"1994"

Hey, folks,  I hate to break it to you  ---  the NYS GOP-Conservative Party swan song was almost twenty-five years ago  ---  I'll do the math for you (hint: look at the title of this post),  it was 1994  ---  and that's pretty close to a quarter century ago; so we ain't talkin' news here, we're talkin' HISTORY !!!!!

Another year is coming to an end here in Brooklyn (and rumor has it  ---  elsewhere in the world,  as well).  And another election cycle has passed without any real competitiveness from the Republicans or their "allies" in the local branch of the NYS Conservative Party.

The numbers we saw from the tops of OUR tickets in 2017, and even from the contested headliner races down-ballot, were appalling. ( BTW, John Quaglione,  if getting close were the same thing as, or even anything like,  WINNING, then NAVY would have the Commander-in-Chief Trophy back in Annapolis today and it wouldn't be headed up the Hudson for at least a one year stay at West Point).

The reason we find ourselves in this fix is that people like George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg  ---  who all won election or re-election multiple times on the GOP line since 1994  ---  were  quintessential RINOs.  They ran as Republicans and governed as Democrats.  Hey, don't listen to me,  look at the enthusiastic endorsements from DC-37 and Ray Rivera..... 

One thing that these RINOs didn't do was build up a city- or state-wide Republican Party during their multiple stints as governor and mayor  through the late 90s and even on into Millennial times.....  BUT,  neither did anybody else.

Perhaps even worse,  the leaders of the so-called NYS Conservative Party were paid-off handsomely to keep their mouths shut as RINOs Pataki, Giuliani and Bloomberg talked a little bit right,  but governed very much left.  You will recall that both Mike Long and Jerry Kassar vigorously defended Governor Pataki when various other members of the NYS Conservative Party wanted to pull the line from Governor Pataki.

Back in 1994 it was a completely different story.....   

The Clintons had taken Washington by storm and in New York City and State, the Democrats looked pretty much in control (and even though "Rudy" had eked-out a win in 1993, Democrats were already talking about taking out "The Fonse" in a few years).   Nonetheless, a relatively unknown George Pataki was running as a conservative-minded protege of "The Fonse,"  who was still holding court as "Senator Pot-hole";  a very conservative-sounding Herb London was foisted on the GOP to be its NYS Controller candidate by NYS Conservative Party extortion at the GOP convention (BTW, ask Kassar or Mike Long about that one.....); and a little-known Reagan-era U.S. Attorney from western New York,  Dennis Vacco, found himself in a race for NYS AG against a self-proclaimed lesbian.  

The only thing that kept the top of the GOP ticket from having a near-sweep in 1994 (Bernadette Castro having had no real shot against incumbent U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan)  was that the Conservative Party's darling and the "shotgun wedding" Republican nominee for Controller,  Herb London,  inexplicably endorsed the incumbent Democrat Governor Mario Cuomo for re-election very late in the 1994 campaign.  Oddly, Cuomo and London,  who were both ahead in the polls at the time of the London endorsement, each found themselves on the losing end of the stick on election day 1994.

Nothing like the 1994 dynamic exists today.