The Village Voice: CityState: Getting Away With Murder by Wayne Barrett hen George Pataki was a Republican assemblyman in 1990 and Mario Cuomo was running for certain re-election while trying to roll up a record victory margin to impress national Democrats, the young, three-term legislator led a filibuster against the state budget. Finally, at 3 a.m., With no reporters left in the Capitol, the Democratic Speaker suspended the rules of debate and moved for an immediate vote, passing the budget over the outraged protests of Pataki, who later called this the "most difficult day" in his decade-long legislative career.
This is how Pataki summed up the experience just four years ago in an autobiography no one bought: "This wasn't just a policy disagreement. It was a bipartisan agreement to enact a budget that put the interests of government—more accurately those of politicians and their careers—ahead of the interests and needs of the people of New York.