The cartoonist Thomas Nast made the phrase famous—some believe he actually fabricated Tweed’s response—as a symbol of official arrogance during the Gilded Age. Tweed is long gone, but the spirit of his supposed response—What are you going to do about it?—is alive and well in New York.

In the last week, yet another senior member of the State Senate, John Sampson of Brooklyn, was arrested on corruption charges, while two of Comptroller John Liu’s former campaign aides were found guilty of fraud. Mr. Liu, who is running for mayor, was positively Tweed-like. As The Observer reports this week, Mr. Liu suggested that prosecutors “put up or shut up.” How’s that for remorse?

In the aftermath of Senator Sampson’s indictment, Governor Cuomo reiterated his pledge to pass tough anticorruption legislation before lawmakers wrap up their session next month. Mr. Sampson’s indictment, the governor said, added “more of an urgency to do it, and denial is not a life strategy.”

That’s fine, but it’s not enough. The governor needs to make the mess in Albany his top priority. New York has become an ethical laughingstock—even more so than usual. Two members of the State Legislature, one from each house, have been secretly taping conversations with their colleagues. The legislators, Assemblyman Nelson Castro and State Senator Shirley Huntley, agreed to wear a wire after law-enforcement officials confronted them with evidence of ethical lapses.

If this all sounds comical, well, Senator Sampson’s case adds a truly menacing twist to the usual narrative of political shenanigans. Prosecutors say that Mr. Sampson secretly sought to get the names of witnesses who were cooperating in a federal investigation of his office. The senator allegedly said that he wanted to “take them out”—presumably not for a cup of coffee.

The U.S. attorney who investigated Senator Sampson, Loretta E. Lynch, said the case was “one of the most extreme examples of political hubris we have yet seen.”

Mr. Cuomo has hardly been silent about the ethical failings of his colleagues in the Legislature. But he needs to be louder and more forceful, because, fairly or not, he is going to have to answer for the behavior of corrupt legislators when or if he decides to run for higher office.

Of course, presidential politics should be the least important reason for getting serious about cleaning up Albany. But self-interest has always been a great motivator in the political world, and it is certainly in Mr. Cuomo’s interest to scrub Albany of the dirt that has accumulated over the last several years—including the two-plus years of his tenure as governor.

Mr. Cuomo and his allies would have you believe that his election marked the beginning of dramatic change in Albany. The persistence of political perp walks in New York would seem to indicate that real change has been elusive.

Though he has fought crime in the borough for decades, Mr. Hynes, who is in his sixth term as the Brooklyn district attorney, looked slightly out of place loitering on a dark patch of sidewalk in front of a dicey-looking housing project near midnight.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes at the Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King at BAM (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Well into his 70s, Mr. Hynes is grandfatherly in appearance, white-haired and slightly hunched. He wore a bright blue checkered shirt, cleanly pressed, with an open collar. He waited patiently, a sizable police detail nearby, until Rev. Sharpton arrived, 20 minutes late, in a chauffeured black Navigator.

The gathering, which its organizers called Occupy the Corner, had been staged to protest the gun violence that has sprung up in recent months. Though the event was aimed at a spate of recent deadly shootings in problem Brooklyn neighborhoods like Brownsville and East New York, the message had been made all the more poignant by a shooting earlier that day in Manhattan in which a gunman murdered a former colleague outside the Empire State Building before being killed in a hail of fire by the NYPD.

“We’re not going to be intimidated ... these are our communities, these are our streets, and this won’t continue,” Mr. Sharpton said in front of a small crowd of community members, news media and politicians, including Councilwoman Letitia James and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who is running for congress.

“We’re not going to stand by and let them overwhelm our streets and kill our children,” Mr. Hynes added when it was his turn to speak. “Whatever it takes, the people rule this city and not the thugs.”

There’s no doubt Mr. Hynes is proud of his record taking on violent crime in the borough—and he has a right to be. During his 23-year tenure in office, homicides have fallen precipitously.

“Brooklyn had less than 200 murders last year,” Mr. Hynes told The Observer, indulging his habit of frequently trotting out the impressive crime statistics of his tenure. “That’s the least since 1963, and this year we’re 23 murders fewer.”

As big an issue as guns are, however, and as much as Mr. Hynes cares about it, in the murky and sometimes cynical world of Brooklyn politics, the night seemed more than an opportunity to take a stand against violence; politically, it was a chance to grab some screen time with some of the most prominent leaders of New York’s black community—a voting bloc Mr. Hynes knows he would be wise to court.

“We’re happy D.A. Hynes has joined us tonight,” Rev. Sharpton said. “Most D.A.s just prosecute us; he’s one that is standing with us.”

DA Hynes announcing a large seizure of counterfeit items in July (photo courtesy of Getty Images)

In the wake of withering criticism, Mr. Hynes can certainly use endorsements like this.

In May, The New York Times ran a series of articles about the district attorney’s cozy relationship with influential rabbis in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. Among the reports were disclosures that Mr. Hynes and his office had agreed last summer to allow a prominent religious organization, Agudath Israel, to vet sexual molestation accusations within the Hasidic community internally before reporting the allegations to the authorities.

The story drew a sharp rebuke from Mayor Bloomberg, who according to the Times said he “completely disagrees” with such an arrangement—the kind of top-level complaint rarely lobbed at a D.A. in this city, especially one as tenured and respected as Mr. Hynes.
The reports also took a critical view of techniques Mr. Hynes has employed to encourage victims of sexual abuse to step forward, and they questioned whether his office has pursued meaningful sentences against admitted molesters. To this day, Mr. Hynes will not release the names of accused Hasidic suspects of sexual assault, even though sheltering the identity of someone indicted for a crime is a highly unusual practice among district attorneys and has drawn persistent criticism from victims’ groups.

“We have completely disagreed with the policy of not releasing the names of the abusers,” Mark Appel, founder of a victims’ advocacy group, told The Observer. “A Jewish child should be identical to any other child.

“With past cases, we have not had good outcomes,” Mr. Appel added, referring to situations such as the 2008 plea-bargain agreement with Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, who had been charged with sexual abuse at a yeshiva in Flatbush. In that case, Mr. Kolko received probation. “Every D.A. has the power to put more effort into the prosecution with more investigative work. One way to do it is to publicize an alleged abuser because you’re sure to bring out previous cases that people didn’t want to talk about.”

District Attorney Hynes has vigorously defended sheltering the names of the accused. Given how tight-knit the Hasidic community is, revealing a suspect’s identity, he says, is tantamount to outing the accuser, thereby dissuading victims from coming forward.

“It was absurd,” Mr. Hynes told The Observer during his appearance with Rev. Sharpton (he wouldn’t agree to a subsequent interview). “Before I had that policy, I wasn’t able to have any prosecutions. As of this morning, I have 114 Orthodox Jews under indictment.”

Amid a recent spate of career-sinking bombshells such as Vito Lopez’s sexual harassment scandal (also courtesy of the Times), the coverage was damaging but not damning. An ugly conclusion was hard to avoid: Mr. Hynes had seemingly ignored serious crimes or handed out wrist-slaps to members of the Hasidic and Orthodox communities. In exchange, these cloistered neighborhoods, which cherish their autonomy and insularity from the secular world and its authorities, gave him critical support at the polls.

The election for district attorney in Brooklyn isn’t until next year. Still, the revelations have left Mr. Hynes in what would appear to be one of the trickiest positions of his long career as Brooklyn’s D.A. On the one hand, he must dispel the now-widespread impression that his office is playing politics and doling out special treatment to a critical voting bloc. And yet, for a position that is decided based on notoriously thin voter turnout, it would appear essential to maintain the allegiance of these reliable supporters.
Just how well Mr. Hynes can strike a balance between these seemingly conflicting mandates will be on full display this fall, when his office is expected to try one of the most contentious of the recent molestation cases: accusations against Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist who is alleged to have sexually abused a 12-year-old girl during sessions.

Mr. Weberman has enjoyed an almost shocking level of support, and his case has come to define the apparent denial or unconcern with which some members of the Hasidic community have treated the issue. During a fund-raiser for his defense held in Williamsburg in May, thousands of supporters showed up, a group of mostly Hasidic men who stared down, heckled and even charged at a small contingent of protesters who were demonstrating on behalf of the victim, who has remained unidentified.

To his credit, Mr. Hynes has met such belligerence with steely resolve. In July, he indicted four Hasidic men for trying to intimidate and bribe the accuser and her boyfriend into retracting the charges against Mr. Weberman. Always media savvy, Mr. Hynes seized on the incident to spin the story his way. He hadn’t seen comparable threats against a witness, he proclaimed, since dealing with the mafia. The former prosecutor, who rose to fame by busting a group of white men from John Gotti’s old stomping ground, Howard Beach, in a racially charged killing of a black teenager in the late 1980s, was back at it—grappling with a tight-knit subculture and its code of silence.

In the race for an outer-borough district attorney’s office, such headline-friendly sound bites are the stuff that keeps incumbents in power.

“Any time his office ever does something, they’re out there with a press conference,” said Abe George, a former prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who plans to challenge Mr. Hynes in next year’s election.

After failing to win tough sentences in past abuse cases, Mr. Hynes needs to come up with a stiff penalty against Mr. Weberman if he wants to turn the page on his shaky record and put the scandal to bed. But to do so will shatter the community’s cherished illusion that men like Mr. Weberman can’t be guilty of such transgressions.

“It bothers me personally that someone accused of a heinous crime has people supporting him,” said Ezra Friedlander, a member of Borough Park’s Hasidic community who is active in lobbying. “But then again, the flip side is that no one there thinks for one second that he’s guilty.”

Losing a bloc like this could be a setback to Mr. Hynes’s re-election efforts, especially when in previous tight elections, the Orthodox community was one of the key groups that helped him edge out opponents, including one of his toughest contenders, John Sampson, in 2005.

Surprisingly, though, it turns out that not all, or even most, members of the Hasidic community oppose the idea of placing the investigation and handling of molesters squarely in the jurisdiction of the secular authorities—a fact that Mr. Hynes, for all his apparent pandering to top rabbis, clearly grasps.

“It’s kind of funny, he’s supposedly the guy placating the Hasidim, but I’m not sure the rank-and-file member of the community, the voter, wants that treatment,” noted Lew Fidler, a New York City Councilman who served as Mr. Hynes’s campaign manager when he first ran for office in the late 1980s and then later when he made a failed bid for state attorney general in the mid-1990s. “Do you know how many rabbi leaders there are and different factions of the community? It’s not a monolith, so the view that he’s just pandering to this majority is false.”

Mr. Hynes has not left it merely to chance that his intensified efforts to win justice for victims receive attention. According to Mark Appel, in early July, Mr. Hynes arranged a series of meetings with a small and influential group of Hasidic community members who have been vocal supporters of molestation victims. Arranged through Anita Altman, a liaison he uses as a go-between with the Orthodox community, the talks were proposed as a platform for victims’ supporters to speak directly with Mr. Hynes and his top prosecutors and voice their concerns.

“It was a vehicle, so everyone could have a safe environment to work out their differences,” Mr. Appel said.

Predictably, the conversation quickly turned to the issue of releasing the names of the accused. Mr. Hynes again refused, and when the meeting adjourned, its participants emerged wondering what the purpose of the get-together had been, given how intractable the district attorney appeared.

The next day, Mr. Appel received his answer. The Jewish Daily Forward, a popular publication in Hasidic precincts, published a report describing how Mr. Hynes had reached out to key victims’ representatives.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Appel said. “He had set the whole thing up to create this illusion.”

Mr. Hynes or his people had apparently leaked the story in order to create the impression he was tightening his relationship with the victims’ groups and to ameliorate their persistent criticism of him. (Mr. Hynes’s office declined to comment on the matter.)
In reality, Mr. Appel said, Mr. Hynes continues to shelter the identity of accused molesters as an ongoing gesture to powerful rabbis who would still prefer to sweep the molestation issue under the carpet.

“With all the scrutiny the community has received, maybe they know it’s not possible to hide from the issue anymore,” Mr. Appel said. “The continued withholding of names, though, would at least seem like some small conciliation.”

Always the savvy political animal, Mr. Hynes had figured out a way to placate both sides.
No icon wants controversy to be the coda of a proud career, and if Mr. Hynes wasn’t content to finally retire after his sixth term, he is even more reluctant after the Hasidic molestation scandal. Re-election won’t be the cakewalk it was in 2009, however, when he ran unopposed. It’s already clear that Mr. Hynes will have at least one challenger next year: Mr. George, who resigned a prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office after announcing his candidacy earlier this summer.

In recent weeks, Mr. George, who is 33, excitedly filled in The Observer on the essence of his campaign—that he can bring the sophistication of Manhattan’s District Attorney’s Office that has been lacking in Brooklyn and inject the office with a new vigor and novel approaches to stubborn problems—like persistent gun violence in the borough’s most troubled neighborhoods.

“I don’t think that Charles Hynes has gotten to the issue of violent crime in Brooklyn,” Mr. George said. “Brooklyn still leads the city in homicides and shootings. He always talks about reducing crime by whatever statistic he uses, 89 percent, but how much of that is simply gentrification?”

Mr. George doesn’t have backers like Al Sharpton to vouch for him, of course. And, at the time he spoke with The Observer in mid August, he fretted that the political machine in Brooklyn presented daunting challenges for an outsider candidate. After all, Vito Lopez, the Democratic Party boss, had endorsed Mr. Hynes for office.

“There are so many ways a guy like Vito can make it hard for a candidate like me,” Mr. George said.

That was then. More recently, Mr. Lopez was revealed to have sexually harassed female employees in his office, spurring his removal from several key chairmanship positions he held in the State Assembly, widespread calls for his resignation, and an overnight shifting of the entire political landscape in Brooklyn.

“I feel like now is my chance,” a rejuvenated-sounding Mr. George told The Observer in a follow-up conversation.

On August 31, about a week after Mr. Lopez’s scandal became public, Mr. Hynes requested a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations against the assemblyman, citing the conflicts of interest that could be perceived from his handling of such an investigation himself, since Mr. Lopez is a supporter of his.

Come campaign season, no one will be able to say that Mr. Hynes gave a powerful political fixer special treatment.

dgeiger@observer.com

Wrong. After all, these are not ordinary times.

The apparent victory of Republican upstart David Storobin in a special election to fill Carl Kruger’s former Senate seat is, in fact, an enormous win for Governor Andrew Cuomo. Why? Because Senate Democrats under the retrograde leadership of Brooklyn’s John Sampson remain opposed to the governor’s aggressive and necessary leadership on pension reform.

Mr. Sampson has characterized Mr. Cuomo’s recent pension reforms as an “assault on working men and women in New York State.” This no doubt will come as a surprise to those working men and women who otherwise would have to pay for out-of-control public-employee pensions in the decades to come. Mr. Sampson’s rhetoric, however, actually is no surprise. He and his colleagues remain stuck in a time warp. They still think it’s acceptable to lard up public-employee contracts in exchange for union support and contributions.

The special election in Brooklyn was not solely a referendum on Mr. Cuomo and the astonishing changes he has implemented or negotiated over the past year. Voters no doubt sought to send a message to the political establishment after the longtime incumbent, Mr. Kruger, resigned in disgrace in a corruption scandal. Mr. Kruger became a poster boy for all that is rotten about the status quo in Albany. His former constituents had every reason to turn their backs on Mr. Kruger’s party and onetime allies.

Still, though, it is hard not to conclude that this special election captured the mood of an impatient and exhausted electorate fed up with business as usual. And that’s precisely what the Senate Democrats stand for, and why they clearly deserve to remain on the outside looking in when important decisions are made in the statehouse.

Mr. Cuomo has shrewdly aligned himself with those lawmakers, public policy advocates and union leaders who understand that the old ways of governing are over. Party labels and outdated dogma are unimportant­—what matters is flexibility, creativity and an open mind.  As a result, Mr. Cuomo has enjoyed support from more than a few Republicans in the Legislature as he attempts to put the brakes on public-employee benefits that simply should never have been granted in the first place.

Many of Mr. Cuomo’s fellow Democrats, including a small but influential group in the State Senate, understand that the state simply cannot sustain the level of benefits and perks handed out in the past. Unfortunately, top Democrats in the Senate remain wedded to the policies of the past. They play the class card because they have no other argument.

Voters in Brooklyn made it clear that they will not stand for a return to dysfunctional state government. Mr. Sampson and his colleagues had better pay attention.

The format, as I understand it, will be lawmakers getting on stage and acting as stand-up comedians. The theme will, of course, be political jokes, and quite a few are intended to be about the man whose coffers they're there to fill. (Because really, who'll pay to see people make fun of someone from another party, when it's free on television. )

As the New York City press corps demonstrated this weekend, making political jokes funny is not easy, despite an abundance of material.

I'm sure the people who read this site could come up with infinitely better material than anything most lawmakers would dare use. So, if you have a joke you want to share, leave it in the comments section.

And, in case there's any question, jokes left in the comments will not count as an in-kind contribution.

"We need a fair and objective evaluation system that takes into account the needs of children, parents, and educators. Governor Cuomo’s legislation on teacher seniority meets that goal, and is consistent with the development of evaluation standards required by the Race to the Top legislation we passed last year. It also has the support of the state Education Commissioner.

“Governor Cuomo has taken a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to addressing a complex issue in a manner that protects the needs of our children and recognizes the importance of collective bargaining for our workers.

“We cannot let New York become Wisconsin where an assault has been launched to dismantle the collective bargaining rights of the public workforce under the guise of fiscal emergency. I look forward to working with Governor Cuomo, the Assembly, and our colleagues in the Senate on an intelligent solution to this critical issue.”

Democratic Leader John L. Sampson has released a statement that supports the proposed legislation and calls on the Senate to pass the redistricting bill when it comes back into session in Albany. Westchester senator Jeff Klein, a member of the Senate's Independent Democratic Conference, has also spoken out in favor of the proposal.

"As one of the few members of the Legislature who has actually voted for legislation to create an Independent Redistricting commission," said Klein in an official statement, "I commend Governor Cuomo for once again demonstrating his commitment to this much needed reform."

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos supports of the idea of redistricting reform, but isn't sure that it should be a high priority right now. An official statement cited government spending cuts, tax reduction, and job creation as critical issues, and said that the Senate should be focusing instead on creating and instating a "fiscally responsible budget" by the April 1 deadline.

"The issue of redistricting reform is an important one and I have said repeatedly that we will act on reform legislation," Skelos said. "A number of proposals have been advanced and we have to take a close look at what makes the most sense to ensure a fair, open and truly nonpartisan process."

These senators are among those that signed a good government pledge with Ed Koch's reform group New York Uprising. The organization has held up independent redistricting as one of its chief causes, and aggressively pushed lawmakers to make good on the pledge and move forward with redistricting reform.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver declined to sign Koch's pledge, but stated that he does plan to cooperate with other legislators on reform measures.

"We are reviewing the governor's program bill," he said, "and remain committed to working with governor and our colleagues in the Senate to reform redistricting in time for the upcoming redistricting process."

Minority leader John Sampson said that the Democrats' six-part bill that will cover a variety of ethically-dubious areas including client disclosure requirements, proper use of campaign funds, the need to eliminate the existing 'pay to play' attitude, and the creation of an independent redistricting commission.

"We need to make these changes because they have lost faith, trust and confidence in us," Sampson said. "If we ask them to tighten their belts, we have to tighten our belts."

The ethics package is comprised of six separate bills, all pertaining to different areas where ethics violations have occurred.

Sen. Daniel Squadron is pushing for the establishment of an independent ethics oversight committee that will oversee all areas of state government. He also said he was "very pleased" that Gov. Andrew Cuomo's support for increased ethical oversight during his campaign.

"The key here is no single appointed entity has a majority of the commission," Squadron said.

Sen. Liz Krueger's bill would insure that public officials and candidates only use campaign contributions for the campaign, citing college tuition fees, foreign trips and swimming pool maintenance fees (taking a jab at former Republican State Sen. Joe Bruno) as examples of misuse. Her bill would also stipulate that all funds have to be either returned or given to other causes within four years of an official leaving office. She said that political donations, charitable giving, or prorated return to the donors would all qualify as proper ways to get rid of the money in a campaign fund.

Sen. Joseph Addabbo focused his bill on the end of 'pay to play' by forbidding those with state contracts from making political donations. When asked about what groups specifically qualified as receiving state contracts, he kept his answer purposely vague but hinted that he wants the title to cover all interpretations, including union contracts.

"If the intent of the bill was to stop the pay to play, let's leave it open to include anyone who has contracts with the state," Addabbo said.

Sen. Malcolm Smith said that random campaign audits would be used to enforce clean financing standards in his portion of the bill.

The disclosure of client lists and donors would be a way to "open our books" to their constituents, and Sen. Gustavo Rivera included that measure in his bill.

"We have seen that different legislators have different masters," Rivera said.

The final aspect of the ethics package would create an independent redistricting commission to prevent gerrymandering and help create a truly representative state government, Sen. Michael Gianaris said.

"What have we learned recently was that 240,000 more people have voted for democrats in this past election, and yet the make up of the Senate is 32 Republicans and 30 Democrats," Gianaris said. "It shows that the Republicans do not control the Senate because more people voted for Republican candidates."

He was careful not to cast all the blame on state Republicans, and stressed the need for the commission to be independent.

"One could make an argument that Democrats who control the assembly have done the same thing," he said.

Sampson concluded the press conference by saying he had been in talks with Gov. Cuomo about bringing an ethics passage up for debate and seemed hopeful about the outcome.

"That bill is ready to go in the chamber and pass because we believe the time has come, because we need to let the people of the state of New York know that we heard them," Sampson said.

The vote fell three short of passage after Republicans held firm in opposition and not enough Democrats showed up at the chamber to vote.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader John Sampson placed blame on his Republican counterparts and noted that hundreds of jobs will be lost.

"There is a human cost to playing politics with New Yorkers' livelihoods. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans once again put political interests over the people's interests," Sampson wrote. "It is deeply disturbing thousands of New Yorkers will lose their jobs because so few Senate Republicans had the courage to fulfill their duty as elected officials."

The betting locations were initially expected to close at the end of business on Friday, but the company's board of directors voted to keep the business operational until this afternoon's final decision.

While the closure is set to put between 800 and 1,000 NYC-OTB employees out of work, over 35,000 people involved in the horse-racing industry are expected to be affected.

"From the tellers and clerks in New York City, to the breeders, farmers, and track workers Upstate and on Long Island, the closure of New York City OTB will have a devastating impact on communities across the state," Sampson wrote.

"I had hoped today's vote would be a break in the Albany logjam, but Senate Republicans rejected our call for bipartisanship just as they rejected those New Yorkers whose jobs are now lost."

Competitors, like New York Racing Association and Catskills-OTB, have already released ads urging users to switch to their service.

Senate Democrats stood behind Majority Leader John Sampson's unwillingness to pledge to bring gay marriage up for a vote in 2011 in a series of interviews today.

Many State Senate Dems gathered on the steps of City Hall for a press conference on hydro-fracking and they agreed with Sampson that it may make sense to hold off on marriage equality for the time being.

Sampson told Liz Benjamin recently that he would not commit to bringing gay marriage to the floor in 2011, and he’s angered gay advocates with his pledge to support all Senate Dems seeking reelection (that includes six who voted against the same-sex marriage bill, which killed it 38 to 24).

“I think John Sampson supports gay marriage,” State Senator Diane Savino told The Observer. But, she added,  “Bringing the vote to fail doesn’t make sense."

The Senate needs to have a better understanding of how the vote will go before bringing it to the table, Savino said.

“I think we need to elect more people willing to vote yes.”

State Senator Bill Perkins said that this is issue is key for him, but that the legislative process is not so simple.

“This is for me one of the single most important pieces of legislation,” he told The Observer.  “I would like to get this passed yesterday. 

But, “The legislative process is nuanced this way,” he said. “If you don’t have the vote, you might want to hold off. … You don’t retreat and throw it in the garbage, but you save it for another time that’s more opportune.”

“I’m frustrated,” Perkins said, who added, “I will defer to the strategic sense of the leadership.”

A Sampson spokesperson said in a recent statement to Capital Tonight that he is still a strong supporter of gay marriage: “There was and is support for marriage equality in our conference and Senator Sampson will not stop working until it becomes reality in New York,” the statement read.

And Liz Krueger, who has been a strong supporter, said on Tuesday that she didn’t want to see the cause damaged by another no vote.

“It is not a useful message for the movement,” she said of another potential vote against gay marriage. “I’d be thrilled to death … if my colleagues shifted their position,” she said, adding, “I want this bill passed as quickly as possible.” 

But without many more pro-marriage Democrats in the Senate, the current crop in the upper chamber of the New York legislature realized that rushing it may not be the way to go.

“I don’t think it is helpful,” Krueger said. 

slevin@observer.com

Earlier this week, City Hall reported that Sampson implored two of the state's leading gay rights groups,  The Empire State Pride Agenda and the Human Rights Campaign to remain neutral during the primaries. Sampson's entreaties were rebuffed, however.

And yesterday, Sampson told Liz Benjamin that he would not commit to bringing gay marriage to the floor in 2011. It was brought to the floor last year and was defeated, a rare occurence for a bill in Albany.

"We certainly want to ask him a few questions regarding the incumbent Senators he has been supporting," said Joe Hagelmann, president of the Stonewall Democratic Club. "We are focused on getting better Democrats into the New York State Senate. There is a lot of frustration with his continued support of some incumbents who in our opinion are some of the people that have to go."

Among the target list of incumbent Democrats that LGBT groups would like to dump include Shirley Huntley, Ruben Diaz, Sr., and Bill Stachowski. All three voted against the marriage bill last year.

"We would like to make it clear we are not happy with [Sampson's] donation of money and help to Huntley and we are not happy with his help for Ruben Diaz, Sr and frankly we are not going to be treated like we can be taken for granted," Hagelmann said.

And if a marriage bill is not brought back to the floor next year, Hagelmann said "That would be terribly upsetting."