Old School Politicians Peaved They Now Have to Actually Work Instead of Party and Sexually Harass Interns

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Since arriving in Albany Gov. Spitzer has put the kibosh on lobbyists picking up checks and insists his staff would rather spend their time at the office rather than at the bar.

It was a Wednesday night at Elda’s on Lark, a bar and restaurant two blocks from the Capitol. Lawmakers would once have been strolling through the doors for a drink or three, or six. But Mr. Connor, a long-serving state senator from Brooklyn Heights, saw no familiar faces. “I keep thinking, I’m 62 — am I out of it? Maybe this isn’t the place anymore,” he said.

Politicking is hard.

Gov. Spitzer not only put a halt to lobbyists picking up the tab, he also maintains that it’s “unseemly” to hold political fund-raisers in Albany. Many of the old school politicians are wondering where the good old days went when they got raging drunk, had sex with an intern, pocketed some money from the lobbyists and then called it day.

But more significant, all agree, were the accusations of harassment and even assault made by staff members or interns, mostly younger and female, against older, more powerful men. They culminated in the 2004 conviction of a senior aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for sexual misconduct.

Stringent new rules enjoining lawmakers from fraternizing with interns followed, and with them came a far less forgiving atmosphere. This spring, a married Assemblyman was censured by his colleagues after admitting that he fell asleep on the floor of an intern’s apartment after a night at a sports bar. The intern was fired.

Ethics rules were gradually tightened too, beginning with a 2006 decision by the state lobbying commission limiting gifts to lawmakers to less than $75 per year per giver.

“It used to be that a lobbyist would call and say, ‘I’ve got some people from the Senate or Assembly, and there are 15 of them, and I want seven bottles of wine on the table, food — soup to nuts,’ ” said Paul Mancino, the owner of Lombardo’s, an Italian place a few blocks from the Executive Mansion. Politicians still tread the black-and-white tile floor there, but now they trickle in by twos and threes and they ask for separate checks.

I wonder how many important, life-altering votes have taken place by politicians that were hungover or still smashed from the night before? A spokeswoman for Gov. Spitzer commented, “The bars may be suffering, but we hear the coffee shops are doing quite well.”

Yeah, suck it you fat bastards. No more suckling at the teat of society you worthless whore mongering excuse for representatives.

In Albany, Life Has Seeped Out of Night Life [NYT]