The Yankees once had a player whose fielding lapses inspired a New York Post label that stuck to him like flypaper: Hector (What a Pair of Hands) Lopez. That was 50 years ago. But retro is fashionable. Thanks to the New York State Assembly and its shenanigans, there is reason to revive the sobriquet.
Clyde Haberman offers his take on the news.
The post-Labor Day workweek begins with leading figures in Albany facing investigations into the actions they took - or should have taken, but didn't - in the sexual haras sment scandal that cost Mr. Lopez his Assembly leadership position and forced him to resign as Brooklyn's Democratic political boss. A special prosecutor is looking into the matter. So is the state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which scheduled a meeting for Tuesday.
Those sober tidings cast a shadow over the state's delegation that is in Charlotte, N.C., for the purpose of renominating the Obama-Biden ticket at the Democratic National Convention.
Not that the news is all bad. On a positive note, the list of 380 or so state delegates doesn't reveal anyone known to be under indictment or recently released from prison. In New York politics, especially at the state level, that almost qualifies as impressive. Certainly, Mr. Lopez is not headed to Charlotte (which, for the record, was named for the wife of King George III, not for the dessert).
But the delegation does include a few people who are hardly unfamiliar with inve stigations. Among them are Democratic elders like Representative Charles B. Rangel. They also include figures whose actions, or non-actions, in the Lopez affair will be central to the inquiries.
Prominent among them are Eric T. Schneiderman, the state's attorney general, and Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller. And for sure let's not forget Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker. As the delegation's leader, the speaker will get to announce on the convention floor that New York - the Empire State, producer of presidents, the first capital of this great republic, home to both Wall Street and Main Street, and so on and so forth - casts its ballots for the present and next president of these United States, Barack Obama.
Back home, some watching this ritual may be more focused on the investigations into Mr. Silver's behavior. Is he the resolute scourge of sexual miscreants that he claims to be? Or is he, rather, Albany's Joe Paterno?
On Aug. 24, when h e stripped Mr. Lopez of his leadership role and its perks, the speaker said “the Assembly has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment.†But it wasn't the first time that female employees had accused Mr. Lopez of abusive behavior. In June, Mr. Silver had made a separate case go away by secretly agreeing to pay two women $103,080 in taxpayer money.
The reason for secrecy, he said, was to honor the women's request for privacy. Less understanding souls might reasonably conclude, though, that the payment amounted to hush money. If nothing else, it suggested that at one stage in this sordid business, Mr. Silver's tolerance of sexual misconduct was higher than zero. Perhaps investigators will be able to pinpoint the exact level: Was it 18-percent tolerance? Perhaps 43 percent?
Mind you, Vito (What a Pair of Hands) Lopez keeps insisting that he did nothing wrong. That, of course, explains why he agreed to paying off his former employees - tossi ng in $32,000 of his own on top of the $100,000-plus in the taxpayers' money - and why he quit as Democratic leader in Brooklyn. Sure, innocent people do things like that all the time.
Belatedly, Mr. Silver acknowledged that he'd made a mistake. He now also says that he asked Mr. Lopez to resign from the Assembly, only to get no satisfaction.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't alter the fact that his reflexive impulse was to not be transparent. Rather, it was to (1) dip into the public till to cover the tracks of a colleague accused of behaving disgracefully, and (2) keep the whole mess quiet. There's Albany for you. Investigators will no doubt look into how much responsibility, if any, must also be shared by the attorney general and by the comptroller, whose offices were consulted before the money was paid.
For voters and taxpayers, the ultimate question is whether this scandal changes the way Albany conducts business. Or does it keep doing the sa me old - livin' la Vito Lopez?
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