A Needed Slap at NY Progressives

In a fat slap at state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and the arrogant far-left coterie that now runs the Legislature, a trial-court judge ruled Tuesday that the full Senate must vote on a governor’s nominee to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest bench.

Committee votes, wrote state Supreme Court Judge Thomas Whelan, “cannot substitute for the power reserved to the Senate by the constitution,” though ASC & Co. had argued for weeks that a committee vote against Hector LaSalle’s nomination was enough.

She tried to avoid this slapdown with a last-minute floor vote to torpedo LaSalle last week, but Whelan let the suit proceed anyway, since the larger issue still stands.

No Senate leader had ever tried this stunt before, and Gov. Hochul had also called out the no-vote move as unconstitutional.

This slapdown follows last year’s court humiliation of the Legislature, tossing out the bid to gerrymander US House and state Senate districts, in clear defiance of the state Constitution as amended by the voters.

Indeed, that plainly prompted the drive to reject LaSalle, and progs’ demand for a nominee who’ll pull the courts hard-left: They want a top court that will endorse the next gerrymander, and read progressives’ wishlist into law with no need for legislation.

Yet refusing a floor vote for LaSalle was also a power play against Hochul: The gov plainly realizes the far-left agenda (from crime to taxes) means disaster; progressives want her to think she’ll get nothing but humiliation if she fights the lunacy.

Instead, Hochul now knows she has at least a shot at the support of the judicial branch. And since the progs mean to use their temporary power to lock in permanent control of state government, she has every reason to fight long and hard: The future of democracy in New York is at stake.