Silver’s Arrest Promises to Upend New York Politics

“His power unbending, his whims often unexplained, Sheldon Silver’s two decades as speaker of the State Assembly made him a seemingly irreplaceable presence at the nucleus of New York’s political world, a steady advocate for liberal causes and a master of negotiation in Albany’s often closed and entrenched way of governance,” the New York Times reports.

“But Mr. Silver’s arrest on Thursday on federal corruption charges has thrown that arrangement — whereby the governor and leaders of each chamber of the Legislature decide the most crucial policies of the state — into question. It is a potentially seismic shift in power whose reverberations may be felt from the speaker’s home district on the Lower East Side to the grounds of the State Capitol.”

“Until now, what the United States attorney called ‘the show-me-the-money culture’ of Albany has taken comfort in knowing that its leader and most powerful figure was unassailable — untouched despite years of investigations, suspicions and rumors of impropriety. The events have shaken that sense of security, and opened the question of whether Mr. Silver, the quintessential capital insider, could relay his own colleagues’ sotto voce misdeeds to federal prosecutors in exchange for leniency.”