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Run, Steve Levy, Run!

The last best hope for a Jewish N.Y. governor

by
Marc Tracy
March 17, 2010
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.(Suffolk County)
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.(Suffolk County)

With Democratic Gov. David A. Paterson still clinging to power despite a pretty damning scandal involving his alleged intervention in an aide’s assault case, Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch likely won’t get the chance to cure the two-year-long drought in New York—the republic’s most Jewish state!—of not having a Jewish chief executive.

But on the Republican side, there’s now a chance. Some Republicans who are dissatisfied with the current prohibitive favorite for their nomination—that would be Rep. Rick Lazio, best remembered as Hillary Clinton’s original Senate opponent in 2000—have inquired as to whether Lazio’s fellow Long Islander Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, is interested in running for the GOP nod.

Levy is—how shall I put this?—a Democrat. But this is the same state whose main city has elected a lifelong Democrat who turned Republican, and then turned independent, as mayor. Three times. Besides, for us, Levy will be of neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, but rather of the Tribe. (OK, so his mother’s Italian. We’re trying here.)

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.