Posted on 04/06/2009 12:47:41 PM PDT by decimon
SARATOGA COUNTY, N.Y. -- Former Congressman John Sweeney will appear in court later this week on a felony DWI charge. This is his second drunk driving arrest in 18 months.
(Excerpt) Read more at capitalnews9.com ...
Have they officially stated that Tedisco was the winner?
The official count is not completed. Absentee ballots are yet to be tallied and they are more Republican than Democrat. My "apparently won" may be premature.
Which party?
I sure hope he pulls it off.
One of ours. He really f’d up badly.
*ping*
He’s Republican. I posted this as it may give some background to the much publicized race for the 20th district.
That Tedisco spent 26 years in Albany is not encouraging but he hopefully has taken a lesson from the fate of other, errant politicians.
Yes, Sweeney really screwed up. What I don’t get is, why do these people (i.e., boozers) drive?! Drink yourself sick, if you like, but take a damn cab or call home for a ride. I think there’s a need for a “light” version of AA that demands only that its members not drink and drive. (I’m serious.) Perhaps the emphasis on abstaining from alcohol has set the bar too high for some people. Many people get arrested for DUI and say, “I’m sorry. I’m an alcoholic.” Society shouldn’t care much if that guy continues to booze it up, but society does need the guy to stop driving when he has been boozing it up.
They drive because they think they can handle it. Half the problem is they’re in denial.
He was first elected in 1998 in the former 22nd C.D. (Jerry Solomon's district, a safe GOP district). It became the 20th with a bigger, 71,000-vote GOP enrollment edge in 2002. That November, Sweeney won his third term with 73 percent of the vote.
Some widely-aired personal problems cost him the seat in 2006 when he got 47 percent against now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. The following January, he picked up his first DWI conviction after he was stopped on the Northway (I-87) north of Albany with a 24-year-old local stripper sitting on his lap.
Sweeney was part of the campaign team that elected George E. Pataki governor over Mario Cuomo in 1994. He was nominated for the Solomon seat over Jerry's objections. Solomon preferred Roy McDonald, a fellow conservative, but did campaign for Sweeney in the end.
About 1985, NYS motor vehicle law was changed so that a DWI arrest within 10 years of a conviction is automatically treated as a felony.
You’re surely right that they’re in denial, but I don’t get why judges aren’t much quicker to suspend peoples’ licenses after their first DUI offense. One of the reasons boozers are denial is that The Law lets them continue to drive. People with suspended licenses could still choose to get behind the wheel, of course, but I’d bet the number of people willing to ignore having a suspended license is lower than the number who still have licenses and still drink and drive.
There’s a lot of idiots clogging up the benches of our courts, that’s another reason.
Sweeney is a poster boy for showing how screwed up you can get with over drinking. He always struck me as be a hard-ass who would never let the opposition get one over on him. In spite of that, he ran himself, his family and his party into a latrine because of his drinking.
At least he’s not still in Congress to embarrass us further. He and Fossella. Do New York Republicans have a special reason for drinking and driving?
If you were a Republican in Congress, how could you serve sober ?
Easy, get high instead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.