Point

Beating the AG remains a big lift

The clock quickly ticks toward nominations for this year’s statewide ballot. With state Republicans scheduled to convene at the Garden City Hotel in just over three weeks, a bit of internal party suspense has begun on the matter of who will square off for state attorney general against the incumbent Democrat Letitia James.

James seems to have adequate resources and solid party backing. That’s while pushing a civil case against ex-President Donald Trump’s business organization over alleged financial and tax wrongdoing, and still drawing public vitriol from ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who resigned last year after the AG’s famous stinging report alleging sex harassment.

Republicans speak of James having clear vulnerabilities. Anyone who opposes her on the ballot will undoubtedly not only critique her handling of high-profile cases but also look to tie her to widespread concerns over higher crime and looser detentions of the accused and convicted.

However, with the convention to open Feb. 28, no world-famous or even state-famous figures have been successfully recruited who would surrender top-paying private-firm jobs to buck blue-state political fashions from trends and join a Republican ticket likely so far to be headed by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) for governor.

That said, Michael Louis Henry, a young lawyer who lives in Astoria, has been working GOP circuits since last summer when he first announced for AG. As a graduate of Touro Law School in Central Islip, he was once a judicial intern for The Honorable John M. Czygier Jr., Suffolk County Surrogate’s Court. In Mineola in November, a fundraiser for Henry featured local politically conservative activists Frank Ammendolea, Grant Lally, Don Derham, Thomas Scanlon and Dennis Saffran.

Filings show he’s raised more than $60,908 mainly in hundreds of small donations. He told The Point on Friday that he’s focused on appealing to working class and immigrant communities in New York City, knowing that if he can draw a third of the city vote he can win given advantages for Republicans in other regions. He cited the GOP’s recent comeback in Nassau County as a positive sign.

So far Henry isn’t the only Republican angling for the nomination. On Friday, Westchester attorney John Sarcone, who announced in November, issued a statement touting support from the chairs of 20 of the state’s 62 counties, largely upstate and in the Hudson Valley.

In public appearances Sarcone, like Henry, has been pounding law-and-order issues. A former regional administrator for the U.S. General Services, he has worked with the Independence Party in the local politics of northern Westchester.

Four years ago, the GOP failed to gain traction for the attorney general’s post even after Democratic AG Eric T. Schneiderman was forced out by a personal scandal. On a ticket headed by a reelection-bound Cuomo, James defeated Republican lawyer Keith Wofford, 62% to 35%.

The odds remain long for seeing the first Republican state AG since Dennis Vacco lost his reelection bid to Democrat Eliot Spitzer 23 years ago.

In electoral politics, that’s a very long time.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Religious-schools group rejects state oversight

In 2015, a group of yeshiva graduates filed a lawsuit against four East Ramapo private religious schools, the East Ramapo school district and the state, alleging that the Jewish schools they attended did not teach them the secular subjects, like English, math and history, required by law.

At issue is "substantial equivalence," and Education Law §3204(2), which requires that instruction for students in nonpublic schools "shall be at least substantially equivalent to the instruction given to minors of like age and attainments at the public schools of the city or district where the minor resides."

The ensuing investigations turned up a significant number of religious Jewish schools, particularly in East Ramapo and New York City, teaching almost no secular subjects.

But attempts since by the Board of Regents and the state Education Department to further specify what must be taught and give the state the power to enforce the rules, have been stalled by political pressure from the Orthodox Jewish community.

And it continues. The Rabbinical Union for the Protection of Traditional Jewish Education has written a letter to the Regents decrying other Jewish education groups working with the state to set acceptable rules, "such as Torah Umesorah, Agudas Israel, Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty (PEARLS)," and arguing the state has no power at all over religious school curricula.

The letter says: "We staunchly oppose any accommodation in Jewish education, secular or religious, because, under Torah law, it is utterly impermissible for us to add or alter in any way, either in quantity or in quality, anything in secular — certainly so in religious — studies from the norm in the past. It is our view that such changes inevitably undermine our core religion passed down to us for millennia."

The group did not comment Friday.

Long Island Regent Roger Tilles, who has been working with rabbis for years to find a compromise, told The Point that while the group represents a powerful set of rabbis, only about 10% of New York yeshivas actually object to including the secular subjects. But no one has been able to shake the hard-liners from their stance.

The Orthodox community lost its most powerful partner when Republicans lost control of the State Senate in 2018. At the time many advocates for religious schools were on the offensive, fighting for state tuition vouchers and increased transportation and special education money. Now the faction has fewer clear allies, but still wields considerable influence.

Tilles said substantial equivalence will again be taken up by the Regents this month or next. It could become a significant issue in the November elections, and anticipation of that and other scrums between Democrats and Orthodox communities is reflected in the new State Senate and Assembly districts just unveiled.

In Rockland County the Assembly’s 97th, currently represented by first-term Republican Michael Lawler, will become the second majority-Orthodox district, and the first outside New York City, containing the majority of the Hasidic Jews in Ramapo, a town of about 150,000 people.

Closer to home and more importantly, the new lines move the heavily Orthodox Five Towns area from Sen. Todd Kaminsky’s 9th District to James Sanders’ Queens-dominated 10th. Sanders, in five general elections, has never garnered less than 97% of the vote. Kaminsky won by 15 percentage points in 2020, part of a strong Democratic showing.

Previously, the district was solidly Republican, with former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos actively courting Orthodox votes. Kaminsky won his first run for the seat, a special election in April 2016, by just one percentage point over Christopher McGrath, and the rematch seven months later by four points.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

The hard part

Credit: PoliticalCartoons.com/Dave Whamond, Canada

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

PSEG worried about stormy weather in Albany

Last year ended on an up-and-down note for PSEG Long Island, the New Jersey-based company that operates LIPA’s electrical system.

In December the embattled division got a new, four-year contract to run the system, after PSEG’s scrambling failures in its response to Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020 threatened the deal. But the new contract puts an end date of 2025 on an agreement that originally had an option to extend eight years longer than that, and makes half of PSEG’s $80 million annual fee dependent on performance.

That contract end date is also the deadline in a bill from Fred Thiele in the Assembly and James Gaughran in the State Senate for a legislative commission to review and implement a fully public LIPA plan. Public-power proponents are calling the next four years a "glide path" to municipalization, a path that’s a lot smoother now that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who opposed municipalization, is out of power.

The legislation comes after a LIPA study of possible options in 2021 concluded that a fully public model would be best, saving customers about $80 million a year, but the politics of the moment made it a nonstarter.

But the previous "LIPA must change" study of options, by the post-Sandy Moreland Commission created by Cuomo to study the option, concluded municipalization was a bad bet.

At the time it was argued that the cost of adding so many workers to the state pension plan, the difficulty of recruiting top executives at government pay levels, and the patronage and politicization that could ensue ruled out a fully public option.

Now, what PSEG wants is for that legislative commission to look at every possible option, too, not just that one.

In an editorial board meeting this week, PSEG Director of External Affairs Chris Hahn argued that PSEG had made tremendous improvements in the communications and computer systems that failed, and characterized Isaias as the company’s only storm failure in its eight years serving the Island.

"What makes sense is a comprehensive study that asks, ‘What is the best option?’ " Hahn said.

He argued that the public-private model offered checks and balances that a fully governmental option would not. And he pointed to PSEG’s integrated resource planning as the tool that kept the unnecessary but politically backed Caithness II generating plant from being built.