New York State Assembly
The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly, with each of the 150 Assembly districts having an average population of 128,652. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits; the Assembly convenes at the State Capitol in Albany. The Speaker of the Assembly presides over the Assembly; the Speaker is elected by the Majority Conference followed by confirmation of the full Assembly through the passage of an Assembly Resolution. In addition to presiding over the body, the Speaker has the chief leadership position, controls the flow of legislation and committee assignments; the minority leader is elected by party caucus. The majority leader of the Assembly is selected by, serves at the pleasure of, the Speaker; the current Speaker is Democrat Carl Heastie of the 83rd Assembly District. The Majority Leader is Crystal Peoples-Stokes of the 141st Assembly District The Minority Leader is Republican Brian Kolb of the 131st Assembly District.
As of July 23, 2018, the following is a list of Assembly committees and committee chairs. +Elected in a special election New York State Capitol New York Legislature New York State Senate Political party strength in New York New York Provincial Congress Official website
New Jersey Senate
The New Jersey Senate was established as the upper house of the New Jersey Legislature by the Constitution of 1844, replacing the Legislative Council. There are 40 legislative districts, representing districts with average populations of 210,359; each district has one senator and two members of the New Jersey General Assembly, the lower house of the legislature. Prior to the election in which they are chosen, senators must be a minimum of 30 years old and a resident of the state for four years to be eligible to serve in office. From 1844 until 1965, each county was an electoral district, with each county electing one senator. Under the 1844 Constitution the term of office was three years; the 1947 Constitution changed the term to four years. Since 1968 it has consisted of 40 senators. Senators serve a two-year term at the beginning of each decade, with the rest of the decade divided into two four-year terms; the "2-4-4" cycle was put into place so that Senate elections can reflect the changes made to the district boundaries on the basis of the decennial United States Census.
If the cycle were not put into place the boundaries would sometimes be four years out of date before being used for Senate elections. Rather, with the varied term, the boundaries are only two years out of date, thus elections for Senate seats take place in years ending with a "1", "3" or "7". Interim appointments are made to fill vacant legislative seats by the county committee or committees of the party of the vacating person; the office is on the ballot for the next general election, unless the vacancy occurred within 51 days of the election. The appointment stands until the following general election. Senatorial courtesy is a senate tradition that allows home county legislators to intercede to prevent consideration of a local resident nominated by the Governor for a position that requires Senate confirmation. Any of the senators from the nominee's home county can invoke senatorial courtesy to block a nomination, temporarily or permanently, without any obligation to justify the basis of their actions.
Governor Corzine nominated Stuart Rabner on June 4, 2007, to be the next Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, replacing James R. Zazzali, nearing mandatory retirement age. Shortly after the nomination, two members of the Senate from Essex County, where Rabner resides, blocked consideration of his confirmation by invoking senatorial courtesy. State Senator Ronald Rice had blocked the nomination, but relented on June 15, 2007, after a meeting with the governor. Nia Gill dropped her block on June 19, 2007, but did not explain the nature of her concerns, though anonymous lawmakers cited in The New York Times indicated that the objection was due to Rabner's race and Governor Corzine's failure to consider a minority candidate for the post. In June 2007, Loretta Weinberg used senatorial courtesy privileges to hold up consideration of a new term in office for Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli; until 2010, in the event of a gubernatorial vacancy, the New Jersey Constitution had specified that the President of the Senate would assume the role of Acting Governor and retain their role in the Senate.
An Acting Governor would assume the governorship while retaining the reins of power in their house of the legislature. The Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey took office for the first time on January 19, 2010, following conjoint election with the Governor of New Jersey; the position was created as the result of a Constitutional amendment to the New Jersey State Constitution passed by the voters on November 8, 2005. While the amendment itself took effect as of January 17, 2006, made some interim changes to the succession to the governorship, the first lieutenant governor was not elected until November 3, 2009. District 1: Bob Andrzejczak District 2: Chris A. Brown District 3: Stephen M. Sweeney District 4: Fred H. Madden District 5: Nilsa Cruz-Perez District 6: James Beach District 7: Troy Singleton District 8: Dawn Marie Addiego District 9: Christopher J. Connors District 10: James W. Holzapfel District 11: Vin Gopal District 12: Samuel D. Thompson District 13: Declan O'Scanlon District 14: Linda R. Greenstein District 15: Shirley Turner District 16: Christopher Bateman District 17: Bob Smith District 18: Patrick J. Diegnan District 19: Joseph Vitale District 20: Joseph Cryan District 21: Thomas Kean, Jr. District 22: Nicholas Scutari District 23: Michael J. Doherty District 24: Steve Oroho District 25: Anthony Bucco District 26: Joseph Pennacchio District 27: Richard Codey District 28: Ronald Rice District 29: Teresa Ruiz District 30: Robert Singer District 31: Sandra Bolden Cunningham District 32: Nicholas Sacco District 33: Brian P. Stack District 34: Nia Gill District 35: Nellie Pou District 36: Paul Sarlo District 37: Loretta Weinberg District 38: Joseph Lagana District 39: Gerald Cardinale District 40: Kristin Corrado Committee chairs for the 2018-2019 Legislative Session are: Budget and Appropriations - Paul Sarlo Commerce - Nellie Pou Community and Urban Affairs - Jeff Van Drew Economic Growth - Nilsa Cruz-Perez Education - Teresa Ruiz Environment and Energy - Bob Smith Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens - Joseph Vitale Higher Education - Sandra Bolden Cunningh
Lewis Beach
Lewis Beach was an American politician and a U. S. Representative from New York representing two different congressional districts, the fourteenth and the fifteenth. Born in New York City, New York Beach was graduated from the Yale Law School in 1856. Beach commenced practice in New York, he moved to Orange County, New York, in 1861, served as member and treasurer of the Democratic State central committee from 1877 to 1879. Elected as a Democrat to the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses, Beach was a U. S. Representative for the fourteenth district of New York from March 4, 1881 to March 3, 1885, he was elected to the Forty-ninth Congress for the fifteenth district and served from March 4, 1885, until his death on August 10, 1886. He served as chairman of the Committee on Expenditures on Public Buildings during the Forty-ninth Congress, he published a history of Cornwall, New York in 1873. Beach died, from typhoid fever and Bright's disease, at his home, "Knoll View" in Cornwall, Orange County, New York, on August 10, 1886.
He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, New York. List of United States Congress members who died in office United States Congress. "Lewis Beach". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; this article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website http://bioguide.congress.gov
William H. Robertson
William Henry Robertson was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He was the son of Henry Robertson, he received an academic education, studied law, began practice in his native town. He was a Whig member of the New York State Assembly in 1849 and 1850, he was Judge of the Westchester County Court from 1856 to 1866. He joined the Republican Party upon its organization in 1855, was a presidential elector in 1860, voting for Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. Robertson was elected as a Republican to the 40th United States Congress, holding office from March 4, 1867, to March 3, 1869, he was again a member of the State Senate from 1872 to 1881, sitting in the 95th, 96th, 97th, 98th, 99th, 100th, 101st, 102nd, 103rd and 104th New York State Legislatures. In 1874, after a constitutional amendment created it as a standing office, he was chosen President pro tempore of the New York State Senate, he remained on this post until his retirement from the Senate in May 1881 upon his federal appointment.
In 1881, he was appointed Collector of the Port of New York by President James Garfield whose nomination he had helped to secure by leading a part of the New York delegation at the 1880 Republican National Convention to desert the Grant column. Robertson's nomination to the collectorship, made without consulting the wishes of the two Republican U. S. Senators, Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. Platt, according to their claims, in violation of the President's pledge, led to the resignation of the two Senators and resulted in a serious party split. In the bitter struggle between the Stalwart and the Half-Breed factions which followed, Robertson was active in the campaign that resulted in the election of new Senators in the place of Conkling and Platt. Robertson was a delegate to the 1884 Republican National Convention, held the collectorship until 1885. Afterwards, he resumed his law practice, he was again a member of the State Senate from 1888 to 1891, sitting in the 111th, 112th, 113th and 114th New York State Legislatures.
Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.. "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won more than any other newspaper; the Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U. S; the paper is owned by The New York Times Company, publicly traded and is controlled by the Sulzberger family through a dual-class share structure. It has been owned by the family since 1896. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher, his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. the company's chairman, are the fourth and fifth generation of the family to helm the paper. Nicknamed "The Gray Lady", the Times has long been regarded within the industry as a national "newspaper of record"; the paper's motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. Since the mid-1970s, The New York Times has expanded its layout and organization, adding special weekly sections on various topics supplementing the regular news, editorials and features.
Since 2008, the Times has been organized into the following sections: News, Editorials/Opinions-Columns/Op-Ed, New York, Sports of The Times, Science, Home and other features. On Sunday, the Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine; the Times stayed with the broadsheet full-page set-up and an eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six, was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography on the front page. The New York Times was founded as the New-York Daily Times on September 18, 1851. Founded by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones, the Times was published by Raymond, Jones & Company. Early investors in the company included Edwin B. Morgan, Christopher Morgan, Edward B. Wesley. Sold for a penny, the inaugural edition attempted to address various speculations on its purpose and positions that preceded its release: We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good.
We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or wrong. In 1852, the newspaper started a western division, The Times of California, which arrived whenever a mail boat from New York docked in California. However, the effort failed. On September 14, 1857, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times. On April 21, 1861, The New York Times began publishing a Sunday edition to offer daily coverage of the Civil War. One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials in the Times alone; the main office of The New York Times was attacked during the New York City Draft Riots. The riots, sparked by the beginning of drafting for the Union Army, began on July 13, 1863. On "Newspaper Row", across from City Hall, Henry Raymond stopped the rioters with Gatling guns, early machine guns, one of which he manned himself; the mob diverted, instead attacking the headquarters of abolitionist publisher Horace Greeley's New York Tribune until being forced to flee by the Brooklyn City Police, who had crossed the East River to help the Manhattan authorities.
In 1869, Henry Raymond died, George Jones took over as publisher. The newspaper's influence grew in 1870 and 1871, when it published a series of exposés on William Tweed, leader of the city's Democratic Party—popularly known as "Tammany Hall" —that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's City Hall. Tweed had offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story. In the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned from supporting Republican Party candidates in its editorials to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign. While this move cost The New York Times a portion of its readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper regained most of its lost ground within a few years. After George Jones died in 1891, Charles Ransom Miller and other New York Times editors raised $1 million dollars to buy the Times, printing it under the New York Times Publishing Company.
However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, by 1896, the newspaper had a circulation of less than 9,000, was losing $1,000 a day. That year, Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the Chattanooga Times, gained a controlling interest in the company for $75,000. Shortly after assuming control of the paper, Ochs coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print"; the slogan has appeared in the paper since September 1896, has been printed in a box in the upper left hand corner of the front page since early 1897. The slogan was a jab at competing papers, such as Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which were known for a lurid and inaccurate reporting of facts and opinions, described by the end of the century as "yellow journalism". Under Ochs' guidance, aided by Carr
Know Nothing
The Native American Party, renamed the American Party in 1855 and known as the Know Nothing movement, was an American nativist political party that operated nationally in the mid-1850s. It was anti-Catholic and hostile to immigration, starting as a secret society; the movement emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, thus providing the group with its common name; the Know Nothings believed a "Romanist" conspiracy was afoot to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. It is remembered for this theme because of fears by Protestants that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. In most places, Know Nothingism lasted only a year or two before disintegrating because of weak local leaders, few publicly declared national leaders and a deep split over the issue of slavery.
In the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism, but was the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party. The collapse of the Whig Party after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act left an opening for the emergence of a new major party in opposition to the Democrats; the Know Nothings elected congressman Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts and several other individuals in the 1854 elections and created a new party organization known as the American Party. In the South, the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians opposed to the Democratic Party. Many hoped that it would seek a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of many Democratic politicians and the anti-slavery positions of the emerging Republican Party; the American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, although he kept quiet about his membership. Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees.
The party declined after the 1856 election. The 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision further aroused opposition to slavery in the North, where many Know Nothings joined the Republicans. Most of the remaining members of the party supported the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 presidential election. Anti-Catholicism had been a factor in colonial America but played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics in the 1840s, it reemerged in nativist attacks on Catholic immigration. It appeared in New York politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the American Republican Party; the movement spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it. They succeeded in a number of local and Congressional elections, notably in 1844 in Philadelphia, where the anti-Catholic orator Lewis Charles Levin, who went on to be the first Jewish congressman, was elected Representative from Pennsylvania's 1st district. In the early 1850s, numerous secret orders grew up, of which the Order of United Americans and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner came to be the most important.
They merged in New York in the early 1850s as a secret order that spread across the North, reaching non-Catholics those who were lower middle class or skilled workmen. The name "Know Nothing" originated in the semi-secret organization of the party; when a member was asked about his activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing." Outsiders derisively called them "Know Nothings," and the name stuck. In 1855, the Know Nothings first entered politics under the American Party label; the immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1860 made religious differences between Catholics and Protestants a political issue. Violence erupted at the polls. Protestants alleged that Pope Pius IX had put down the failed liberal Revolutions of 1848 and that he was an opponent of liberty and republicanism. One Boston minister described Catholicism as "the ally of tyranny, the opponent of material prosperity, the foe of thrift, the enemy of the railroad, the caucus, the school".
These fears encouraged conspiracy theories regarding papal intentions of subjugating the United States through a continuing influx of Catholics controlled by Irish bishops obedient to and selected by the Pope. In 1849, an oath-bound secret society, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, was created by Charles B. Allen in New York City. At its inception, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner only had about 36 members. Fear of Catholic immigration led to a dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, whose leadership in many cities included Catholics of Irish descent. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates sympathetic to their cause: Immigration during the first five years of the 1850s reached a level five times greater than a decade earlier. Most of the new arrivals were poor Catholic peasants or laborers from Ireland and Germany who crowded into the tenements of large cities. Crime and welfare costs soared. Cincinnati's crime rate, for example, tripled between 1846 and 1853 and its murder rate increased sevenfold.
Boston's expenditures for poor relief rose threefold during the same period. In spring 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston and other New England cities, they swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall their biggest victory. The Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, editor Robert T. Conrad, was soon revealed as a Know Nothing as he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sund
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, having served as an American representative and governor of Ohio. Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings in the antebellum years. During the American Civil War, he was wounded while fighting in the Union Army, he was nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1876 and elected through the Compromise of 1877 that ended the Reconstruction Era by leaving the South to govern itself. In office he withdrew military troops from the South, ending Army support for Republican state governments in the South and the efforts of African-American freedmen to establish their families as free citizens, he promoted civil service reform, attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Hayes, an attorney in Ohio, served as city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861; when the Civil War began, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer.
Hayes was wounded five times, most at the Battle of South Mountain. He was promoted to the rank of brevet major general. After the war, he served in the Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for governor of Ohio and was elected to two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872, he served a third two-year term, from 1876 to 1877. In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious elections in national history, he lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden but he won an intensely disputed electoral college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes; the result was the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election on the condition that he withdraw remaining U. S. troops protecting Republican office holders in the South, thus ending the Reconstruction era. Hayes believed in equal treatment without regard to race, he ordered federal troops to guard federal buildings and in so doing restore order from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
He implemented modest civil service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland–Allison Act, which would have put silver money into circulation and raised nominal prices, insisting that maintenance of the gold standard was essential to economic recovery, his policy toward Western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887. Hayes kept his pledge not to run for re-election, retired to his home in Ohio, became an advocate of social and educational reform. Biographer Ari Hoogenboom said his greatest achievement was to restore popular faith in the presidency and to reverse the deterioration of executive power that had set in after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Although supporters have praised his commitment to civil service reform and defense of civil rights, Hayes is ranked as average or below average by historians and scholars. Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822, to Rutherford Hayes, Jr. and Sophia Birchard.
Hayes's father, a Vermont storekeeper, took the family to Ohio in 1817. He died ten weeks before Rutherford's birth. Sophia took charge of the family, raising Hayes and his sister, the only two of the four children to survive to adulthood, she never remarried, Sophia's younger brother, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family for a time. He became a father figure to him, contributing to his early education. Through each of his parents, Hayes was descended from New England colonists, his earliest immigrant ancestor came to Connecticut from Scotland in 1625. Hayes's great-grandfather, Ezekiel Hayes, was a militia captain in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, but Ezekiel's son left his Branford home during the war for the relative peace of Vermont, his mother's ancestors migrated to Vermont at a similar time. Most of his close relatives outside Ohio continued to live there. John Noyes, an uncle by marriage, had been his father's business partner in Vermont and was elected to Congress, his first cousin, Mary Jane Mead, was the mother of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead.
John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, was a first cousin. Hayes attended the common schools in Delaware and enrolled in 1836 at the Methodist Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio, he did well at Norwalk, the following year transferred to The Webb School, a preparatory school in Middletown, where he studied Latin and Ancient Greek. Returning to Ohio, he attended Kenyon College in Gambier in 1838, he enjoyed his time at Kenyon, was successful scholastically. He addressed the class as its valedictorian. After reading law in Columbus, Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843. Graduating with an LL. B, he opened his own law office in Lower Sandusky. Business was slow at first, but he attracted a few clients and represented his uncle Sardis in real estate litigation. In 1847, Hayes became ill with. Thinking a change in climate would help, he considered enlisting in the Mexican–American War, but on his doctor's advice he instead visited family in New England. Returning from there and his uncle Sardis made a long journey to Texas, where Hayes visited with Guy M. Bryan, a Kenyon classm
