News of Assemblyman Steve Katz’ marijuana arrest in the Albany County town of Coeymans spread quickly through social media channels Thursday—as did past coverage of various events in his past.
Here’s a look back at some of Katz’ ups and downs that have come to light since he took office in 2011. And here’s more information on Katz’ Thursday ticket for pot possession.
– Katz, a Yorktown Republican, was elected to the Assembly in 2010 for a seat vacated by now-Sen. Greg Ball, a Patterson Republican who chose to run (successfully) for the Senate. Katz ran with Ball’s support, and the two were known as political allies.But the relationship had soured somewhere along the way. In December 2011, Katz’ wife Nicole posted a video to YouTube that was critical of Ball for deleting items she had posted to Ball’s Facebook page and later de-friending her. The video—titled “The Salad Bully”—showed a dinner-party scene in which Nicole Katz has her mouth duct taped shut after she’s critical of the host’s olive selection.
Ball later used the video as part of his own YouTube piece critical of the assemblyman. Katz and Ball have since appeared at events together.
– Katz received plenty of attention in western New York this past week for his comments regarding the Buffalo Bills, whose stadium will receive major upgrades partially funded by the state and Erie County as part of a new lease deal.“Aren’t they wealthy enough that they can handle their own operating support? Why are we doing this for them?” Katz asked on the Assembly floor.
A frequent critic of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Katz stood by the comments as they gained more attention in the Buffalo area, calling the stadium funding a “luxury.” But he later posed for a picture wearing a Bills hat—provided by Buffalo-area assemblyman Sean Ryan—as a goodwill gesture.
– In early 2012, Katz had expressed interest in running in a primary against Ball for Ball’s Senate seat. As the media began paying more and more attention to the potential challenge, Katz addressed a pair of past arrests related to his veterinary business. (In both instances, charges were dropped, Katz said.)On a public-access television show, Katz said one of the arrests dated back to the 1990s, when he was operating a veterinary practice in Philadelphia. According to Katz, an 80-year old client and her 102-year-old mother called him one night because their 90-pound German Shepherd was dead on their living room floor. He put the dog into the trunk of his car to transport it to his veterinary hospital and it began to “ooze onto (his) daughter’s Barbie dolls,” he said.
Katz said he took the dog back to his apartment because he didn’t have the keys to his practice, and placed the dog on an outdoor dumpster. Police officers saw him with the dead dog, and arrested him for “short dumping.”
– More on some of Katz’ recent history here, here, here, here and here.
2 Comments
This guy votes against medical marijuana to help sick people. Then he gives the ‘black market; money on the inside to get his own weed.
Yikes.. this is just like alcohol prohibition… grass empowers too many creeps to be even creepier. We need to give it back to the people and take it from clowns like Katz.
That said, if it was anyone else they would of arrested him BY THE GRAM… in this case ‘it was a small baggie’.
To be honest I am more worried about the speeding. Unlike the marijuana, speeding can directly kill people and it endangers us all no matter what state of mind you are in. Katz sounds like a true menace.
Trying to control each and every thing that 350 million people do with their bodies is not small government!
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and true conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society’s problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals themselves, and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with “fake” conservatism is over moral issues. A true conservative would have no problem with agreeing that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles quite clearly are:
1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.
Prohibition is actually an authoritarian war on our economy and Constitution.
It’s all about market and cost/benefit analysis. Whether any particular drug is good, bad, or otherwise is irrelevant. As long as there is demand for any mind altering substance there WILL be supply! The only affect prohibiting it has is to drive the price up while increasing the costs and profits – and where there is illegal profit to be made criminals and terrorists thrive.