Piss and vinegar

Pissing into the wind is a tricky business, but it’s one the Democrats for Change seem to be employing now that they’re in charge. The group that has hijacked the city’s Democratic Party and prone to political sniping is making it their practice to piss and piss often, even if there’s bound to be some splash back.

This week, the piss has come in the form of a spiteful and prattling diatribe about Republican Mayor Scott Johnson’s state of the city address. The group under the auspices of Al Turkheimer issued a ‘rebuttal’ to the mayor’s speech Sunday, basically lambasting him for everything they could fit into the nearly 1,000 word statement.

Of course, they didn’t bother to craft this so-called rebuttal until more than two days after the mayor’s speech, long after any media attention toward the event subsided. And the fact that they did offer a rebuttal is somewhat unprecedented, as the State of the City address is often one of the few times the city’s politicians put their partisan differences aside.

For those unfamiliar with this speech, it’s typically used as a rallying cry by the city’s mayor; a sort of pep talk to get the community buzzing and the commissioners moving. Although the address typically includes a lot of party back slapping, seldom is it marred by partisan rhetoric and party dogma. This is exactly why a rebuttal is sort of pointless, especially after the mayor spent a good deal of his speech urging cooperation on both sides of the aisle.

But these Change-ocrats aren’t the type of folk that allow petty things like precedent, reason or calls for cooperation get in the way of their progressive march to righteousness. Their rebuttal is steeped with much of the rhetoric that has dribbled from Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim’s lips after he’s had a good whisper from his deputy, the bitingly partisan Eileen Finneran.

“The small crowd and the half empty seats were an apt metaphor for the presentation itself,” the rebuttal states. “What Mayor Johnson gave us was a ‘small and half empty’ presentation unworthy of Saratoga Springs.”

Obviously the author –or authors –didn’t pay much attention to the embarrassingly monotone speeches given by Johnson’s predecessor. But why digress into semantics? Let’s talk content. The Democrats for Change roundly chided Johnson for conducting his politics in the shadows and behind closed doors, citing the recent ratification of a $270,000 settlement with the Department of Environmental Conservation, even though he is only one of five votes on the council.

The statement also blames Johnson for loading the city’s land-use board with his own partisan cronies and for being a wastrel with city spending. How soon they forget the reign of Keehn, where these boards became dumping grounds for her campaign workers and the city’s mostly empty coffers were treated like never-ending source of financing that could be arbitrarily spent.

Sadly, the anti-state of the city address did include a nugget or two of sensible questioning. For instance, a mention of the Johnson Administration’s over-reliance on outside council, while two perfectly capable attorneys in the mayor’s office. However, any sort of reason to be gleaned from the diatribe is lost amid the partisan piss and vinegar.

In all, the statement shows how petty the party has become under its new leadership and how they are hell-bent on bringing back the fruitless city council battles of bygone days. Unfortunately, this sort of sniping is basically neutering the party and will likely scare away the centrists they so desperately need to gain seats on the council.

That doesn’t seem to be a concern for the Changers, as they appear ready to roll out a slate of candidates that is bound to roll some eyes in both parties. Among the forerunners of the slate is Kim himself, who is rumored to be making a run for the mayor’s seat once he realizes there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he’ll get the nod to run for the 20th Congressional District. Most would say he only stands a marginally better chance at winning the mayor’s office, even though the nut jobs in his party seem to think otherwise.