Well, I used to like Suozzi. Working to defeat Republicans in the senate isn’t my idea of reforming, how about helping get rid of the veto proof majority in the assembly. I do like the idea of laying out their plans and let the voters decide, yet as we know NY has the worst gerrymandered districts and why should we trust them to do what they say anyway, have they kept their word ion the past that gives us any trust at all? Answer, NO….

Suozzi poses a tax challenge

— The political jockeying that will precede next year’s state Senate races that could tip control from Republicans to Democrats is generally viewed as perhaps the biggest roadblock toward the parties actually getting anything done during next year’s legislative session.

Actually, a former candidate for governor suggested this week, it could create a unique opportunity to get lawmakers and Gov. Eliot Spitzer to deal with the most important issue facing the state: soaring property taxes.

“We should be demanding a debate of the idea: Who will do a better job of reducing our property taxes?” Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi said at a conference on taxes in Albany this week.

Now, Spitzer and Senate Republicans are grappling over, essentially, Spitzer’s fitness to be governor in the wake of the “Troopergate” scandal involving use of the State Police to gather damaging information on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Spitzer’s since-withdrawn proposal to allow illegal immigrants to get drivers’ licenses.

Since the Troopergate scandal broke in July, the men have not spoken in public and apparently have insulted each other in private.

Suozzi, who was swamped by Spitzer in last year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, essentially wants to perform political jujitsu on the Capitol, making the tensions and the impending election work for voters to force the two sides to compete over ideas rather than personalities.

“That’s how democracy is supposed to work,” he said.

Suozzi has some credibility in this area. Before launching his kamikaze campaign for governor last year (nobody but he thought he had a chance to knock off America’s attorney general, and everybody but he was proven right) he was out front on another long-shot mission, which he called “fix Albany.”

His idea: Work to defeat generally invulnerable Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats (the majority parties in each house) to show the displeasure of the electorate with Albany.

He managed to help defeat one Democratic Assemblyman from Nassau County, throw a scare into a Republican senator and make enemies with establishment figures in both parties, setting the stage for his gubernatorial campaign debacle last year.

He sounds chastened now (He introduced himself to the audience at this week’s conference this way: “My name is Tom Suozzi. I used to be a rising star.”) but still convinced that the political system can be manipulated to actually do some good things.

We’re about to enter a unique year in state politics. Not only might control of one house of the Legislature change from one party to the other (something that hasn’t happened since 1974) but we have a governor who has thrown out the usual nonaggression pact between Albany incumbents and has worked actively to help Democrats take over the Senate.

That would require them to capture two of the 33 seats currently held by Republicans.

Suozzi said the first clue about whether something like this might actually happen will be disclosed on Jan. 9, when Spitzer delivers his annual State of the State address to the Legislature.

If he makes controlling local taxes one of the keystones of his plans for the new year, the battle could be joined, he thinks.

Under this scenario, the sides would vie to present the better plan, and the voters would reward the winner by giving them the power to implement it.

On the plus side, Spitzer has done almost everything wrong politically for much of the year.

Maybe it’s time for him to get one right.

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