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ELECTIONS 2012
Case against Brooks continues from page 7
legislation in the Democratic-led State Assembly, Lebowitz says. But much of the legislation considered in the County Legislature comes from the Brooks administration, not individual legislators. And Brooks is much more than the highestranking Republican in Monroe County; she’s a rock star. If Brooks explicitly told Republican legislators to work more closely with Democrats, there’s little doubt they’d do it. Similarly, Brooks might have made a difference in the 2007-2008 public defender search, when Republicans ignored precedent and rammed through a favored candidate. But she chose not to intervene. Nor did she offer any leadership when county Republicans tried to rig the search to find a new MCC president during that same general timeframe. Lebowitz did provide several examples when asked to illustrate Brooks’ commitment to bipartisanship. Those include the county executive’s work on pension, Medicaid, and mandate reform through various state efforts, and her work on the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council. She was president of the New York State Association of Counties and County Executives of America, and she joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s bipartisan pension reform movement last year. Lebowitz also cited the county’s bipartisan budget review commission, and legislation regarding protests at veterans’ funerals as local examples of Brooks’ bipartisanship. But the commission accomplished little, and a Republican put his name on the funeral legislation, which was introduced by a Democrat, before the GOP-led County Legislature approved it. It’s doubtful the legislation would’ve passed without the addition. Summary: Bipartisanship is rare in Monroe County.
There are broader implications to sending Maggie Brooks to Congress.
Monroe County would lose Representative Louise Slaughter’s influence and seniority, but the bigger issue is the alarming direction of the Republican Party. It’s unlikely that Brooks, as a freshman member of the House, would be able to do anything but follow the wishes of party leadership — or risk her political career. That’s troubling, given the extremists driving the Republican agenda. Brooks says she’d vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, although she says she supports the parts of the law dealing with preexisting conditions and letting children stay on their parents’ policies longer. City
OCTOBER 24-30, 2012
She says the ACA is a partisan plan and should be repealed so a new bill can be drafted with broader input — a bill that creates competition and keeps a real eye on cost. But like her counterparts at the national level, Brooks offers few specifics when asked what the ACA should be replaced with. And when making the case for repeal, Brooks also repeats some thoroughly debunked claims, like the Republican assertion that the ACA cuts $700 billion from Medicare. The fact-checking website PolitiFact confirms that “neither Obama nor his health care law literally cut funding from the Medicare program’s budget. Rather, the health care law instituted a number of changes to try to bring down future health care costs in the program.” And the reductions in reimbursements do not affect Medicare beneficiaries; they are aimed at insurance companies and hospitals. Brooks, by the way, says she does not support the Medicare voucher plan proposed by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and would not have voted for the Ryan budget. Brooks says no one in the Republican leadership or in the Republican conference in the House has asked for her commitment to vote a certain way on anything. “I don’t want to go to Congress to become the standard-bearer for the Republican Party nationally,” she says. “I want to be in Congress to be a voice for this community. And I have to reflect the values of this community, and that’s everybody.” To illustrate her willingness to be independent, Brooks cites her opposition to House Republicans’ reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, “because it placed unnecessary restrictions on access to domestic violence services,” reports Liz Benjamin in her Capitol Tonight blog. But opposing something from the safety and distance of the county executive’s chair is much different than opposing it as a member of the House. And again, it’s difficult to believe Brooks would be able to chart her own path in a party that does not tolerate disloyalty. And that’s dangerous, since today’s Republican Party seems hell-bent on attacking women’s reproductive rights, attempting to destroy the social safety net — conveniently forgetting that in the days before Social Security and Medicare, many people actually did spend their “golden years” in poverty — and pushing draconian spending cuts that would inflict serious damage across a wide spectrum of the country. Summary: No matter her personal convictions, Maggie Brooks would have difficultly opposing the national Republican Party’s extremist agenda.
Congressional candidates Louise Slaughter (left) and Maggie Brooks debate in the WXXI studio. Photo by MATT DETURCK
National governance is about more than health care, of course. But when we
interviewed Brooks, she seemed reluctant to talk about some national issues — particularly ones that are important to progressives, like personhood legislation. VP candidate Ryan was a co-sponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which says that human life begins at fertilization and would criminalize abortion and, critics worry, some forms of birth control. When we interviewed Brooks, she said she didn’t know what personhood is, and that she’d want to study it before she gave an opinion. Brooks has a track record when it comes to LGBT issues. Back in 2008, under Brooks’ leadership, Monroe County appealed a court ruling that same-sex marriages performed outside New York must be recognized in the state. The county eventually dropped the appeal. Brooks said she’s a “traditional marriage person,” but that same-sex marriage isn’t as divisive an issue as it used to be. But she says civil unions, which she supports, provide same-sex couples equal benefits to those of marriage. They do not. Civil unions fail to offer many of the rights and protections given to married couples. Brooks’ most puzzling response came when asked about climate change: specifically whether or not climate change is real. Many Republicans openly express doubt about climate change and people’s role in it. “Dear, dear, dear,” she said in our interview. “Oh, I don’t know. Is it real? What do you mean? What does real mean? Our weather changes every year. Something’s real. Something’s changing the dynamic in our weather. When does Rochester, New York, go a whole winter without having a major snow season? I think there are a lot of things that impact our environment. “When you get into that whole climate change, there are people who are a lot smarter than me who can tell you if that’s real or not and what we need to do,” Brooks said. “It’s not something I’ve focused on, to be quite honest with you. I believe in good environmental stewardship. That’s probably my answer to all of that.” On foreign policy, Brooks said it’s important to maintain a strong defense, but that military action should be a last resort. She said she
supports the use of drones, and that the US has to finish what it started in Afghanistan. “We’re trying to get these countries to a point where they are no longer a threat,” Brooks said. “And as we have seen, we’re not there yet. We’re a long way from that. Nobody likes to see our troops overseas. Nobody likes to see us in military conflict. But we’re there and we’ve got a program and we need to follow that through to completion.” Brooks said President Obama has not been tough enough on countries like Iran. “I think generally as a country we’ve been very weak with our foreign policy,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve said to places like Iran, ‘We’re not going to tolerate you having nuclear capability.’ We don’t want to be the bully in the recreation yard, but we don’t want to get walked on, either. I don’t think people take us seriously.” (An October 2 article in the Atlantic lists several instances of Obama talking about Iran and nukes, including this quote from 2008, “We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”) But Brooks also talked about the importance of military spending as a job-retention strategy. “When you talk about taking money away, put the national defense part of it to the side,” she said. “You’re talking about the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs — millions of jobs that support the defense industry. So it’s a very, very viable portion of our national economy. If you look here in Monroe County, there are probably 12 to 15 companies that do a lot of defense work and would be severely impacted if we were to look at draconian cuts to defense spending.” Summary: We respect Brooks’ intelligence and diligence, and the fact that she’s had a difficult job dealing with the county’s fiscal problems under severe restraints. But the scandals and cronyism during her administration are major concerns, as are Brooks’ beliefs on issues such as marriage equality. If voters elect Brooks, they’ll be trading an experienced, progressive legislator who has done much good for this region for a freshman whose biggest service would be falling in line with the increasingly conservative leadership of her party.