Next gov to hit the Hamptons circuit

Daily Point

Hochul eyes East End for 2022 fundraising

With Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul soon to become governor by succession — and saying she plans to seek election to the job next year — it should surprise no one that she’s due soon to visit East Hampton at the height of fundraiser season.

Party insiders say an event had been planned soon for reelection to her current post, but was put off and not rescheduled. On Aug. 22, a week from Sunday, the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee holds its annual East End reception, which Hochul has attended several times and is widely expected to drop in on again. She will be sworn in as governor on Tuesday, Aug. 24.

The ER committee was founded by Judith Hope, the former state Democratic Party chair, ex-East Hampton Town supervisor, and former Democratic National Committee member, and supports female pro-choice candidates.

Hope told The Point that Hochul has had the group’s backing ever since she first ran for the Hamburg, New York, town board on which she served from 1994 to 2007, before running in a special election for Congress and later, in 2014, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor.

"It’s a new day in New York State politics," Hope told The Point. "Not just for the power of the governor’s office, it's the beginning of a new era." Of Cuomo, Hope said: "I was among those who said he was a fine governor, and I’m sorry to see him go, but very excited to see Kathy come in."

The same weekend, on Aug. 21 on the East End, a fundraising reception is scheduled for Assemb. Crystal People-Stokes, the Democratic Assembly majority leader and a political ally of Hochul from Buffalo.

One longtime Democratic activist, who preferred anonymity because the plans are not yet set, said "it would make sense" to reschedule what had been an LG fundraiser for Hochul for the same weekend.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Schumer peppered SALT plan

There was a little floor action in the Senate Tuesday evening that augurs well for some reinstatement of a federal tax deduction of state and local property taxes, known as SALT. During the vote-a-rama on the infrastructure bill, there were many hours of amendments, including an unexpected one from Republicans.

The amendment, put on the floor by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, would have prevented the House from making "changes to the state and local tax deductions that mainly benefit the wealthy in the Senate."

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also the New York senator up for reelection next year, flexed his muscle to get all 50 Democrats to vote against the Grassley amendment, including those from states where it isn’t a politically powerful issue. Overall, the infrastructure bill passed 69-30 with bipartisan support.

Although the SALT poison pill went down, it’s a glimpse at the GOP strategy to call out Democrats for demanding tax increases on the wealthy while also seeking to include a measure that would benefit high-earners, as well as those who live in suburban areas where high school taxes are a big burden on middle-class homeowners.

Angelo Roefaro, a spokesman for Schumer, said Democrats from high-tax states understand that it will help a broader swath of the population.

"Despite GOP efforts, their attempt to stop help for middle-class Long Islanders failed," he said. "The senator kept the Democratic caucus together on this." That doesn’t mean restoration of the SALT deduction is a sure bet, he said, but if the amendment passed, any chance of resurrecting the full deduction would have died.

Up next for restoring SALT: inclusion by the House Ways and Means committee, which originates legislation on taxes. And there another New Yorker is taking the lead — CD3 Rep. Tom Suozzi, who recently was called "Mr. SALT" in a Bloomberg News article. Suozzi said that there are competing spending priorities by Democrats in his chamber, but he feels confident about his chances.

"My number one priority is getting SALT into the markup by Ways and Means," he said, declining to say whether full repeal of the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions was in the cards.

— Rita Ciolli @ritaciolli

Pencil Point

That sinking feeling

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Final Point

Breakdowns beget breakthroughs

When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo steps down in 12 days and Kathy Hochul is sworn in, his premature departure will help her make history as the first woman to lead the state of New York.

That sounds like it would be an unusual way to break through, but it’s actually the norm in the Empire State. We got our first Black governor, David Paterson, when Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign following his dalliances with prostitutes becoming public in 2008.

And the one governor of the state who was impeached and tossed out, William Sulzer, was also followed by a groundbreaking replacement.

When Sulzer was expelled for failing to report campaign contributions he used to buy stocks (and more crucially, for getting crosswise with his Tammany Hall patrons) in 1913, his lieutenant governor, Martin Glynn, was sworn in.

And Glynn became the first Catholic governor of the state.

Al Smith, who would become the state’s second Catholic governor and the nation’s first Catholic major-party presidential candidate, oversaw Sulzer’s impeachment proceedings as the speaker of the Assembly.

Glynn’s tenure lasted just 14 months, because gubernatorial terms then lasted only two years and he was defeated by Republican Charles Whitman in the 1914 race. Glynn had been a journalist, congressman and the state comptroller before being governor. He returned to journalism at the Albany Times Union, and later became somewhat of a statesman.

And his Catholicism was central to his statesmanship.

Much of Glynn’s New York Times obituary focuses on his part helping "solve" the Irish conflict by bringing British Prime Minister Lloyd George and the Irish leader Eamon de Valera together to ink a deal. At the time of Glynn’s death in December 1924, the tone seemed to imply that peace was expected to last there between Protestant and Catholic, England and Ireland.

That was not the only thing in his obituary that would turn out to be untrue, and the other falsehood might well have shocked Glynn the journalist, if not Glynn the politician.

The news reports claimed he died of a heart attack after returning home from a hospital where he’d been treated for a spinal injury from which he suffered for years.

In truth, Glynn took his own life, a fact which the coroner recorded on his death certificate but did not tell the press.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

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