Courageous or just thirsty?
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- July
- 1
Democrats referred to Sen. Frank Padavan, R-Queens, today as “courageous” for walking into the chamber while they were conducting session yesterday. He became the 32nd senator they needed in order to have a quorum and pass bills. Democrats and Republicans, who have one Democrat on their side, have been deadlocked in a 31-31 split for a few weeks and haven’t been able to take up legislative business.
Padavan (pictured in photo) said he was on his way to get a cup of coffee in the members’ lounge and made his way through the chamber because the hallway outside the Senate was blocked by a crowd of reporters. (In other renditions of the story, Padavan was getting a soda or a V-8.) He and other Republicans have called the Democrats’ session “fraudulent” and are disputing its validity.
But Democrats see it a little differently.
Sen. Craig Johnson, D-Nassau County, said Republicans have been calling Democrats—or at least one of them—to join them in the Senate chamber so they could get a quorum. “It just takes one of you to walk into the chamber, one of you to walk into chamber, just one courageous senator,” Johnson parroted.
“Frank Padavan is that one courageous senator,” Johnson said. “Whether it’s for a V-8, a Coca-Cola or a cup of coffee, a 37-year veteran … walked in and didn’t just walk in and walk out, walked across the chamber.”
Johnson said it would have been great if more GOP senators had “joined Sen. Padavan’s courage” yesterday.
That led to the following question from one reporter: “With all due respect, do you really think Sen. Padavan was being courageous when he came in or just thirsty?”
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 4:45 pm by Cara Matthews.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
