Bad judgment on LaSalle: State Senate Dems rightly cave on vote and wrongly reject a good man

The Democratic-led state Senate violated the New York Constitution and the law and yesterday they admitted it. Tomorrow, they should be so castigated for it in court and ordered to never do it again.

Wednesday’s surprise roll call vote on the nomination of Hector LaSalle to be the state’s chief judge proved that the tally was required, as Friday’s looming court date meant that they were facing certain rebuke and embarrassment.

So after insisting, including in court papers filed yesterday morning, that Senate rules trump all and no floor vote was needed, Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins called the vote. While LaSalle stoically sat alone in the second row of the visitor’s gallery above, the Senate debated him for 75 minutes.

That he lost the vote is a defeat for LaSalle and Gov. Hochul, as he returns to be the eminently qualified leader of New York’s busiest appellate bench and Hochul awaits a new list of candidates from the state Commission on Judicial Nomination. It’s also a loss for the state, as LaSalle would have been a good chief judge for the Court of Appeals.

But the bigger losers were the Senate Democrats and the duo behind this nonsense: Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris and Judiciary Committee Chair Brad Hoylman-Sigal, duly licensed lawyers in good standing, who went to the same out-of-state law school. We would expect that school to better train its grads, as both are clueless as to the Constitution and the law.

And this is the second time in two years for Gianaris, as he was the ringmaster of the redistricting disaster that may have prevented Hakeem Jeffries from being speaker of the House.

Even as they debated LaSalle, urging his rejection, they contended that under Senate rules they didn’t need to have the roll call. Sure. Imagine that there’s a Senate rule allowing ritual murder in the chamber, does that make it legal?

They said that the nomination fight was a distraction and a crisis. Yes it was. Of their own doing.