The season, speculatively speaking
Ah, late November. Election Day recedes into memory and the pols look toward next year. That means it’s time for “speculation.” And speculation has it:
• That Buffalo’s Leecia Eve, coming off a key role in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, will return home to run for mayor next year.
Those who know her, however, are debunking speculation she will challenge incumbent Mayor Byron Brown in the September Democratic primary.
Nevertheless, the daughter of former Deputy Speaker Arthur O. Eve boasts impressive credentials and connections. She is Clinton’s former counsel, and could move to the State Department should President-elect Barack Obama choose the senator as secretary of state.
She was counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee when it was run by Vice President-elect Joe Biden. And she attended Harvard Law School with both Barack and Michelle Obama. No speculation is necessary about her ability to land an influential Washington post should she want it.
• That one of three names making the legal rounds could succeed Terrance P. Flynn, the Bush administration’s U. S. attorney in Buffalo.
In alphabetical order, the names we’ve heard are all Flynn assistants— William J. Hochul, who heads antiterrorism prosecutions; Richard A. Resnick, who heads white-collar crime investigations; and Trini E. Ross, detailed to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
But then again, most of the people appointed to that position over the past two decades have not been selected from within the office.
• That Rep. Brian Higgins will be appointed to the Senate in the event that Clinton moves to State.
This speculation ranks as an important overture to upstate, which is now shut out of leadership in all of state government, even if few expect it to pan out.
But the governor heightened speculation last week when he told politickerny.com that he is looking for someone with the ability to represent urban, suburban and rural areas — which some interpret as right up Higgins’ alley.
• That Brown will land a Senate appointment.
This speculation may be prove more intriguing, say insiders. If Illinois does not appoint an African-American to Obama’s vacancy, some say Gov. David A. Paterson would be hard-pressed to pass over a black. Otherwise, they point out, the Senate will once again be devoid of any African-American.
Meanwhile, three area legislators — Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples and Sens. Antoine Thompson and George Maziarz — have encouraged Paterson to appoint Brown.
• That money will not prove a problem should Brown somehow end up in Washington. The mayor is an official friend of Tom Golisano, the Responsible New York chairman who vows to keep on spending his millions on favorite candidates.
That means Brown could count on the billionaire owner of the Buffalo Sabres to launch the kind of campaigns he financed this year for local Senate candidates Joe Mesi, Kathy Konst and Bill Stachowski — only this time on a statewide basis.
• That Paterson will appoint an upstater to the Clinton post.
Some say the move would strengthen the governor when he runs for election in 2010 outside his city base.
But it’s a tough assignment for a Democrat in a statewide primary, given the overwhelming numbers concentrated in the Big Town and its environs.
Still, some locals say it’s worth the fight for a Higgins, a Brown or another upstater to take the risk, establish a good record and run as an incumbent.
• That Paterson will appoint Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to remove a potential rival, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Caroline Kennedy Schlossburg to quell virtually any opposition.
But this, after all, is speculation. And despite all the dead trees we’ve used to present all this speculation, nobody knows what will happen except Paterson himself.
And that is beyond speculation.
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