Diaz Sr. lists his son--the newly elected Bronx borough president--at the top of his invitation, but then lists (in order) John Sampson, Malcolm Smith, Pedro Espada Jr. and Carl Kruger as the other headliners.

Diaz Sr. aligned with Kruger, Espada and Hiram Monserrate nearly a year ago to form the "four amigos" bloc that frustrated Smith's rise to the leadership, and his governance of the chamber. The ongoing tension between the amigo faction and Smith prompted Monserrate and Espada to flip to the Republican conference, before eventually returning to increased money and power.

The top dollar for Diaz Sr.'s fund-raiser is $2,500.

"That question had three ‘ifs,' so I'm going to give you an answer that has none," Paterson said, before blasting the State Senate, which has been part of his political comeback strategy. He said that he is calling lawmakers back for an extraordinary session to "finish legislation that couldn't be completed because the legislature went out to have a political fight in the last two weeks of session."

No mention of the $2.1 billion mid-year imbalance in the budget he, the Assembly and Senate agreed to.

Here's the rest of what Paterson said:

The public authorities have needed to be reformed for a long time. I, as a member of the legislature, worked with one of the sponsors--Assemblyman Brodsky--on that issue and turned it over when I left to the senator who actually took my place in my district, Senator Perkins, and that's who  passed the bill. Public authorities: there is abuse, there is waste, it does need reform. Public auth at times have become the shadow government. Here's the problem: there are some inequities in that bill that act for actually work counter to what the bill is supposed to do. How do you reform an agency when you ask that the appointees only serve the agency? That is the wrong way to reform an agency because now appointees to the board can't identify the abuse and the waste that we already know. The people who are appointed to the agency shouldn't be responding to the legislature, they should be responding to the public. Here's another example: when you do a land swap, often what we're doing often to create jobs, is helping subsidize the land so a company can come in and create jobs. We just did that a few weeks ago around here. So if you have to have an even swap for land all the time, you lose the opportunity to use public money as we're doing even here today with Geico in trying to stimulate the economy by stimulating the work force.

He continued:

Whenever you have an agency system and you're trying to keep it so that it's serving the public, you must always have it responding to one entity. Many of these aspects of the bill have it responding to the Senate and the Assembly. When do the Senate and Assembly agree on anything? One of those two bodies couldn't even show up for work for a month at the end of the session, necessitating us going back in September. If you leave decisions for more than one person, not only in government but in life, you've got a lot of problems.

Sources in the chamber say that about $6 million of increased allotments to members would be going out, in connection with what a spokesman called the "significant reforms" adopted last month in the throes of a 31-day stalemate.

On Thursday, Minority Leader Dean Skelos's office faxed members saying that the base allotment would increase from the current $350,000 to $450,000 for senators, with an additional $50,000 appropriated for ranking members on standing committees, according to a Republican source.

Scott Reif, a spokesman for Skelos, said that the increases come after "an acknowledgment by Democrats that things were not equitable" but that the exact timing of the appropriation--whether it will happen this year or next--is unclear.

Republicans enjoyed majority status in the chamber for decades, before it was taken by Democrats in January. A spoils system of lopsided funding developed, only to come crashing down. Several Republicans were forced to lay off staffers.

Thirty-six percent of the 623 registered voters surveyed by the Siena Research Institute have a favorable impression of Paterson, up five points from a month ago, and 22 percent approve of the way he is doing his job, a two-point bump from June.

Sixty-four percent of people thought Paterson had some role in resolving the State Senate quagmire, which 77 percent of voters said made them "angry that the senators wasted more than a month of valuable time accomplishing nothing."

"Voters don't see reform coming from this fight and they strongly believe that important legislation will be harder to pass," Steve Greenberg, a spokesman for the Siena Poll, said. "More than half of voters don't want to see either the Democrats or Republicans control the Senate, preferring to see a coalition of both parties in control.  And 71 percent of voters say the last month has made them even less confident in state government to solve the problems facing New York."

Of all the players in the coup, Senator Pedro Espada Jr. fared the worst. Most voters have heard of him, and he has a 46 percent unfavorability rating (compared to 11 percent who look upon him favorably.) The next highest rating for an elected legislator was Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has a 38 percent unfavorability rating.

A slight majority--51 percent, compared to 34--believe Paterson acted appropriately in naming Richard Ravitch as his lieutenant governor. That appointment is being contested in court.

But despite the apparent stabilization in his poll numbers and an endorsement of his recent actions, the statistics show Paterson's political future to be...challenging. Voters prefer "someone else" over Paterson 69-17. More people hope that Andrew Cuomo will run for governor than for another term as attorney general, and in a hypothetical primary, Cuomo trounces Paterson among Democrats 65 to 23.

Were he to win the nomination, the poll finds Paterson would lose to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani 57 to 34 but would narrowly beat Rick Lazio 41 to 39.

"One has to be very, very careful, because at any given time, an agreement, a deal could be cut that leaves you out," Espada, who did a double-double-cross to become the chamber's majority leader, told Arbetter.

Here's a clip of Espada talking about the Democratic conference he rejoins. The interview will be broadcast this weekend at:

ALB WMHT Fri. 7:30pm AND Sun. 11am & 11pm
NYC WNET Sat. 11:00am
ROCH WXXI Sun. 6:30pm
SYR WCNY Sun. 11:00am
BUF WNED Sun. 9:30am
LI WLIW Sun. 6:00am
WAT WPBS Sun. 7:30am
BING WSKG Sun. 6:30pm
ADKSMTLAKE Sun 10:30am
Think Bright Fri. 8:00pm

"You don't want people voting on this when they're just exhausted. The Senate is tired, and there's a lot of emotions there," said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the powerful gay rights lobbying organization. "I would have preferred June weddings, but autumn weddings are just as nice in New York."

Van Capelle said he spoke with David Paterson last Thursday, as news broke of a deal that returned State Senator Pedro Espada Jr. to the chamber's Democratic conference as its majority leader. The governor said he was willing to put the bill out immediately, but the two agreed that it might be better to wait and let the State Senate "settle."

He would not be specific about whether his estimated vote-count has changed, but insisted that there were enough Republican senators committed to the measure to ensure its passage before the coup, and that there will be enough after Labor Day. (Not enough senators have admitted as much publicly.) The measure passed the Assembly in May, and its advocates were pushing for a floor vote in the Senate before the end of June. The attempted coup of June 8 preempted it.

"Everything was in flux, so we pivoted the message to, ‘No state senator should come home without addressing LGBT equality," Van Capelle said. "We took our ads off the air because it seemed like a waste of money at that money, because we didn't exactly know who we would be targeting our ads towards. We decided to pivot the message."

The result was a strong phone lobbying effort directed at senators who were allies of the measure, urging them not to leave Albany without acting on same-sex marriage. Now, Van Capelle said he will travel the state to "re-connect" with senators of all stripes.

The thinking is that senators who were once amenable are now irritable. A long debate now might be explosive. I asked if LGBT activists was still energized, or if the momentum had slowed. He told me about this year's Tea Dance in East Hampton, held this weekend, where Paterson, Kirsten Gillibrand and Tom Suozzi mingled with close to 1,500 other guests, some of whom paid over $1,000 for tickets that were retailing online for $100.

"When the governor came through, people applauded," Van Capelle said. "It was a total home run. We had two Mr. Softee trucks pull up, a hot dog cart. It was just a real fun event."

"I think I have a real problem with both sides of the aisle with what they did. It cost the taxpayers $5 million for the circus and shenanigans that went on," said Long, the chairman of the State Conservative Party. "It wasn't about trying to cap property taxes; it was just a pure bare-bones power struggle. It's going to raise questions when we look at endorsements next year—we have an obligation to do that to the taxpayers of New York State."

I asked if he was ready to mount a "throw the bums out" campaign, which has been mumbled by some but which currently lacks the organization or money to get moving.

"There's plenty of people who have said that. My statement is: Who needs any of them?" Long replied. "It's a long way between now and next year, but right now the public is pretty p-o'd at them. If that sentiment holds, it could mean something."

Long, whose party often endorses Republicans, seemed disgusted with members of that party for choosing to ally with State Senators Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate. ("You never get into a deal with characters like that!" he said.)

"I do believe that the people I tend to support and endorse, right now if there was an election tomorrow, will be more hurt by the public than the people I don't usually support," he said. "Conservative-minded Republicans hold their elected officials to a higher standard than the liberal Democratic voters do."

He also said that a report that several Democrats received large salary increases amid the turmoil was "outrageous and disgraceful."