Poor Mikey Lupica.  Little Mikey thought he had his first original thought in fifteen years yesterday and he rushed to his wordprocessor to bang out the piece that would make the young writers in the newsroom think he’s again worthy of their adoration.  Sorry Mikey, back to the drawing board.  Your piece yesterday on David Paterson’s determination to push on with his campaign reeks of the pedestrian political analysis that’s undermining our nation’s political process, and is flagrant misuse of your power as a columnist (love that Jeter reference at the end…real original).  Rather than begrudging Paterson for not doing what everyone thinks he should do, why not take the Democrats to task for what they are boldly doing?

The Mikey Lupica I grew up reading might’ve approached the issue with something like this yesterday:

Earlier this year when Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was being indicted for offering to sell his state’s vacant seat to the highest bidder everyone piled on they pre-rehearsed arguments about how Blago’s tactics were undermining democracy.  Yet, less than a year later, when the same presidential administration that claims to have been unaware of Blago’s antics decides to inject itself into New York state’s gubernatorial race, they are widely depicted as doing the right thing, and it’s the embattled state governor who’s left to defend himself. Clearly there are degrees of difference between Blago’s actions.  New York state’s Dems are not committing any crimes by encouraging Paterson to step aside so that favored son Andrew Cuomo can run. 

Yet, while they aren’t doing anything illegal, State Dems are at least challenging the integrity of the democratic process by allowing this Paterson/Cuomo melodrama continue spilling out into public view. 

BUT, my beef today isn’t with the Dems, and instead I’m upset by how NY’s press corp and media outlets from WNYC to Mikey Lupica’s Daily News that have ceded the governor’s race to Cuomo, Paterson, Rick Lazio and Rudy Giuliani.  Consider for example that if instead of luring us into this glorified pissing contest, our city’s press corps navigated us through a discussion about the underwhelming number of women candidates running for state and city-wide elected office this year.  Comptroller candidate Melinda Katz was the only formidable woman candidate running for city-wide office this year and at no point was she considered the favorite in her race.  City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who in early 2008 was being touted as a future Mayoral candidate has seen her luster eroded by her handling of a city council funding “scandal” and allegedly conspiring with Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his third-term power grab. 

While New York has more than a handful of women representatives in Congress, as Carolyn Maloney found out this year as long as Kirsten Gilibrand is in office, they’ll have to find another seat to run for if they want to compete in a state wide election. 

GO SLOW!

We entered this decade celebrating Hilary Clinton’s election as a New York state senator and Betsy Gotbaum’s nomination as this city’s public advocate.  These seemed to be the logical next step in a state that can claim legendary women politicians such as Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro in its recent memory.  The euphoria Clinton’s victory generated at the dawn of this decade and pending era of open competition that was likely to ensue had the GOP scrambling to find viable women challengers to take down Hilary, notably Jeanine Pirro.  All of this energy appears to have dissolved and all that the city’s of this city are left with is a desperate attempt to prop up Gilibrand. What happened?

Last year I argued in the Huffington Post that the New York Dem’s back room politics approach was stifling the emergence of Latino candidates.  Pedro Espada used this dearth of Latino candidates to propel his power grab in the New York State senate.  We all know how our society treats women behaving badly, so pulling an Espada may be out of the question.  That said, how long can we sit idly by as our state’s two major parties continue telling women to GO SLOW!

Having put off my race man post for another day, the question that I have today for Mikey Lupica, Brian Lehrer and all the boys in the press corps who are arbiters of public opinion in the city, Where My Ladies At!

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