Republicans have lost their 40-year grip on the State Senate (30 to 32), the number of new Democratic voters has surged, and political observers have been left wondering: What's gone wrong with New York's once venerable GOP?
Andrew Eristoff, the Manhattan coordinator for the McCain campaign and a former Republican New York City councilman, wrote a scolding open letter to state Republicans yesterday that declared the state party had "ceased to exist as a viable political organization." "More than an embarrassment, the Republican Party's self-immolation is a disservice to all New Yorkers regardless of party affiliation," Eristoff wrote, admonishing his allies to rebuild the GOP from the ground up.
State Republican officials shrug off the defeat as a one-time setback, arguing Democrats rode the broad coattails of popular President-elect Barack Obama. But other longtime political observers say strategic errors and tactical missteps have caused the GOP to lose both on Long Island and statewide.
"It's hard to make a cut-and-dried judgment that it was Obama's coattails," said William T. Cunningham, a Democrat and former aide to Gov. Hugh Carey. "Maybe in one or two districts." Rather, Cunningham said, the Republicans were hampered by consistently re-electing aging candidates like 82-year-old Sen. Caesar Trunzo (R-Brentwood) or 75-year-old Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Elmhurst). Both have served in the Senate for decades and both lost decisively to younger Democrats Tuesday. The GOP leadership, Cunningham said, has failed to groom younger candidates to rise through the ranks. "Part of being a manager, whether it is a baseball team or a political team, is finding and developing talent," Cunningham said.
Others said the Republicans' critical errors occurred at the grassroots. Stanley Klein, a C.W. Post political science professor and Republican committeeman in Dix Hills, said the party has suffered a painful lack of committeemen in Suffolk. He said more than half of the slots are unfilled in Brookhaven and Islip, the county's largest towns. "You depend on the committeemen to do the work of the party," Klein said of the volunteers who do everything from coordinating campaign events to gathering signatures that get candidates on ballots. "If you don't have foot soldiers, you don't win elections."
It's the fact that the Republican Party has overall become a pit of cronyism and corruption across the board. It is so bad it makes the democrats look not crooked. The Republican party is becoming rapidly the vote people cast so the other guy doesn't win, rather than the first choice.
But a spokesman for Joseph Mondello, who serves both as state and Nassau Republican chairman, insists the criticism of the recent losses is overblown. Anthony Santino cited wins for Nassau GOP incumbents as evidence of solid grassroots organizing and called complaints about losses from proven winners like Maltese and Trunzo "Monday morning quarterbacking." Santino called the losses "the result of an Obama tsunami that overwhelmed a lot of Republican candidates at every level. It's not something that portends a permanent shift."
Michael H. Drucker
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