Billionaire businessman helped GOP take back Senate
Newsday
Long Island, NY
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/state/ny-stgoli1012861099jun09,0,3152684.story
ALBANY – In the end, it was Malcolm Smith’s BlackBerry that did him in.
Businessman Thomas Golisano, upset over tax and spending increases in the state budget, had journeyed to the Capitol in April to share with the Senate majority leader what he says were $1 billion worth of ideas for trimming costs. But Smith’s attention quickly strayed to his e-mail, where it stayed for the rest of the meeting, Golisano said.
“We felt we were talking to the wall,” the Paychex Inc. chairman and three-time Independence Party gubernatorial candidate said yesterday.
That’s when Golisano, the billionaire vagabond of New York politics who helped the Democrats take the Senate last fall, decided to help the Republicans take it back.
Within weeks, he would invite the GOP’s former majority leader, state Sen. Dean Skelos (R- Rockville Centre), to Rochester for a meeting with state Sens. George Maziarz (R-North Tonawanda) and Thomas Libous (R-Binghamton) that set the wheels in motion for Monday’s coup, Skelos said Tuesday.
Golisano, who moved from Rochester to Florida this year after Democrats temporarily raised the state income tax on high earners, has promised campaign money for those who carry out his reform agenda. That includes the two Democratic senators who broke ranks to join the Republicans, Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx – elected temporary president of the Senate Monday – and Hiram Monserrate of Queens.
Given the primary challenge the two Democrats can expect, that counts for a lot. But Golisano stressed that his political action committee, Responsible New York, “will be watching very carefully” to see if the new coalition keeps its promises.
He added his PAC will not bankroll legal bills for Espada, whose campaign finances are under investigation, or Monserrate, who has been indicted on felony assault charges. But he laughed off criticism of his building a takeover of the Senate on their support.
“The governor used drugs – what do you want from me?” Golisano asked, referring to Gov. David A. Paterson’s acknowledgment last year that he had tried cocaine and marijuana in his youth. “Half of Albany is under indictment.”
Outside the locked Senate chamber Tuesday, Golisano was as full of smiles as a proud new papa handing out cigars.
“Isn’t that wonderful?” he gushed, about the new rule giving all senators an equal share of member-item grant money. He is “especially delighted,” he said, by the new term limits for majority leaders.
Less delighted was Judith Simon, a Citizen Action member who bored into the crowd around Golisano Tuesday.
“You bought our democracy! How dare you do that? Go back to Florida and screw up their state!” she shouted. “You are a disgusting human being!”
If Golisano takes credit for working to foster the new coalition, Skelos made it clear he had already developed a quiet alliance with Espada as the contentious budget process unfolded.
“Every so often Pedro and I would look at each other and would either cross the aisle [to talk], roll our eyes or just shake our heads,” he said.