When State legislators return to Albany in January, the likely new Senate Majority Leader will be Democratic Queens State Senator Malcolm Smith. On Thursday, November 13, Smith stopped by The Queens Courier office to discuss a number of topics ranging from the pending budget cuts, the new leadership in the Senate and what that change will mean for Queens.
On his background growing up
MS: They are very meager roots. My mother and father both graduated from high school that was it…I rode a bicycle delivering groceries in my neighborhood, worked at McDonald’s, worked at Burger King, while I was at Fordham - I had to make money while going to school.
On how he first got interested in politics
MS: My mother was involved in the political club, at that time it was called the United Democrats. She used to bring me there…Guy R. Brewer said to me, you’ve got a smile for politics. I might have been 13 or 14. I think a lot of what drove me to politics had to do with my family. My mother and father always instilled the importance of helping where you can, that combined with my education - Catholic and Jesuit - where especially Jesuit philosophy being true to yourself and knowing what your purpose is in life.
On some of his early political mentors
MS: I worked as [former City Councilmember] Archie Spigner’s Chief of Staff, and then I worked down at the Mayor’s Office… I ran around the country with Geraldine Ferraro when she ran for Vice President - a tremendous experience. At that time, I visited about 10 different states I had never been to before. After that, I worked for Reverend [Floyd] Flake, and I ran his office in NY.
I had a lot of people who I learned from - learning what to do and what not to do if you will. You watch a number of elected officials; how they manage themselves and what they do. It’s been very interesting.
I would have never believed that I would be where I am today. It was never an ambition of mine to get to a point where I could be the second or third most powerful person in the state.
On a particular skill that has helped get him to where he is today
MS: I think there are two things. One, I think it is being honest and forthright. If you tell someone what you are going to do and stand for, you stick to that, even if it’s something that they agree with or disagree with. And, the other thing is relationships. I ran on a theme that relationships yield results.
On his pride in helping engineer the Democrats retaking the majority
MS: First of all, it wasn’t Malcolm, I had a team of people…It was more of a team effort. I think in the past, it wasn’t done with as much teamwork as possible. We had a broad base of support, and we had a plan since ’04 that Governor Paterson helped put together, and we didn’t sway from it.
On his efforts to reach the renegade Democrat Senators threatening not to caucus with the conference
MS: Our conference is a diverse conference; it’s not a divided conference. My members are all Democrats. My conference already gave me a vote of confidence to be the Majority Leader unanimously, and the next vote is not until January so now we are working on a transition…This is the diversification that I and we should be proud of in this whole entire state. I’m happy that they are doing this. I think it’s great. I think at the end of the day we’ll all be on the same page. They are fighting for their interests, for their constituencies, that we have not had the opportunity to do since we were in the minority.
On working with the Governor to deal with the difficult challenges facing the state
MS: I think the Governor was brilliant and courageous in tackling what is a difficult subject matter that has to be dealt with. We are prepared to work with him, and we are also prepared to make sure there is shared sacrifice and that there is no one group or organization that has to suffer more than another in terms of some financial pain. Our conference has been working in the past week and a half to put together a package. We know we have to control spending and do some cutting - there’s no question about that. The question is exactly where do we do it and how do we get as best a consensus as we can.
On the upstate versus downstate perception
MS: The Republican administration believed in an old-school philosophy of divide and conquer - upstate versus downstate. That is not going to exist anymore. We are one New York.
I am going to do all I can to make sure New York City remains the financial capital of the world. London will not succeed in taking our financial place. It’s not going to happen. We will be investing our money smarter.
This will be treated as one New York. We are going to make sure that all of the state gets sound investment. We are going to have regional economic development boards - probably nine throughout the state - and they will drive the agenda for how we invest.
On the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crisis we are currently facing
MS: I don’t like talking the partisan stuff because I really believe we all have to work together, but just from a historical perspective, the Republican conference would not move on our foreclosure legislation package that we had. So, what we did was develop our own program called Operation Protect Your Home…We had the state’s banking department, financial institution, housing advocates, lawyers and we had the homeowners come to places around the state where they actually worked with the homeowners to reconfigure their mortgages. We saved 1,600 homes.
I agree with President-elect Barack Obama that we should have a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures so that people can reconfigure.
On the importance of creating jobs
MS: While we want to focus on cutting spending, our number one priority is rebuilding our state’s economy and creating jobs. If you want to talk about a social program, the best social program you can give someone is a job. Give them something that will instill pride in them, get them up in the morning and out of the house.
On seeing Barack Obama become the next President
MS: I was actually in the Sheraton Center Hotel. My family was there with me. We had just gotten word that we just picked up [the Senate majority] and just after Addabbo’s seat, the flash came across that Barack Obama is elected the next president of the United States, and we all cried. There was no other way of handling it.
