Espada flexes muscle in Albany coup d'etat

By N. Clark Judd

Pedro Espada Jr. has been known to fight above his weight class.

A former boxer who grew up in the Bronx with the help of public assistance, he fought his way to prominence and a six-figure salary as head of a network of health clinics. He’s repeatedly fought off allegations that he used money from those health clinics to further his political ambitions, though he is reportedly being investigated again.

His last loss came in 2002, when Ruben Diaz Sr. took his Soundview state Senate seat. But last year, facing indicted Sen. Efrain Gonzalez Jr. for the right to represent parts of Fieldston, Riverdale and Kingsbridge, as well as most of the West Bronx, he fought his way back to Albany.

On Monday, he stepped into the ring again. And again, he won.

Mr. Espada was the fulcrum of a power play, several weeks in the making, which overthrew the Democratic leadership in the state Senate. With another Democrat, Hiram Monserrate, he joined the Republican bloc in a vote to replace Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith with Republican Dean Skelos.

Those 32 senators then voted Mr. Espada in as the president pro tempore.

Democrats in Albany say Mr. Espada has dashed hopes for issues like increased protection for tenants and the rights of New Yorkers to marry people of their same gender. Mr. Espada and his new Republican allies, on the other hand, say that Democrats failed to deliver promised reforms — and that in a new Albany they are shaping, power will no longer be held in the vice-like grip of legislative leaders.

“You already saw the difference in having a Democratic Senate … in terms of the bottle law, the Rockefeller law,” said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the Riverdale/ Kingsbridge area.

All the legislation Mr. Dinowitz had hoped to have signed into law before the legislative session ends in two weeks, he said, he will now write off as impossible to pass.

Mr. Espada pledges that this is not the case, and adds that a slate of rules reforms the Republicans and their two Democratic colleagues passed Monday drastically changes the definition of the state Senate leadership.

Under the new rules, at least one third of the members of every committee will be members of the minority party, and the minority will be represented proportionally on every committee as of mid-July. Similarly, every member will get the same base amount of money for staff.

But the rules also give Mr. Espada tremendous power.

As president, Mr. Espada will pick state Senate staff, and together with a presumably Republican vice president, he is tasked with picking the committee chairs.

“Yesterday’s reforms are real, the bipartisanship, framework is real, and I hope for really great things to come out of it,” Mr. Espada said Tuesday.

Reform was the purported motive of the overthrow’s engineer, billionaire state Independence Party founding member Tom Golisano.

To get the changes to the state Senate that he wanted — taking power from the majority leader and distributing it among the members — he turned to Mr. Espada and Mr. Monserrate, a former city policeman who now stands accused of slashing his girlfriend last December with a broken glass.

Deposed Democratic leader Malcolm Smith on Monday called the overthrow itself illegal, saying the vote to replace him as leader took place after legislative session had been adjourned.

It’s unclear if his position carries any weight.

It is similarly unclear if Mr. Espada’s motives were entirely as high-minded as Mr. Golisano’s claims his to be. On Tuesday, he said at least one failure that has garnered him considerable criticism — failure to establish an office in his district — was Mr. Smith’s fault.

Mr. Smith’s staff had not correctly handled his lease at 400 E. Fordham Road, Mr. Espada said, part of what he called a pattern of poor leadership and a lack of transparency. A spokesman for Mr. Smith has disputed those claims.

“I was paying for, and by extension the people in my district were paying for, the kind of accountability I demanded from Malcolm Smith,” Mr. Espada said.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Espada have things in common. Both share an affinity for fine clothing; Mr. Espada is rarely seen outside of a three-piece suit, and Mr. Smith can identify a Brooks Brothers tie on sight.

Adversarial relationship

But they’ve been apparent adversaries since last winter, when Mr. Espada started jockeying for a high-ranking post in the state Senate leadership. Before Monday, he had apparently settled for vice president for urban policy.

Over the winter, he nearly extracted the president pro tempore position from Mr. Smith, but the then-majority leader was forced to retract that deal when his conference cried foul.

After mounting pressure from the press, Mr. Smith publicly called out Mr. Espada for his years of incorrectly or incompletely filed campaign finance disclosures and the tens of thousands of dollars he owes in fines as a result.

He later said he was placated when Mr. Espada made a token down payment on fines owed to the state and established a new campaign committee to properly record future disclosures.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Mr. Smith’s office also prevented Mr. Espada from giving about $2 million in member-item money to organizations connected to his own business. Mr. Espada is quoted as saying there was nothing wrong with the requests.

For Mr. Espada, allegations of campaign misconduct aren’t new: Members of the staff at his Soundview Health Care Network pled guilty to spending tens of thousands of dollars meant for AIDS programs on his 2001 borough president campaign. He was acquitted in a similar, previous case.

Mr. Espada’s willingness to tag-team with the Republicans, which he demonstrated when he represented Soundview, has always worried Bronx Democrats. Mr. Dinowitz, the Riverdale/ Kingsbridge assemblyman, supported the incumbent Mr. Gonzalez even though the lawmaker had been indicted for stealing taxpayer money. Mr. Gonzalez pleaded guilty earlier this year to related mail fraud charges.

“[Mr. Gonzalez] would have been returned to office and he would have lost his job,” Mr. Dinowitz said. “And we would have had neither Efrain Gonzalez Jr. nor Pedro Espada.”

When last in office, Mr. Espada sided with the Republicans to get access to more member-item money.

By siding with Mr. Golisano on Monday and signing on to the billionaire’s reforms, Mr. Espada obtained the title he seems to have always wanted.

“My colleagues have recognized and identified my leadership expertise,” Mr. Espada said. “So this is not something that I have imagined, I have made up; 31 senators voted for me, along with obviously my own vote, to make me president of the Senate.”

It may not be clear if reform was always on Mr. Espada’s agenda, or even if he will deliver the Democratic platform he has promised.

But one thing is certain: Since his return to Albany, Pedro Espada the fighter remains undefeated.