After Other States’ Moves, Connecticut Is Still Working on Stricter Gun Law

In January, New York passed the first comprehensive gun legislation in the wake of the killings. On Wednesday, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado signed bills mandating sweeping new restrictions on the sales of firearms and ammunition there.

But in Connecticut, which became the epicenter of the debate over guns, legislative leaders have yet to introduce a bill to address gun violence and mental health issues. They continue to meet daily, and now expect introduction around the first week in April.

The result, to some, has been a perplexing process in a state traumatized and galvanized by the killings, where opinion polls show overwhelming support for new gun legislation, and where Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the General Assembly and thus have the ability to pass whatever they want. But legislators say that given the state’s relatively moderate politics, with a culture of bipartisan lawmaking and a new House speaker who made a commitment that both parties would be involved in writing gun legislation, the process has played out in a largely familiar way.

Some Democrats, including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and gun control advocates have expressed frustration with the pace. But the House speaker, Brendan Sharkey, a Democrat presiding over his first session, said he was confident that Democratic and Republican legislators could agree soon on comprehensive gun legislation. And, citing a statement by New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, that his state’s new limits on ammunition magazines were unworkable and needed to be modified, Mr. Sharkey said Connecticut legislators were wise to take the time to get their legislation right.

“My mantra at the beginning was it is important to act quickly, but it is more important to act intelligently,” Mr. Sharkey said in an interview.

He added, “I’m personally very confident that what we produce will give Connecticut the strongest gun safety legislation in the country when we’re done.”

After the tragedy, Connecticut created a somewhat confusing process, with one commission established by Governor Malloy to research guns, violence and mental health issues and a separate task force set up by the legislature.

Republicans and Democrats on the legislative task force agreed on many elements of a gun-control package but offered separate reports. Both sides called for universal background checks, greater safe-storage requirements and more requirements for buying ammunition. Only Democrats called for expanding the existing assault-weapons ban to cover a broader array of weapons and for a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

But Democratic and Republican leaders indicated that the fact they were still talking was evidence that those two elements could be part of bipartisan legislation. And Larry Cafero, the House Republican leader, said passing legislation roughly four months after the shootings would be extraordinary given the complexity of the issues.

Colorado’s legislation came eight months after the mass murder in Aurora, Colo., last summer, Mr. Sharkey noted.

Alluding to New York’s experience, Mr. Cafero said, “To be the first out of the blocks and get it wrong is not a success as far as I’m concerned.”

Legislative leaders have largely kept their deliberations private. But one aspect discussed is whether to have multiple bills, with one able to gain broad support and another dealing with issues like assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that would have a harder time attracting bipartisan agreement. That approach now seems unlikely, people close to the deliberations said.

If there is support for a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, the next question is whether it should apply just to their sale or also to their possession, meaning that those people who now own them would have to dispose of them. The commission appointed by Mr. Malloy, in an interim report, recommended the ban of the “sale, possession or use” of magazines with more than 10 rounds.

Mr. Cafero last week also sharply criticized the State Police for a briefing about the Sandy Hook case it delivered this month at a law enforcement convention in New Orleans. The Daily News, quoting someone who had attended the convention, reported on details of the crime that have not been disclosed to legislators or the victims’ families. Among the details was that the gunman, Adam Lanza, had compiled a large spreadsheet of mass murders and the weapons used in them.

Mr. Cafero said lawmakers should have all appropriate information as they work on legislation before they finish.

Mr. Malloy echoed Mr. Cafero’s disappointment with the leak, and directed the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney to release additional information on the investigation by next Friday.

But, perhaps indicating some limits to bipartisanship and frustration with the progress made, the governor said in a statement that “the vast majority of people in Connecticut can agree on some simple, common-sense things we can do — right now” and that legislators should by now have all the information they need to proceed.

“What more does Mr. Cafero need to know before he’s finally ready to take action?” Mr. Malloy said.

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After a New-Look Debate, a Harsh Light Falls on the Moderator

Mr. Lehrer’s light touch was widely criticized during and after the debate on Wednesday night, particularly by Democrats who felt that President Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, effectively moderated the debate himself. Speaking to CNN after the debate, Stephanie Cutter, the president’s deputy campaign manager, said, “I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney. We should rethink that for the next debate.”

But conservatives suggested that critiques of Mr. Lehrer were just excuses for Mr. Obama’s own poor performance in the debate.

Mr. Lehrer, 78, the former anchor of the “NewsHour” on PBS, moderated 11 presidential debates between 1988 and 2008. He had decided to do no more, but the Commission on Presidential Debates persuaded him to come back this year.

He said he was persuaded by the potential of the new format: it allowed for six 15-minute conversations, each starting with a question and two-minute answers from each candidate. The format was appealing to Mr. Lehrer, who has consistently said that his job as moderator is to get out of the way and get the candidates talking.

He succeeded in getting out of the candidates’ way in Wednesday night’s debate, and when he did speak, it was often in phrases like “excuse me,” “wait” and “please.” Throughout the evening, he strained to interrupt when the candidates went over their allotted time. And at one point he faced a testy Mr. Obama, who complained that the moderator had cut him off by saying that time was up. “I had five seconds before you interrupted me,” Mr. Obama said.

At other times, both candidates seemed to completely ignore Mr. Lehrer. When Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Romney as failing to provide more specifics about his economic plans, Mr. Romney insisted on responding. “No, but,” Mr. Lehrer said as Mr. Romney kept on going. He spoke for a minute, completing his entire thought without interruption from the moderator.

Because the first five topic areas took up more than 15 minutes each, the candidates only had three minutes to talk about the sixth topic, cures for partisan gridlock in Washington.

In an e-mailed statement Thursday afternoon, Mr. Lehrer said he thought the new format accomplished its purpose, “which was to facilitate direct, extended exchanges between the candidates about issues of substance.” He continued, “Part of my moderator mission was to stay out of the way of the flow, and I had no problems with doing so. My only real personal frustration was discovering that 90 minutes was not enough time in that more open format to cover every issue that deserved attention.”

The critiques came from several sides of the media spectrum.

“Boy, Jim Lehrer got rolled over,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” on Thursday morning. “You could see an exasperated look on Jim’s face when they would just keep plowing right over him,” said Gretchen Carlson on “Fox & Friends” on Fox News. Speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, Steve Liesman offered up what he called a “private-sector solution” to the moderator dilemma: “Why can’t the two guys take care of themselves?”

The complaints about Mr. Lehrer seemed loudest from the left. Bill Press, whose liberal radio program is simulcast on Current TV, started on Thursday by saying Mr. Lehrer “lost control of the debate, and Mitt Romney ran all over him like a truck crushing a bug.” The liberal media monitoring group Media Matters said Mr. Lehrer had “lost the debate” by missing “repeated opportunities to press Mitt Romney into offering specifics on his policy proposals.” Richard Kim, a writer for The Nation, concluded that Mr. Lehrer’s version of moderation “is fundamentally unequipped to deal with the era of post-truth, asymmetric polarization politics — and it should be retired.”

The six-topic format for a debate primarily about domestic policy also drew complaints that many issues — gun control, abortion, reproductive rights, gay rights, the environment — were not addressed.

Alan Schroeder, a Northeastern University professor who has written books about debates, said that “in Jim Lehrer’s defense, this was an untested format.”

Mr. Schroeder said Wednesday’s session reminded him of televised debates he has studied in France and Spain, where “the role of the moderator is to set up the topics, then hang back and let the candidates go at it.”

The next debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will be moderated by Candy Crowley of CNN, who notably did not join the chorus of complainers about Mr. Lehrer’s performance on Wednesday night. She credited Mr. Lehrer for trying throughout his moderating career to get candidates to engage with each other.

“In the end, this debate is, you know, brought to you by these candidates,” she said on CNN after the debate, “and to me, it’s better to hear from the candidates than to hear from the moderator.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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After a Disappointing Jobs Report, Romney Attacks Obama

Michael Appleton for The New York TimesMitt Romney questioned President Obama’s jobs policies at a campaign event on Friday in Orange City, Iowa.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Seizing on a disappointing jobs report, Mitt Romney questioned on Friday whether President Obama “knows what he’s doing” when it came to fixing the economy.

“There’s almost nothing the president has done in the past three and a half, four years that gives the American people confidence that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to jobs and the economy,” Mr. Romney told reporters as he stopped here for a campaign rally.

In Mr. Romney’s first remarks since the Democratic National Convention wrapped up on Thursday night, the Republican nominee said Mr. Obama had offered little more than empty promises. The employment report released on Friday morning showed that the economy added 96,000 jobs in August, down from a revised figure of 141,000 in July and well below the 125,000 level economists had been expecting.

“What is he going to do to get this economy going?” Mr. Romney said. “And all he said last night was the same as what he said four years ago — which, by the way, he made a lot of promises four years ago. Can you think of any of those promises that was met? I mean, he was going to create jobs. We haven’t. Lower unemployment? He hasn’t. Rising take-home pay? It’s gone down.”

His appearance in Iowa came as the Romney campaign was ramping up activity on another front. It announced on Friday a major advertising campaign in eight swing states. The commercials – 15 in all – are specifically tailored to resonate with voters in each of those states.

In Florida, for example, people will see commercials about falling real estate values and high foreclosure rates. In Colorado, where the military and defense contractors are large employers, people will hear how the president’s budget cuts could cost 20,000 military jobs there.

And here in Iowa, they will hear how “excessive government regulations are crushing small businesses and family farms.”

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For Three New York Lawmakers, Falls From Grace After an Attempted Coup

They were state senators from New York City, Democrats who threw the upper house of the Legislature into chaos after the 2008 election, at a time when Democrats should have been celebrating winning control of the chamber for the first time in more than four decades. Instead, the amigos — a term they bestowed upon themselves — gleefully posed before camera crews and loudly courted both sides of the aisle for perks, power and patronage.

Two of the amigos, Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate, even briefly allied with the Republican caucus in 2009, orchestrating a coup that for a time paralyzed the state government.

Ah, karma.

Now, two amigos — Mr. Monserrate and Carl Kruger — are headed to prison, and the fate of a third, Mr. Espada, is in the hands of a jury after a federal corruption trial. Jurors said Wednesday that they had reached an impasse, but the judge, Frederic Block, instructed them to continue deliberating.

Few of their fellow Democrats are sorry to see them gone from Albany.

“Three are gone,” Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, said with a broad smile on Wednesday, before walking into the legislative chamber.

Senator Diane J. Savino, a Staten Island Democrat, said: “You almost want to say, I don’t have any sympathy for you. But I’m human, and I don’t wish anybody ill. It’s so frustrating; we were kneecapped by the four of them after Election Day.”

One amigo remains in office: Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister who is one of the Legislature’s most outspoken social conservatives, is unrepentant about their rebellion.

“Never in the history of New York State has there been something so exciting,” Mr. Díaz said. “Never, never, never. That was history. That will go down in the book of history.”

The amigos stole the spotlight in 2008, right after the Democrats won control of the Senate. Only a day after the election, the four lawmakers shocked their colleagues by refusing to commit to backing a member of their own party to lead the chamber.

Three of the four lawmakers are Hispanic, and their stated reason for rebelling was that Latino lawmakers needed a greater voice in government. “We have a black president, a black governor, and we have a concern that we have to be sharing power,” Mr. Díaz said at the time.

Mr. Espada, with his well-tailored suits and unflappable style, seemed particularly to enjoy playing to the cameras. He would tell reporters he was leaning toward supporting a Democrat for leader, then mention he was having dinner with Senator Dean G. Skelos, leader of the Republicans.

Eventually, the amigos agreed to back a Democrat, but for a price. Mr. Kruger was named head of the Senate Finance Committee, and Mr. Espada was made a vice president of the Senate and given the chamber’s top housing post. That was not enough for him. By the following summer, he and Mr. Monserrate had orchestrated a coup by briefly joining with the Republicans.

After Mr. Monserrate returned to the Democrats, the chamber was evenly split and rudderless, culminating with both sides holding dueling sessions at the same time, in the same chamber. Mr. Espada eventually returned to the Democratic fold and claimed the lofty title of majority leader, if not all of that title’s traditional powers.

“What they did is take what should have been a real moment of celebration and turned it on its head, and quite frankly we never recovered from it,” said Ms. Savino, now part of a new splinter group, the Independent Democratic Conference, that has allied with Republican lawmakers.

The fate of the amigos has taken a considerable turn in recent weeks. This month, Mr. Monserrate pleaded guilty to improperly using public money to finance a failed political campaign, acknowledging that he was guilty of mail fraud and mail fraud conspiracy. He was ousted from the Senate in 2010 after a conviction for domestic assault.

In April, Mr. Kruger was sentenced to seven years in prison by a federal judge; he had been accused of accepting more than $1 million in bribes from two hospital executives, a lobbyist and a health care consultant.

Mr. Espada faces charges of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a nonprofit health care network to support his lavish lifestyle. And he was recently ordered to pay $80,000 worth of fines and restitution by a legislative ethics commission, which said he had violated state law by hiring his uncle to join his official staff.

Mr. Díaz remains bitter about Mr. Espada’s fate. He says he believes that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, when he was still attorney general, overreached in corruption cases that he brought against Mr. Espada.

“I think that Pedro Espada was targeted,” Mr. Díaz said. “Why would Andrew Cuomo accuse him of stealing $14 million? Why? Because it was a vendetta.”

Of the other two amigos, he said, “I will continue being a friend and praying for them, and anything that they need, I will be there for them.”

Senator Neil D. Breslin, an Albany Democrat, said: “Neither Democrats nor Republicans should have embraced Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate. We all share in the guilt of doing that. Shame on us.”

But Senator Eric L. Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat, was more forgiving. “Our caucus, unlike the Republican caucus, we don’t look alike, sound alike; it’s extremely diverse,” he said, alluding to the fact that the Republican caucus is exclusively white. “I don’t think they hurt our conference; they added flavor to our conference, a flavor that’s missing from the guys across the aisle.”

Mosi Secret contributed reporting.

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50 Democratic House Seats in Play for 2012 After N.Y. Special Election (ContributorNetwork)

The National Review reports, based on the results of the special election in the New York 9th Congressional District, as many as 50 Democratic House seats may be vulnerable in next year's election.

This is not to say that the Republicans will pick up all 50, but the National Review provides a list of seats that are as favorable or more so for a GOP turnover for 2012.

The widespread vulnerability of House Democrats, even after the political tsunami of 2010, parallels the predicament President Obama is facing in formerly safe states. Coupled with the fact Democrats have to defend over 20 Senate seats, 2012 is shaping up to be a history-changing year.

Political strategists charged with deploying resources in a nationwide election always take note of four kinds of House seats. There are seats one's party holds that are safe, seats one's party holds that are vulnerable, vulnerable seats the opposition party holds, and safe seats held by the other party. The best situation to be in is to have few of one's own seats vulnerable and as many of the other party's seats as possible vulnerable.

The Democrats are in the worst of all situations. They have to defend many vulnerable seats and do not have many Republican seats ripe for a pickup. Resources such as money, paid campaign workers, and volunteers have to be spread very thin to defend vulnerable seats. Some very vulnerable seats may have to be given up as hopelessly lost.

Coupled with the president having to campaign in previously safe states and defend many Senate seats, one can see the Democrats are bracing for a bloodletting they have not seen in their history. It is a combination of 1980, when another weak president was suddenly at bay in the face of a conservative Republican candidate, and 1994, when congressional Democrats found themselves suddenly an endangered species.

The stakes cannot be higher. The prospect of a Republican president with a large majority in the House and a healthy majority in the Senate, with a mandate to execute a kind of hope and change the Democrats never imagined, must keep people in that party awake at night.

Source: After NY-9, 50 Democrat-Held House Seats Could Be Competitive, Jim Gergahty, National Review, Sept, 15, 2011

Results of New York Election Points to Obama Vulnerability, Mark R. Whittington, Yahoo News, Sept. 14, 2011

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