Back in February, Bouldin observed that this year may be the year of challenging the entrenched and out of touch political establishment in NYC. Bouldin focused primarily on Paul Newell's challenge of perhaps the most entrenched politician in New York State, Shelly Silver. I want to expand upon what Bouldin wrote by covering some other races as well.

There is no question that Paul Newell is going up against the biggest bully in NY State, something that takes considerable guts. Let me let Paul introduce himself to you (though he has already done so here on Daily Gotham several times):

Democrats Steve Harrison and Councilman Dominic Recchia Jr., candidates for the 13th Congressional District (Bay Ridge-Staten Island), are scheduled to speak at a forum in Bay Ridge on Monday, March 10 at 8:30 p.m., sponsored by the Brooklyn Democrats for Change. The candidates' forum will be at the Knights of Columbus-Thomas Dogan Council, 8122 Fifth Ave. It's their first forum together in their primary election contest to unseat Republican Congressman Vito Fossella in the November General Election. For further information, call (718) 619-5110

This could be your chance to confront Dominic Recchia on his seeming support for permanent bases in Iraq and his endorsement of an unqualified, homophopbe for a Brooklyn judge, and confront Steve Harrison for his past support of a Republican candidate.

On a warm summer day in July 2007. Jose Rivera (Bronx Democratic Chairman) and Joseph J. Savino (Bronx GOPee Leader) met for lunch at the Seashore restaurant on City Island in the Bronx. J.C. Polanco was also there. Over the course of this lunch the planning and plotting was being conspired on, since that John Ravitz was resigning as the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections in October 2007. So at this lunch Jay Savino told Jose that he will not run for the senate seat anymore, like he was really any threat and also that J.C. Polanco would not run against Jose’s daughter Naomi Rivera for her assembly seat, oh please. So with that in mind Jose agreed to make J.C. Polanco the commissioner at the Board of Elections for the representation of the Bronx republicans. And also Jay and J.C. needed Jose Rivera’s influence over Christine Quinn, speaker the New York City Council, because the past four applicants (including Savino himself) for the commissioner’s job were all turned down by Christine Quinn and the rest of city council.

Today I was able to make Senator John Edwards' policy speech on fighting terrorism at Pace University. This is my first time hearing Edwards in person and I will say I liked him. Again, I remain undecided among Edwards, Richardson and Obama, and remain happy with all the Dem candidates. But hearing Edwards today did boost my estimation of him.

Edwards' speech started just a tad flat and unconvincing. A few lines of it made me think he needed new speech writers. However, he rapidly moved into some real solid material. The first part struck two main themes: BOLD and smart.

BOLD as in a bold, new strategy to fight terrorism, breaking away from the out-dated, failed flailing of Bush.

Bold was the most repeated theme, with smart coming in second. As a combination it is a powerful shift from the current Bush failures which are neither bold, merely bullying, and about as far from smart as anyone can get.

The speech ended with a Kennedy-esque call to service, an "ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" moment calling on the young students of Pace to join in and face the challenges that the 21st century have thrown at us.

Steve Harrison is running for Congress against one of Bush's main Iraq War supporters, Vito Fossella. Vito has voted for the war at every opportunity and has helped to block Democratic attempts to discuss withdrawal.

We need a change. And Steve Harrison understands that. I learned this last year when I met him and we discussed the Iraq war.

One of the things I like about Steve Harrison is he understands what is at stake and how to stand up to the Republicans in Congress who have failed us on national security. For example, Steve Harrison put the Iraq war into almost perfect perspective. He gave credit for this perspective to one of his staff members, but it means a lot that he recognized the importance of this perspective.

Suppose for a moment Bush had not lied about Iraq. Let's suppose that Bush does bring stability and democracy to Iraq and the civil war that we are now stuck in calms down and we can pull out our troops. Would New York, after that, feel safer than you did just after 9/11?

This last week, Steve Harrison made his long anticipated anouncement (reported first on Daily Gotham as far as I am aware) that he would run for Congress against Bush Lap Dog, Vito Fosella in the NY-13 Congressional district. Make no mistake. This is big because in 2006 Harrison entered the race late and ran an almost strictly grassroots, shoestring campaiagn and by November was breathing down Fosella's sweaty neck.

This time Harrison is anouncing early and already fundraising. And this time, the DCCC is watching with a real eye towards getting involved. Vito Fossella, part of the Cheney/Bush Axis of Corruption, is scared.

To welcome Steve into the race, I want to repost what I wrote in 2006 after first meeting Steve Harrison at a New Democratic Majority meeting in Brooklyn. And let me be the first one to extend a new invitation to him to come by our meetings again this year...anytime!

The following was originally posted in 2006:

Last night I finally got to meet Steve Harrison at the Brooklyn meeting of New Democratic Majority. Steve Harrison is running for Congress against the extremely corrupt buddy of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, Vito Fossella...

Governor Cuomo had the great hall of Cooper Union in stitches yesterday with one of his famous extemporaneous speeches, prompted by the fact that the evening's featured speaker, John Edwards, was delayed by traffic.

Mario Cuomo at the Lincoln Lectern

As is the way of such things, the audience got an earful, including a polished critique of the Reagan years; a wonderful human being himself, the man, with some accomplishments, but also the cause of much that is wrong in America today, and the initiator of not one, but seven, one two three four five six seven, tax hikes. Mario Cuomo, as an aside, seems to be coming into his own as the elder statesman of New York Democrats; it's not an overstatement to say that waves of affection spilled over that stage.

The real meat, however, was in Cuomo's remarks on the Presidential race.

This Daily Kos diary is interesting, in how its author channels his/her frustration over the Iraq funding vote through both a very important insight and a completely useless cliche.

The cliche is that "we are, indeed, a one-party state in this country." It's a lazy sentiment driven by a cranky defeatism, and it demonstrates an unwillingness or inability to analyze, with competence, American politics as they actually function. The United States, for various reasons, has almost always had two large coalition parties, each vying against the other for overlapping constituencies, but each also veering out in various directions, sometimes with great thrust and surprising radicalism, and each party also contradicting itself with regularity. If anything, the American parties have in recent years arguably become more disciplined, more "party-like" in the European sense than ever before. In fact, that development is closely related to the current crisis.

The insight in theyrereal's diary is contained in this observation:

Who do the Democrats fear?

Do they fear us? Obviously no. Not one stinking bit.

Do they fear the American people in general? Same answer, only with laughter.

The diarist veers in the wrong direction with the next sentence, arguing that what the Democrats fear is something called "The Corporatocracy Gang of Which George Bush is the official Figurehead." Not that "coporatocracy" and "gang" are necessarily bad ways to describe the Bush administration. But the analysis is headed into the weeds. Let's bring it back on track.

The Sun reports today on rumors that Malcolm Smith might not necessarily become majority leader when the Democrats take the state Senate. We've heard rumblings to this effect for a while now, though of course nobody's willing to go on the record about it. The Sun's article highlights Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein as a possible replacement for Smith, which isn't surprising, given Klein's fundraising abilities and his effort to win the minority leader post last year. Klein denied any interest in a challenge, but take that for what you will.

According to the Sun, two things in particular may be undermining Smith's position:

[Democratic Senators] question Smith's decision to speak openly about his plans to lure various Senate Republicans to switch parties. No Republican this year has flipped, making Mr. Smith's threat seem premature and empty.

Mr. Smith was also criticized for initially agreeing to support a legislative pay raise bill proposed by Senate Republicans. The move infuriated both the governor and some of Mr. Smith's colleagues, particularly the marginal members, who did not want their names to be attached to the bill.

Under orders from Mr. Spitzer, Mr. Smith ended up opposing and ultimately derailing the pay raise measure, angering Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans who lost their ability to override the governor.

Governor Spitzer, in his keynote speech yesterday, told us that

it’s springtime for the Democratic Party. We are sweeping away some of the old rules in Albany … we’re beginning to see the fruits of our labor.

It takes a lot of labor to make New York State politics bear progressive fruit, but the governor was right. We’re seeing revitalized Democratic leadership that has brought new funding and fairness to our school system, jump-started a serious conversation about campaign finance reform – and a host of other desperately-needed reforms -- moved in favor of marriage equality, and begun a serious push, at long last, to take control of the state Senate.

The labor of the emerging New York progressive netroots is also bearing fruit. The state party’s new leadership has been both proactive and responsive in its outreach to the blogosphere; they did a terrific job making us a part of the spring meeting and we have every reason to believe that they’re committed to building a stronger relationship going forward. One of the neatest parts of yesterday’s experience was chatting with local electeds and party officials who stopped by to talk, often just to ask “what is a blog?” Considering that the wealth of a party is really in its vast network of grassroots activists and local-level candidates and officials, it’s a great thing every time we’re able to take another step forward in mutual understanding between that network and the netroots (and, of course, most of us in the netroots like to consider ourselves part of that network). We have a lot of work to do, on both sides, but so far so good.

At the same time, this developing relationship presents both the party and the netroots with certain challenges.