Now Sweeney and King don’t have much to worry about in voting for the DeLay rule. Sweeney’s secure and popular, and nobody thinks King — who hangs out with Jack Newfield, for God’s sake — is in the pocket of Republican leadership.
” I don’t even get along with DeLay,” King told me.
But Vito’s got a problem, the first in a line of problems the Democrats are going to make for potentially vulnerable Republican members. He won an unexpectedly close victory against an energetic, underfinanced, imperfect challenger this year, and many expect a better-organized candidate– newly minted Senator Diane Savino? — to mount a real challenge in 2006. Now if the Republicans were able to turn the meek Tom Daschle into a bogeyman, it’s no stretch to think that Vito’s loyalty to the Hammer — remember that cruise ship? — could cost him more than a few votes.
But we still don’t know how he voted, and since it was a voice vote, only he can tell us.
