Scandal-Plagued 5-Term State Assemblyman Flames Out in Primary

Oh, it's so hard not to be cynical about politicians. Especially local politicians. The teeny little corner of my heart that can't get Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" out of my head wants to believe that there's good in everyone. That the people we elect to represent us are motivated solely by the desire to serve their constituents, and not just in the game for the goodies. You know. The power. The glory. The free postage stamps. But when news like this smacks me in the face, I just can't help myself.

Two of New York's Hudson Valley Republicans, Marc Molinaro and Patrick Manning, squared off this summer in a primary election for the 103rd district state assembly seat. I normally lean libertarian, but as far as Republicans go, and as far as I'd heard them speak and heard of them, these guys seemed like the best of the bunch. Molinaro, a Dutchess county legislator, is also the mayor of Tivoli, a small town near Bard College (and was the youngest mayor in the United States at 19, and prior to that, the youngest official elected to a government office, at 17) and always seemed like an earnest and well-intentioned guy. Pat Manning has been a fixture in our district (hailing from my home town of East Fishkill) for years, a 5-term State Assemblyman, always the go-to guy for charity events, and was even allowed to speak on (gasp) WAMC, our local NPR affiliate.

But Pat Manning's karma has gone from bad to worse.

Earlier this year, he'd announced that he was going to challenge Elliot Spitzer in the governor's race. I know Spitzer has done some good things, and he's probably going to win, because New York is the Bluest of Blue States, but I don't see how he's going to fulfill his campaign promises of bringing property taxes down and attracting new businesses and fixing everything that's wrong with New York in one gulp, all without raising our taxes. And I liked what I'd heard from Manning, so I was psyched to see him throw his hat into the ring, so to speak.

First, it was leaked that Manning, who'd been in the process of divorcing his wife, was seeing another woman, and he withdrew from the race. Probably the decision had more to do with the fact that he didn't stand a chance of winning rather than the "scandal" of the extramarital affair that wasn't, but whatever. He was out.

Then, running for his sixth term, he found himself facing a tough primary challenge from Marc Molinaro. And in early September, another scandal was in the making: the Molinaro camp had accused Manning of impersonating one of Molinaro's political consultants in an attempt to discover if Molinaro had been conducting push-polls against Manning's campaign. Manning admitted the impersonation, because he believed that Molinaro had been push-polling. This is where pollsters ask leading questions to try to spread rumors about the opposition.

Manning claimed that the complaints against him had no legal ground. "I don't know what is the big issue," Manning said to a reporter from the Poughkeepsie Journal. "I've already told the press that I did this."

I never saw one public comment from Molinaro's camp except outrage about the impersonation, but maybe Manning knew he was in big trouble. Suddenly, he announced (with Newsday scooping our local papers, yet) that he was having surgery later on September 19th to donate life-saving blood marrow to a 50-year-old man with leukemia, whom he'd never met. And then Manning would be leading a drive for other people to become marrow donors. Supposedly, he's been on the national donor list for the past nine years. But the timing seemed awfully suspicious.

The primary, held on September 12, was a tough one, so close that it took Manning two weeks to admit defeat.

Maybe when Bette Davis said in All About Eve, "Fasten your seatbelts. I think it's going to be a bumpy night," perhaps she was also talking about politics.