And meanwhile, the state Democratic Party is struggling to raise money, attract staff and take what should be its rightful place as the dominant political force in the state.
So far this election cycle, the party has been recognized for what it is not doing: sounding off on this year’s New York City mayor’s race, claiming to be unable to get involved while a primary is underway. But that has not stopped the party’s acting executive director from pulling in her $15,000 per month salary, as visible on Federal Election Commission disclosures, while also serving as a campaign manager and consultant for two candidates in heavily contested primaries.
Chung Seto, a political consultant who was the executive director from 2001-2005, returned to what was supposed to be a temporary position last May. Brought in with former Hillary Clinton top aide Karen Persichilli Keogh, Seto was hired to conduct a review of operations in the aftermath of David Paterson’s ascension as governor. When the audit was completed at the beginning of 2009, Keogh moved on—and is now a consultant to Michael Bloomberg’s re-election campaign and Kirsten Gillibrand—but Seto stayed, though her hiring as acting executive director was never formally announced.
At approximately the same time, the relationships between Ryan Toohey of Global Strategy Group, who had been advising day-to-day operations and Cindy Darrison, who had been fundraising for Paterson and the state party, ended.
During this same period, Seto also drew a monthly rate of $6,500 plus other expenses advising the campaign of John Liu, racking up a total of $107,467.77 from May 2008 through the latest city campaign finance filing. Liu was initially running for public advocate during this time, but is now running for comptroller in a four-way field.
Seto was Liu’s campaign manager through the spring of this year, and while her title has now switched to consultant, she continues to draw the same rate. At the same time, she was also fundraising for Alan Gerson, who is locked in his own five-way race to defend his Council seat, earning $7,802.11 for her efforts.
Asked about Seto’s double duty in August, Liu smiled and called her “a renaissance woman.” Liu campaign spokeswoman Juanita Scarlett sent a statement explaining that Seto’s work for the state party “has no impact on her consulting work for the Liu campaign.” And Seto herself emailed a statement which had been vetted by the party general counsel explaining that the state party’s “by-laws do not say anything about participation in party primaries,” explaining further, that state law “does not forbid a party from endorsing a candidate in a primary, which the State Party does all the time through its designations and which the U.S. Supreme Court has held is a constitutionally protected right.”
Seto cited this same reasoning to explain her decision to send an email to the state party list boosting Gillibrand in the early spring, though there were up to four Democratic members of Congress at the time at various stages of preparing to take her on in a Senate primary. Seto overruled internal concerns about getting involved at that moment, and said in a recent interview that she had sent the email on a request from the Gillibrand campaign. Notably, Gillibrand's campaign committee has been one of the main donors to the party amid a period of paltry overall fundraising.
(Democratic Party deputy director Edgar Santana has also made his feelings known regarding two upcoming primaries, circulating invitations to events for Liu and public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio.)
This logic, though, seems to contradict what has become the refrain from state party officials in explaining the lack of active State Democratic Party support for Bill Thompson’s mayoral campaign: that there is still a primary underway, preventing the party from getting involved yet.
As to how she can keep running the day-to-day operations of the state Democratic Party separate from helping two Democratic candidates win primaries, Seto in an email compared her position to people in the past who have been both consultants and communications or political directors for the organization, referring to her situation as “far from unique.” She added that she conducts her consulting work “without use of state party resources and with an operational firewall.”
In a follow-up conversation, Seto said there is no official policy in place to ensure her work stays separate.
“No, no. It’s myself,” she said. “It’s what I, in agreeing to the position, have put myself above what others might do in the position. I have instituted specific operational firewalls.”
Seto did not,
however, to point to any specifics when asked repeatedly, though she said she is careful to use her
own laptop and printer when in the state party offices to avoid having any
state party resources being used on behalf of her clients.
“I really hold myself in high regard to make sure that the firewall stays in place and in a manner that stays true to my professionalism,” she said. “That wasn’t asked of me, it was not required as part of my job. I did that.”
Seto was
also unable to specify her job responsibilities despite repeated requests to do so. While several people recall
Seto as an infrequent presence at the offices, she says she is usually there
two days per week, and is in constant contact by phone, email and fax
otherwise, referring to her job as “24/7.” She said she participates in a morning
phone call with staff, as well as occasionally advising decisions, checking to
make sure others have called donors and getting bills paid.
Initially, she said that “the staff takes direction from me as the executive director,” but when asked about decisions the staff has made, Seto referred questions to outgoing state party chair June O’Neill.
“This is not an institution that says that because I’m the executive director or acting executive director, interim executive director, that I drive the policies, that I drive the work,” Seto said. “We have a collaborative process. We have a state chair who sits on top of the organizational chart.”
O’Neill said that she had not previously heard any questions about Seto’s working for both the party and for primary candidates. Nor did she seem to be aware of any official firewalls or policies being in place—though after talking with Seto, O’Neill reiterated that Seto uses her own computer while at the state party headquarters.
Nonetheless, O’Neill held to the line about the state party refusing to support Thompson in the mayoral race to date, even when reminded that during the summer of 2005, the state party was silent in the four-way primary but still incessantly attacked Bloomberg, O’Neill said she was unfamiliar with those decisions. (The man behind many of the party’s 2005 attack lines, Howard Wolfson, is now the Bloomberg ’09 communications director.) O’Neill said she has been directing the party to stay out of the mayoral race so far based on her understanding of the rules.
“There’s a primary,” she said. “Whether people think they know what the outcome is going to be, there is in fact a Democratic primary. And once the Democratic primary is over, we will be behind the Democratic nominee.”
As for what some might see as a contradiction between that and Seto’s work for primary candidates, O’Neill said, “this is America. People can do what they do.”
What people are not doing in any significant numbers is giving money to the State Democratic Party or continuing to work for it.
After reaching a recent height during the 2006 elections, when Clinton used the party as a resource for her Senate re-election campaign and Democrats took control of every statewide office for the first time in half a century, the party has fallen on tough times. Fundraising has slowed to a dribble. Staff has departed. Efforts to explore new methods of voter engagement have mostly ceased. Confidence has been lost. Despite having an acting executive director and chair, people feel that the party is adrift without leadership.
Meanwhile, Seto has gotten a $4,000 per month raise from her rate last year, with a new rate that puts her on track to earn $180,000 over the course of the year. O’Neill has gotten a raise of just over $1,000 per month, lifting her to a rate equivalent to a $79,700 annual salary.
They have
also spent tens of thousands of dollars on outside fundraising expenses, and
racked up bills at some of the city’s chintzier restaurants, several bars and
regular stops at McDonald’s, among other places. Between those, office rentals in Albany and
Manhattan, and salaries for the very few employees who remain, the party’s
spending is outpacing what remains in its bank accounts—as of the last state
filing July, there was only $77,173.63 left in the main account and another
$85,810.88 in the housekeeping account, with just another $148,572.80 in the
federal account reported at the end of August, for a total of $311,557.31. Seto
and O’Neill alone are set to make over $250,000 combined this year. 
Finances aside, things are in good shape, O’Neill said, citing the party’s special election win record since she took over as co-chair (originally, Eliot Spitzer installed Dave Pollak as co-chair when he became governor, but Pollak left shortly after Spitzer resigned and O’Neill has continued solo). Indeed, of the 16 special elections for Congress, State Senate and Assembly in the last two and a half years, Democrats have won 15. She said the lack of money in the bank is how things should be: all the money that has come in has been used to help power Democratic victories. And the bad economy has not helped either.
Yet the result is a party that lacks the money to build its staff in preparation for next year’s elections. Multiple people familiar with the situation described the state party using terms like “disaster,” or somewhat saltier language.
Incoming party chair Jay Jacobs, who is expected to be officially elected at the state committee meeting set for the end of September in Buffalo, said those assessments are premature.
“I wouldn’t use the word disaster until the day after the election in 2010, if things don’t go well. Then I might use the word disaster,” he said.
But he admitted that the situation is far from rosy.
“Are we flying a plane that doesn’t have all engines operating at the moment? Yes, that’s true. Are there mountains looming in the distance? That may also be true,” Jacobs said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be able to gain altitude soon and we’re going to clear those mountains.”
Jacobs is confident both that Paterson will recover in the polls going into next year’s election and that the governor will help lead the party back to its former heights. But Paterson, many say, is one of the main problems that the organization has been facing. Traditionally, state parties are strong when the governor is strong, and Paterson has not been strong for some time. Far from the days when Spitzer was governor and people assumed that they were ingratiating themselves to a future president of the United States by helping the party, many donors have been reluctant to hitch their wagons to Paterson.
And while Paterson and former top aide Charles O’Byrne did quickly get involved with state party business in the time immediately after he became governor, as the business of governing has gotten more complicated, many have seen him recede, necessarily, from the politicking to tend to things like the budget crisis and the State Senate coup.
Paterson political spokeswoman Tracy Sefl disputed the idea that the State Party has suffered because of the governor’s attention being diverted elsewhere, arguing that he is “certainly providing input and empowering decisions to be made.”
Sefl gave Paterson credit for helping mastermind the strategies that have helped win the special elections on his watch, such as Scott Murphy’s retaining of Gillibrand’s former House seat.
“That’s where you see the payoff,” Sefl said, rejecting the idea that the governor’s lack of constant oversight of operations reflects a lack of engagement. “The governor’s not like, ‘Okay, we have to have twice-daily conference calls.’ The reality is that he’s giving direction.”
Paterson’s
interest in building up the state party to buttress him through next year’s
election, according to Sefl, is evident in his selection of Jacobs to replace
O’Neill as state party chair after a months-long search that, according to
sources with knowledge of the process, included conversations with several
others who passed on the opportunity to take the helm. Jacobs, though, comes
into the job after serving as the finance chair for the party and as the
executive director of the Nassau County Democratic Party, where he had immense
fundraising success and helped engineer historic victories for the county
executive’s office and a majority in the county legislature. 
Jacobs has made clear that his main focus as state chair will be raising money so that he will be able to pay for new staff. He conducted interviews for a new communications director throughout the summer, and hopes to have a new executive director in place before Seto’s contract is up in December. Field staff, pollsters and other campaign experts will be added to the payroll as well, he said, provided he can put together the money for their salaries.
“In the past, the New York State Democratic Party, not unlike other state parties, has been very reliant on outsourcing to consultants,” Jacobs said. “I find that to be both expensive and a little difficult to manage in terms of results.”
Meanwhile, state party headquarters is increasingly quiet and tense. Like many state parties and Democratic organizations, the New York State Democratic Party has a history of dysfunction, though by many reports, things appear to have reached new depths. A good number of operatives and elected officials try to avoid going to the headquarters on Park Avenue South, using words like “toxic environment” when talking about the two-floor suite connected by a spiral staircase. Offices are empty, with the few employees who remain generally working behind closed doors. From the outside, people complain of a lack of direction from those in charge and worry about so much power, with so much of an influence on their political futures, being concentrated in such a small group of decision makers.
Besides a weekly “New York Dems In Action” email regurgitating some of the latest press releases from statewide officials that usually goes out late Friday afternoon, after most people have stopped paying attention, there is no public presence.
Internally, there have been fights over checks being signed, such as those for the $89,000 reception the state party hosted in Denver at the Democratic National Convention, and externally, there has been a feeling the governor’s own political worries are forcing him to cast aside concerns for anything but his own re-election.
What political work is being done by a Democratic organization seems to be coming out of the Democratic State Campaign Committee (DSCC), which is preparing for its long-planned move to separate offices. With the most widespread political worries going into next year’s elections as the conference looks to hold and expand its thin State Senate majority, the DSCC has been active in a range of local elections, like the race to replace Brian Foley as Brookhaven town supervisor, which deprived the Suffolk GOP of a regained foothold. Rather than the state party engaging in this sort of traditional party building, DSCC staff fueled by DSCC money are doing the work to sow the seeds in the hopes of reaping victories next for their own members.
Democratic senators were already angry at the governor over their feeling that he abandoned them during the coup, and being left on their own by the party going into this fall’s elections has not helped—state party leaders boast about the Senate majority, Senate sources gripe, but they are nowhere to be found for contributing the resources or finances to support it.
“They should be daddy,” lamented one Senate Democratic staffer, “but instead they’re the freeloader on your couch.”
When Hiram Monserrate and Pedro Espada stood with Republicans on June 8 in the coup to elect Dean Skelos majority leader of the State Senate, WFP deputy director Bill Lipton was walking the hallways outside. Throughout the lobbying effort to bring back first Monserrate and then Espada to the fold, Lipton remained on scene in the Capitol, joined at points by WFP executive director Dan Cantor. Bob Master, the chair of the WFP, worked the phones. Democrats saw and heard from them regularly.
O’Neill was in a hospital in the North Country, recovering from surgery. Seto was far from Albany. As the governor raged against the State Senate, often railing against the Senate Democrats and even openly congratulating Republicans on their return to power, the people in charge of the state party were nowhere to be found.
Not that the Democrats would have had much sway. For years, the Democratic Party has ceded the bulk of political operations to the WFP, allowing the organization to accumulate increasing power over the rank-and-file and the other members they have helped catapult into the majority.
The WFP has never been shy about its intentions. Writing last May on the blog Open Left, Cantor put the party’s mission in simple terms: “I think it’s fair to say that the very reason for the 1998 formation of the WFP was to counter what we saw as the rightward drift of the Democratic Party.”
In the years since, the WFP has used its multiple millions of dollars in funding from most of New York’s most powerful unions and the quirks of fusion voting to become the state’s most powerful political force. More than serving as a weight on the Democratic Party, the WFP has supplanted it just at the moment when history and demographics should be making the Democrats supreme.
Part of this is a result of skill: media, messaging and field operations can often prove the difference in elections, and the WFP has filled its ranks with experts in each of these categories.
In a state without the fusion voting provision which gave the WFP its foothold or with a more robust Democratic Party, most of these people would probably be working for the Democrats. Some of them already have: Jonathan Berlin and Valerie Rosen did before leaving to form their communications strategy firm that works closely with the WFP and its candidates, and employ, among others, former state party communications director Blake Zeff, who left initially for jobs in the presidential race; Doug Forand, Nathan Smith and Marc Lapidus did before leaving to form Red Horse Strategies, which also generally works closely with the WFP and its candidates.
Meanwhile, over at the Bloomberg campaign, Keogh is a consultant, Wolfson is the communications director and Adam Riff, a top state party staffer who briefly served as interim executive director, is handling LGBT outreach.
If you want to get ahead in politics, goes the old joke, first thing, leave New York. The updated version for operatives is not too far off: if you want to get ahead in politics in New York, first thing, leave the Democratic Party.
(The only recently departed top operative currently working directly for a Democratic campaign is Carly Lindauer, the party’s last communications director, and currently the Thompson 2009 campaign’s.)
Taking advantage of Democratic sluggishness and standard dissatisfaction with the two-party system over the last decade, the WFP has established itself as the premier force in New York politics. True, its endorsements are largely decided by union leaders who are each watching out for their own members’ interests, but by presenting the mission as furthering social justice and pursuing high-minded values, its operatives have created an image in many people’s minds that has enabled it to become known as what many candidates call “the progressive Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”
This has been helped along by the imprimatur New York Times editorial board, which has echoed the general approval, much to the WFP’s delight. Dependably wary of political machines and willing to let connections to the ones in Harlem, Brooklyn or Queens stand in the way of endorsements, in this year’s races, the newspaper is supporting most of the WFP priority candidates, largely without reference to the political behemoth that the WFP has built.
The WFP image in the popular imagination combined with the WFP’s campaign expertise, union backing and popular conception has proved potent. Several New York City Council members and state senators already owe their victories in large part to the WFP, as does Albany District Attorney David Soares. Taking advantage of the Democratic State Party’s tough times and its willingness to shop out operations, the WFP has become the deciding factor in many competitive races.
The WFP influence is perhaps greatest, though, in New York City races, which not only involve a more left-leaning electorate but also, because they are overwhelmingly determined by primaries, are officially avoided by the state party. The WFP has stepped into that vacuum with heavy feet. Its endorsement alone can prove a determining factor in races, and having its organizational and ground support can quickly turn candidates into powerful forces. Witness last fall, when Council Members Bill de Blasio, John Liu and Jessica Lappin suddenly expressed late interest in the New York City public advocate race: de Blasio, who was involved in the founding of the WFP and has remained a close ally, was immediately a serious contender on the assumption of WFP support. Liu was eventually influenced to switch to the comptroller race in part after assurances that he would not receive the WFP backing for advocate but might be looked kindly on in the comptroller’s race, in which he now has WFP support and a leg up in the polls. Lappin, meanwhile, had trouble fundraising and gaining traction at such a late stage in the cycle, and ultimately opted to run for re-election to the Council instead. There were other reasons behind all three decisions as well, but the WFP’s influence was clearly a strong factor.
The state Democratic Party was not a factor.
Nor was it a factor last year, when two challengers lined up to take on Shelly Silver.
In another time, and probably in just about any other state, the incumbent speaker of the Assembly would turn to the state party to take care of protecting him. The troops would have been at the ready, and would have poured into the district like an invasion, working the phones, knocking on doors and powering New York’s senior Democratic leader to an easy win.
Instead, Silver turned to the WFP to provide much of the manpower, BerlinRosen to handle his communications consulting and the United Federation of Teachers to provide the space for his victory party. He paid nothing for the WFP help, but sent a total of $61,000 to BerlinRosen over the course of the year (and another $35,000 in March 2009). The UFT got $9,636 from Silver to cover the costs of the party.
Instead of owing a debt of gratitude to the state party or to Paterson for helping him keep the dissent in his district to one-third of the primary vote, Silver owes it to the WFP.
Politically, the consequences of a hobbled state Democratic Party will be easy to measure: either Democratic candidates will win tight elections, or, as a number of handwringing senior party members fear, they will not. Either Paterson will hold onto his office if he does indeed push through to a primary, or he will not.
If the state party is able to pull off this feat, it will do so just barely, even the most optimistic Democratic boosters admit.
Jacobs, after all, needed five years to turn things around for Democrats in Nassau. He acknowledges how much more pressure is on him coming in now.
“We just don’t have that kind of time here. We’re going to have to see some substantive results by the 2010 election,” he said. “It’s a heavy lift, given resources and time and people and organization.”
In terms of policy, though, the consequences are already apparent. As the Democratic Party has developed into a desiccated, hollow shell and the WFP has taken its place as the decisive force in elections, it has also been able to flex that muscle in becoming the decisive force in determining the agenda for Albany under Democratic control. The complaints of marginal state senators—most of them moderates from suburban districts—that adhering to this agenda will endanger them and the Democratic majority have fallen on mostly deaf ears.
While true, the coup was precipitated in large part by the WFP’s aggressive, impatient forcing of the conference to move on issues including the millionaire’s tax, Rockefeller drug law reform and vacancy decontrol, the WFP was nonetheless a force most Democrats feared crossing, lest they endanger their seats. The implicit lessons of Marty Connor and Kevin Parker from the 2008 primaries ring clearly in senators’ ears: cross the WFP and its operatives will usher you out of office; play along and they will defend you even against powerful forces.
And in its
current condition, the state Democratic Party has not been able to act as a
counterweight, making the case for gradual progress to slowly entrench the
majority. With all the turmoil, the Democratic leadership has not been there to rally its own ranks.
The WFP has shown no sign of backing off its relentless push for other legislative victories. But some Democratic senators are beginning to push back, saying the WFP has won enough battles for now.
“They’ve accomplished significant goals,” said one. “That’s it. You can’t keep going back to the well. These are things that as Democrats we’re going to have to go out and sell.”
However much they may need the WFP support in place of Democratic Party support on Election Day 2010, Democratic senators warn that the relationship between now and then on legislation is at risk of breaking down.
“They need to start picking and choosing their battles on a smaller basis,” the Democratic senator said. “They’re at the point now where there’s the potential for them to overreach. They certainly have angered a number of Senate Democrats with their whole viewpoint.”
With the WFP strongly putting its weight behind so many candidates in city elections this year, there are political observers wondering how, if they succeed, the WFP push for its agenda will refract into municipal policy come next year. Most city elected officials are already about as far to the left on the political spectrum as successful candidates in America can be, but successes in these races could give the WFP as much of a voice in city politics as it has already proven to have in Albany. That would only further establish the WFP as the pre-eminent political force in New York, with the Democratic Party in turn left deeper out in the wilderness.
But still, Democrats hold out hope for a resurgence, and with new staff and money in place, more of a role in the mayor’s race, city affairs and Albany as well. To do that, they are counting on Jacobs to make the state Democratic Party the main force in elections again.
And, he insists, that is definitely his plan.
“It still is the obligation of the Democratic Party to be the primary source for the field work, the GOTV, the voter file management and other aspects of the political science that we talk about in terms of electing officials,” Jacobs said. “We’re supposed to have that role, we should do that, and we will be building the party to that end.”
Cindy Darrison, the former state party fundraiser, expressed faith in Jacobs’ ability to make this happen.
“In 1995, Judith Hope became the chair of the state party. She had to borrow a desk in Denny Farrell’s county office and the party was in debt. She sat down with a phone list, I organized a fundraiser, and she built the party up to be able to achieve Democratic victories on a statewide basis,” Darrison said. “We have a great party here in New York, we have great voter registration advantages. I am optimistic about what Jay Jacobs can achieve.”
Noting that Jacobs is from Nassau and Hope was from Suffolk, Darrison joked, “Maybe it’s the Long Island charm.”
Until that day comes, if it does, people will have to live with the results of a Democratic Party in disarray.
“Is it a bad thing?” one Democrat wondered. “It is what it is. We don’t know what we’re missing.”
