How New York F*cked the Country: New York’s Unelected Leadership Void

Been a while since we hopped in the sack for a Quickie, Unf*ckers. This one is overdue from the midterms. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I was going to do it because the moment had passed. But news broke in the Times this week that put a fine point on this problem and refocused my hostility.

This one is a home game because it’s New York-centric and involves people I know well. And at the center of the shit storm is this guy:

“Let’s take a scenario, uh, very different, where David Duke—remember him? The Grand Wizard of the KKK? He moves to New York, he becomes a Democrat, and he runs for mayor in the City of Rochester, which has a low primary turnout, and he wins the Democratic line. I have to endorse David Duke? I don’t think so.” -Jay Jacobs, Chairman of the New York State Democratic Party

Old news. I know. But it's worth revisiting to set the table for this Quickie.

India Walton won the Buffalo Democratic mayoral primary in 2021. She lost the general election after receiving no support from the party in New York and was out-raised four-to-one as a result. State Democratic Party leader Jay Jacobs refused to endorse or fundraise for Walton because she wasn’t a Democrat. Even though she won the Democratic nomination. You see, her sin was referring to herself as a Democratic Socialist and running a primary.

So Jacobs said that this black female candidate who won a primary on the party line he represents… in the second largest city in the state he serves as chair… was no different than if David Duke, former leader of the KKK, had run as a Democrat and won. That’s the fella in charge of the party we’re going to talk about today.

As a refresher, Quickies are shorter than full Unf*ckings and focus on three different stories that all relate to a larger theme. One is essentially political malpractice. Another could be considered malfeasance. And the third is simply malodorous. Meaning it stinks like shit. So there’s our triumvirate of alliterative nonsense for today’s Quickie.

1. Malfeasance: The Talented Mr. Santos

You’ve probably heard about this one already. It’s made quite a sensation in the news. A rather stunning revelation came out in the New York Times recently about George Santos, the Congressman-elect for New York’s third district. Turns out he doesn’t really exist. He’s like a political avatar or deepfake of some kind. Meaning he lied about literally everything. Here are some highlights:

• He claims to have worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Neither company has a record of this.

• He said he graduated from Baruch College in 2010. Baruch has no record of him even attending.

• He claimed to have run an animal charity, but there’s no record of this either.

• He loaned his campaign $700,000, which would indicate he is rather well heeled. On this point, Santos said his occupation is running a family firm with $80 million in New York real estate, except there are no properties in the entire state listed as owned by him, his firm or a subsidiary.

• What we do know is that he was charged with theft in Brazil, but the case is unresolved because Santos never appeared for the summons and is now in the United States. And that this case occurred when he was purportedly attending college in New York.

• He was evicted twice from New York apartments, once in 2015 and again in 2017. And at his last official known place of employment in 2020, he disclosed a salary of $55,000. He left this employer and, according to the Times, “bounced around” before taking on a “new role as regional director of Harbor City Capital, a Florida-based investment company.” The only thing notable about Harbor was the SEC fraud lawsuit against it for running a Ponzi scheme.

• The company he said he owns, which paid him $750,000 and—let’s be generous here—presumably gave him the ability to lend his own campaign $700,000, has reportedly been dissolved.

• Oh, and the location he listed as a voter? No one at that address has ever heard of him.

Like I said, George Santos might not exist. This might be the fraudster of all fraudsters.

The seat that Santos won, quite handily I might add, is in New York’s 3rd Congressional District; a vacant seat that went up for grabs after Democrat Tom Suozzi retired from the seat to pursue a quixotic campaign for New York State governor. (For the second time, with the same result.)

The nomination from a packed field ultimately went to a local fixture in New York politics named Robert Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a nice fella. Pretty much a behind-the-scenes guy though, so he had almost no name recognition in the general election. And the lackluster effort put forward by New York Democrats ultimately delivered a Republican victory in the 3rd.

Which brings us to the larger story here.

New York. The supposed liberal bastion of the east coast. The home state of AOC. Where FDR hung his hat. New York State screwed the pooch on the midterms. How badly, you ask? Well, Wisconsin, Texas, Iowa, California, Oregon, Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee each lost one Democratic seat to a Republican. Arizona lost two and Florida—fucking Florida—lost three.

But New York? New York lost four fucking seats.

Four.

Four out of the five the Republicans needed to flip the House came from New York.

To understand how this happened, all we need to do is look at the Santos race.

The 3rd Congressional District is almost entirely within Nassau County, NY. It’s one of the most populous counties in America, with nearly 1.4 million residents. Nassau County and New York State Democrats have one thing in common. They share a chairperson. That dude from before, Jay Jacobs.

Ignore the fact that a county chairperson is also the state chair in a state as important to the Democratic Party as New York. One would think that this person would have a vested fucking interest in holding the congressional seat in their home county. And yet, we have to assume that this guy literally did no opposition research on a GOP candidate who might be the most criminally unqualified lying sack of shit to ever run for political office. No verifiable employment history. Lied about running a charity that doesn’t exist. He apparently doesn’t even have a fucking home. In fact, he might be on the lam for a crime in another country.

Now, onto the seats that were lost to Republicans. Four in all. The blame for this comes back to Jay Jacobs once again as the state chair of the Democratic Party. In a very specific way. And twice.

2. Malpractice: Absolute Power

New York is one of the trifecta states where Democrats control the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature. That was a long time in the making, and new in recent years. And herein lies the rub. The ironic thing about having a maniac like Andrew Cuomo as the chief executive of the state was that he served as the de facto leader because everyone was so fucking afraid of this guy.

Now we have Hhhhochul and Dems firmly in control of both the Senate and the Assembly in New York. So the party leader today actually has more influence than before. Needless to say, the cracks are showing since the “Prince of Darkness” left the building. (By the way, that was actually Cuomo’s nickname when his father was governor.)

So, over the past two years, the Democrats have lost a ton of ground in the party chair’s home county of Nassau. Republicans swept the county last year, winning both the county executive position and control of the legislature. Republicans also control the only three towns in the county.

Two ways of looking at this. One is that the suburbs have gone pretty red and Nassau County has a history of being deeply red at times, so it’s not all that surprising. On the other hand, if you’re in charge, then you should live and die by the numbers. Nevertheless, Jacobs persists.

So that’s some local yokel shit. The real political malpractice happened early in the year on the statewide level.

Here’s the upshot. Republicans in New York organized to promote changes to ballot measures in the state that alter the way districts are drawn. For some reason, the Democrats failed to mount a serious challenge despite being firmly in charge of the state. Instead, Jacobs left the drawing of a new statewide map to underlings who produced a map so fucking absurd that it was immediately thrown out by the courts early this year. The map essentially gerrymandered the state so badly, it would have theoretically delivered 22 of the state’s 27 Congressional districts to the Democrats. It was the ultimate hack job.

But here’s the even more bizarre part. When the maps were originally thrown out, the Democrats had an opportunity to cure and resubmit maps that were more balanced. Instead, they allowed the time to lapse, which triggered the appointment of a “special master” from outside of the state to independently draw new maps in a ridiculously short amount of time. Here’s how the Brennan Center reported it:

“After Judge Patrick McAllister struck down New York’s congressional and state senate maps at the end of March, he gave the legislature a window of opportunity to enact replacement maps. That’s not uncommon. The accepted rule in both federal and state courts is that if maps get struck down, the legislature or commission that drew the map should have the first shot at enacting a fix.”

Every step of the way, the Democrats fumbled the ball. Without the tight grip of Emperor Cuomo, the Democratic Party has been operating in complete disarray. One politician who hasn’t been holding her tongue on the issue delivered a scathing rebuke of Jacobs to The Intercept’s Ryan Grimm. Here’s AOC:

“You know, I can say: I’ve been in Congress for four years, I have never had a conversation with the New York State Democratic Party chair ever. In fact, he’s done nothing but attack progressive Democrats all across the state. What he has done is created an environment where the 'only,' quote unquote, or the 'main,' quote unquote, legitimate Democratic candidates worthy of support are those who fight both progressives and Republicans, which is clearly not a winning strategy, especially not in the state of New York. And so, when he has invested so much energy into demoralizing the grassroots and making sure that a lot of this grassroots energy gets busted up all across the state, of course we’re going to see these margins swing towards Republicans.”

The New York Times also reported on the fracture in the state party when the dust settled from the election this year. Several high profile Democrats throughout the state have called for Jacobs to resign from the state leadership position. But only Governor Hhhhhochul can make this happen, and she has signaled unbending support for Jacobs thus far. This, in the face of “more than 1,100 party leaders, local officials, organizations and individuals urging Gov. Kathy Hochul to replace Jay Jacobs as party chair,” according to the Times.

Instead of looking inward, the establishment Dems with Jacobs, such as New York City Mayor and resident weirdo Eric Adams, have doubled down and blamed the progressives for breaking apart the party. (As progressives, we’re getting pretty used to this.) Fighting for things like healthcare, child welfare, criminal justice reform and the environment has placed progressives at odds with the Democratic establishment. Presumably because they’re in favor of sickness, abusing children, keeping black people in jail and destroying the planet. That’s the logical assumption, right?

3. Malodorous: Judging by the Judges

Okay, a seriously quick quickie to round things out on the stench emanating from the Democratic Party in New York. This last bit is serious inside baseball that demonstrates the level of laziness and fuckery one finds when you dig into local politics.

No matter where you live in this great nation of ours, there are two political systems. You’ve got the big stuff that occupies the 24/7 news cycle and most of our brain space. The other is the real bare knuckle scuffle that is local politics. Honestly, I kind of miss it. There’s nothing like the hand-to-hand combat of local politics; and no matter where you go, everyone thinks their little place is different and special. Well, it’s not. In fact, I imagine you can substitute any of the local stories of corruption, careerism and indifference with any municipality to some degree.

So, this is a small example but an important one that illustrates how the NY Dems operate.

Actually, a quick anecdote before I get into this.

I’ve revealed that, back in the day, more than 20 years ago now, I was not only a Republican, but I ran and lost for a local office as one. And as my wife and I like to say, it was the best decision the voters made. Anyway, in my very first GOP meeting with all of the candidates on the slate that year, the chairman rose to speak after a brief introduction and proceeded to fucking light into every one of us. “This is a business,” he screamed over and over until he was red in the face and made his point. The message was to check your ideology at the door, and if you had any thoughts of coloring outside of the lines, think again. The only thing that mattered was jobs. You win the election, you get the jobs. Pretty simple math.

So, a funny thing happened when I went to vote this year. For the first time ever, every judicial candidate for the county Supreme Court was the same. Every one. Choose six from the following six. Working Families, Democratic, Independent, Republican, Conservative. All the same.

I’ve seen cross-endorsements before, but this was fucking batz. So, I spoke to a few friends who were close to the selection and endorsement process to ask what the fuck happened. The long and short of it is that the Democrats had been trying to make this arrangement for years, and the Republicans finally came around to it because it would save everyone money running campaigns for judgeships. Basically, a de facto election before the election made in a backroom deal.

Some friends of mine argued that these should be appointments anyway and that at least these are qualified candidates because they were vetted on both sides and agreed to. And, you know, these particular judges only make about 200 grand a year so it’s hard to find good people to fill the seats. Only $200,000. I’ll let that sink in for a second.

Anyway, here’s the amazing deal the Democrats netted themselves. One judge is a true Democrat who might very well have lost in the suburban Republican wave. In order to secure that spot, here’s the profile of the next five.

• One is a former prosecutor from another county that a watchdog group called, “one of the most conservative justices currently serving on the appellate bench, with a judicial record that is deeply hostile to criminal defendants and includes an anti-abortion decision and an anti-union decision that contradicted Court of Appeals precedent.”

• Another is a former Republican legislator from another county.

• Another is the former Conservative Party chairman from another county.

• Another is a career Republican judge that most people actually really like.

• And the last of the slate is the daughter of the local GOP chairman.

That’s what a backroom deal looks like. And it was negotiated by Jay Jacobs, who thinks it was a good deal.

And so, there you have it. Apologies to the Biden administration and every Democrat around the country that was in a position to actually maintain control of the House in addition to gains in the Senate. It would have been the ultimate rebuke of the Republicans, and instead we have two years of intractability to look forward to, in addition to the entire country becoming all too familiar with Hunter Biden’s dick.

Incompetence, thy name is Jacobs.

Here endeth the Quickie.