Drug War Backlash

By Michelle Goldberg, AlterNet. Posted October 22, 2002.

For the last five years, comedian-turned-drug reform crusader Randy Credico has poured every drop of his considerable energy into Mothers of the Disappeared, a group of prisoners' relatives dedicated to changing the state's draconian Rockefeller drug laws. But despite meetings with Gov. George Pataki, Democratic challenger Carl McCall and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, all of whom pledged their commitment to drug law reform, the Mothers were getting nowhere.

Pataki and the Democrat-controlled Assembly couldn't agree on a compromise between the governor's conservative bill and the Assembly's more sweeping reforms. Credico came to believe that Pataki wants only cosmetic changes while protecting the laws' essential punishment. "Under his plan, we'll go from having the most regressive drug laws in the country to having the most regressive drug laws in the country," Credico says.

Stalled, the issue started falling off the radar. "I thought we were dead," Credico says. But the activists have been resurrected -- and are shaking up the New York governor's race in the process.

In the last two weeks, the billionaire libertarian conservative candidate Tom Golisano, who is running on the Independence ticket, has thrown his support -- and his cash -- behind Rockefeller repeal, not just reform, something few Democrats have dared do for fear of seeming soft on crime. His anti-Rockefeller TV ads are ubiquitous in New York markets. And longtime leftist Credico is working side-by-side with Golisano strategist Roger Stone, a right-wing pit bull and Reagan campaign veteran. They share a message: "Even people who are conservatives recognize that these laws are ineffective and expensive, not to mention being racist and unfair," Stone says.

It's an odd pairing considering that Golisano initially set out to challenge Pataki from the right, bashing the governor for becoming a "liberal." He's promised tax cuts, opposes gun control and supports a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions.

But Golisano is also something of a libertarian, which explains why he agrees with Credico about New York's controversial Rockefeller laws. Under the statutes, anyone convicted of selling 2 ounces or possessing 4 ounces of cocaine or heroin, an A-1 felony, gets 15 years to life in prison. People convicted of possessing half an ounce of narcotics, or of any sale at all, can get up to 25 years in prison.

Both Pataki's bill and the Assembly bill would reduce these. But the Mothers of the Disappeared want to scrap them entirely, handing all sentencing authority back to judges, who would then weigh the factors in a case -- including variables such as lack of a criminal record -- before deciding on punishment.

Golisano agrees with them, and he's spending millions to blanket the airwaves with the message that the Rockefeller laws are cruel and counterproductive. In one advertisement airing frequently on Spanish-language stations Univision and Telemundo, Hilda Garcia says she blames Pataki for the death of her husband, Eduardo, who at age 60 was sentenced to prison for acting as a lookout during a drug deal. Eduardo Garcia had a heart condition. Denied clemency, he died in a unit for the physically disabled at age 68. The ad features pictures of their life together and shots of a forlorn old man behind bars.

In another ad running on UPN and the WB, Anthony Papa, who served 12 years for delivering an envelope of cocaine 16 years ago, says, "When I was a young man I made a mistake. It was the only time I ever got in trouble with the law. Twelve years in a 6-by-9-foot cage. These laws waste money, destroy lives and break up families. Gov. Pataki's plan to change these laws is not true reform and he knows it ... Tom Golisano's plan is true reform."

Golisano is sponsoring an equal number of ads calling for the implementation of medical marijuana laws. And on Monday, he launched a new commercial attacking Pataki for his connection to a long-festering scandal in which his administration was accused of trading parole for campaign contributions -- something that particularly enrages Credico, given the governor's refusal to free some nonviolent Rockefeller convicts like Garcia.

Anti-Rockefeller activists don't see Golisano as a spoiler or a tool -- they've become passionate advocates for him. "Let's go for broke and go for Golisano," says Papa. "We can't do any worse because Gov. Pataki and Sheldon Silver are not compromising. What's left? We've got to go with the outside shot to try to win the election."

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