Cheating New York Democrats pass 125 bills in three hours by counting a Republican as voting with them
July 1st, 2009 by Rightwing Czar at 2:12 pmAs state Democrats convened around noon to hold a one-party session, Republican Sen. Frank Padavan of Queens walked through the chamber on a hunt for the soda machine — a caffeine quest that would later result with him being tallied as voting with the Democrats.
Padavan reportedly claimed he was taking a short-cut to the members lounge, but the 31 Democrats seized the opportunity to count him as their 32 vote and unanimously passed 125 bills in three hours with Republicans absent — the latest attempt to break the three-week-old stalemate that has caused a power struggle in Albany.
In order for us to not believe the Democrats are a bunch of cheating scumbags in this situation, we’d have to believe that they didn’t know how many Democrats they currently had in the state Senate. How likely do you think it is for a party to unknowingly add an extra member to their head count? Slim chance, right? It’s even worse in this situation, though.
The Democrats didn’t have a comfortable majority where one extra member wouldn’t matter. In fact – they didn’t have a majority at all. There are exactly 31 Democrats and 31 Republicans. That one extra member was the key vote.
Even further, the 31 number was in every Democrats mind because one Senator just switched parties:
Democrats won a majority in New York’s state legislature in January following years of Republican control over the state Senate. But in an effort to toss power back to the GOP, two rebellious Democrats — Sen. Pedro Espada of the Bronx and Sen. Hiram Monserrate of Queens — switched parties June 8 to join the Republicans. Monserrate, however, has since rejoined the Democrats, creating a 31-31 stalemate in the Senate.
So yeah. Try and explain this one away like it was an “accident.” That’ll be believable.