Hector LaSalle gives testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 18, 2023, in Albany.
Hans Pennink/AP Photo
The committee chair, Manhattan Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, said the judiciary’s nearly five hours of public questioning Wednesday fulfilled the review process, and he was incredulous Hochul wanted to stoke a brawl over the state constitution.
“I hope that litigation is not our future — it’s obviously the governor’s decision, but we have so much work to do in Albany. To be distracted by a lawsuit would be a travesty for the people of New York,” he said.
Ten Democrats on the 19-member panel voted against LaSalle, two voted for him and one, along with the committee’s six Republicans, voted to advance the nomination “without recommendation.”
But it was one vote short, a rare case of a vote in Albany failing to get approved. It could put Hochul in a weakened position heading into the six-month legislative session after expending her political capital on LaSalle over other potential candidates and after narrowly winning the election last November in the closest race in New York since 1994.
“I hope and I’m sure that few of us have time to extract revenge and so on,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said about the decision and Hochul’s rejection. “We have work to do, and we have work to do on behalf of the people, and we never lose sight of that.”
Most of the votes had been all but decided prior to the hearing — the culmination of weeks of tension surrounding LaSalle’s ethnicity, record and relationship with the court’s status quo that has resulted in an intraparty clash exacerbated by Hochul’s fierce defense of her pick.
At the heart of discourse Wednesday was whether LaSalle’s ability to drive forth Democratic values could be determined by dissecting any number of some 5,000 cases included on his legal record, including a handful of decisions he had joined that invited labels from opponents such as “anti-abortion” and “anti-labor.”
Sen. Brad Hoylman, left, greets Hector LaSalle before the start of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 18, 2023, in Albany.