For voters in the 15th State Senate District, the choice is like apples or apples.--In the battle for the New York State Senate seat, voters will choose between two affable, hard-working and experienced centrist candidates: State Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Glendale), the 20-year incumbent and former Queens assistant district attorney, and Joe Addabbo (D-Howard Beach), the two- term City Councilman and son of the late congressman Joe Addabbo, Sr.
On the major issues facing both the City and the state, the candidates are remarkably similar. Both favor cutting taxes and eliminating government waste to close the budget deficit. Both say they will make conditions more favorable for small businesses to create jobs. Both are supporting a moratorium to delay foreclosures on homeowners. Both want to close the gaps that allow illegal guns to flow into the City from the southern states. Both will put the economy front and center, if elected.
“The things he’s only talking about I’ve already done,” Maltese said.
With so many similarities, conventional political wisdom would suggest that it’s Maltese’s race to lose, even in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans, 2-to-1. But that’s not the case.
The senior senator’s incumbent advantage has evaporated in a few short months despite enormous advantages in advertising, name recognition, and endorsements from popular mayors Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani. The race is now tied at 42 percent each, according to a Sienna College poll released last Wednesday.
It seems there’s another apple in this race – and it’s big and it stinks.
The 2008 election cycle has become as much a referendum on the existing political power structure as it is about individual candidates. Voters are fed up with the leadership, and Republicans have borne the brunt of that dissatisfaction.
A mere 26 percent of Americans were satisfied with government leadership according to a Sept. 18 Gallup poll (tying a 1973 record low), and prefer Democrats by a nearly 9-point margin in the most recent RCP average of congressional preference polls.
New York State is no different. A Quinnipiac University poll in August found only 26 percent of New Yorkers approved of the State Legislature’s performance.
“Republicans have had their chance,” Addabbo said. “The old way of doing business has to stop. I think people are ready for change, an improved way of service and an improved way of getting resources from Albany back here.”
Despite a narrow win in 2006 over an under-supported Democratic challenger, Albert Baldeo, Maltese has otherwise managed to hold his seat comfortably for nearly two decades by staying in the center and avoiding major conflicts with Democrats.
But with the Republican majority in the senate narrowed to only one seat, Democrats are pushing hard for drastic change in Albany – complete Democratic control of the state government.
And instead of rocking the boat this year by choosing a partisan ideologue in a district where conservative working-class values run strong despite the registration numbers, Democrats have opted to take the centrist approach through Addabbo.
In this race, individual distinctions come mostly in shades of gray.
Maltese touts his education record, pointing to a 97-percent increase in local school funding, while Addabbo points to inequity between the City schools and schools in Republican strongholds like Long Island, despite the City’s leading role in generating tax revenue.
Addabbo wants to cut excess government spending to close the budget deficit and cites his efforts to line up private sponsors to clean City parks. Maltese emphasizes looking for alternate revenue streams by proposing to collect back-taxes from illegal cigarette and gas sales on Indian reservations and by pushing forward plans to revitalize Aqueduct racetrack, which he said could generate as much as $1 million per day for education.Of course, some flourishes of red and blue remain among a few wedge issues.
Addabbo is making a big push on healthcare reform and Maltese remains staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage.
Political style has also been a point of contention between the two candidates. Addabbo has taken to the streets with an issue-centric grassroots approach, courting voters face-to-face and house-by-house. Maltese has taken the more conventional route by investing in attack ads and big events.
The Addabbo campaign was in an uproar over a recent ad that cited his vote to increase property taxes but failed to note that it was an emergency measure passed by the City Council in response to the fiscal crisis after the 9/11 attacks. The tax was phased out shortly after.
It was one of few blemishes in what has been a remarkably civil race considering what’s at stake.
With the polls neck and neck just weeks from the election, both candidates acknowledge they’re facing a tough fight, but both are confident in their prospects.
“We are not gonna lose the majority,” Maltese said. “I think it’s a tough race. I think he’s a formidable adversary. But I expect to win my race.”
The 15th District election will be on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
