Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jul 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Al Baker
Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Russell+Simmons (Russell Simmons)
http://www.mapinc.org/find?140 (Rockefeller Drug Laws)

HIP-HOP PLAYER LEARNS ALBANY'S GAME

ALBANY, July 18 - For days, Russell Simmons had been telling everyone
he could that he had struck a deal to revamp New York's mandatory jail
sentences under the state's Rockefeller-era drug laws. He mentioned it
on NY 1. He told it to foreign journalists. He briefed the Rev. Al
Sharpton and anyone else who would listen.

"That's what I do," Mr. Simmons, the mogul, said last Tuesday, with
the confidence that had made him both successful and rich in the world
of hip-hop. "I'm a deal maker."

He claimed to have a bill, put together by Gov. George E. Pataki, that
reflected a discussion with Albany's leaders during a seven-hour
meeting in June. Such a bill would mean that Mr. Simmons had pulled
off a real feat, cracking the code of legislative gridlock in Albany.

Mr. Simmons was neither so skilled, nor so fortunate.

An unwritten axiom of Albany government is that the more possible or
probable it appears that lawmakers will be able to resolve a public
policy quandary, the less likely it is to happen. In the state capital
and its culture of power politics, an open issue is sometimes better
than an outcome.

Mr. Simmons's handshake with the governor meant little.

Barring passage in the Legislature, the so-called agreement was just
69 pages of paper. Instead of providing a compromise to change the
laws that leading Democrats and Republicans agree are too harsh, it
antagonized the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who denounced it on
Wednesday, leaving any deal Mr. Simmons thought he had in ruins.

It has not yet inspired the people of the State of New York to rise up
en masse and demand change in how the courts sentence low-level drug
offenders, as Mr. Simmons has hoped. It did not force Mr. Silver to
compromise from his previous stance of staunch opposition to
predetermined sentences, as Mr. Simmons had expected. It, in fact,
triggered an investigation of Mr. Simmons and his colleagues by the
State Lobbying Commission, with threats of fines hanging in the air.

And it turned many of Mr. Simmons's own allies against him, exposing
him to a new front of opposition on an issue he clearly feels strongly
about and in which he has invested time and money.

Longtime observers of Albany politics were not surprised.

"People who are new to the Albany culture of negotiations are
inexperienced at reading the political tea leaves and you have to be
very careful in Albany, in an environment where there is not a whole
lot of trust," said Blair Horner, a veteran lobbyist for the New York
Public Interest Research Group. "And until the i's are dotted and the
t's are crossed, there is no deal."

Mr. Simmons acknowledged his Albany innocence.

"If you position me as an optimistic, blind idiot, I would accept
that," he said. "I always see a half-full glass, and I always end up
with a full glass. They say that is kind of like a brainwashing
technique. But washing your brain, in a spiritual context and in life,
is not a bad thing. I'm not really lost. I really do live in reality."

For Mr. Simmons, 45, feelings on the subject grew out of insights from
growing up in Hollis, Queens, when it was plagued by heroin addicts,
pushers and killers. Many of his friends wound up in jail, or dead,
and almost always the culprit was drugs, he said.

Some of Mr. Simmons's beliefs could be labeled conservative, like his
belief that those who bring harm to poor communities deserve to be
removed from those communities.

"They kill each other over marijuana," he said. "That is a violent
thing in our community. So, a lot of times, these people who commit
these violent crimes, most people in our community would want them off
the street."

Some could be labeled liberal, like his belief that those who go to
jail for using drugs would be better served by drug treatment than
jail time.

His older brother, Daniel, pleaded guilty because of the Rockefeller
laws, and Mr. Simmons said Daniel salved his stint in jail with drugs,
never getting rehabilitation until he was freed.

Mr. Simmons's presence in the Capitol was plagued with problems from
the start. There he was last month, in a room with Mr. Pataki, Mr.
Silver and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno. It was Phat
Farm street clothes versus Brooks Brothers suits.

The kid from Queens held court with New York's power politicians: Mr.
Silver, the gravelly voiced litigator from Manhattan's Lower East
Side; Mr. Bruno, the white-haired former boxer from upstate farm
country, and the Republican governor, who is known to be socially
liberal but tough on crime.

Their bizarre encounter began on June 18, about 6 p.m., and ended
after 1 the next morning. Though Mr. Simmons said he believed they had
struck a deal that night, it melted like a snow cone in the summer
sun. They had argued, downed Oreo cookies and shunted other
legislative matters aside as the session hurtled toward an
unproductive close.

There was an immediate backlash. Lawmakers cried foul. Lobbyists were
jealous. A political neophyte should never get access like that, they
said, particularly while Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Democratic Assemblyman
from Queens, who had devoted much of his career to the issue, was
forced to wait outside with reporters.

Some of his onetime allies now vilify Mr. Simmons.

"The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was bringing Russell into
this movement," said Randy Credico, an organizer of Mothers of the New
York Disappeared, who has taken to sending fierce e-mail messages to
the governor's director of criminal justice, Chauncey G. Parker. Mr.
Credico blamed Mr. Simmons for accepting a compromise that is short of
what many of the Rockefeller drug laws' opponents are seeking --
restoring sentencing discretion to judges. "This really makes me very
cynical about getting involved with celebrities ever again. I'll die
first before the Simmons bill goes through."

Meanwhile, another legislative session had come and gone in Albany and
despite pledges by all sides to change the laws, they remain today
exactly as they were when signed in the 1970's by their namesake, Gov.
Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Mr. Simmons concedes that there are people better qualified to discuss
the law, but that the governor had invited him. He flew in a
helicopter to Albany from Manhattan with Randy A. Daniels, the
secretary of state (who he later said reminded him of his father). He
went into that meeting for Mr. Aubry, he said.

Mr. Simmons's first impressions, he said, were positive. He said he
was aware of rumors that the leaders were lying on the issue, to one
another and to others, but he found them to be aboveboard.

"There are people who are outside, or inside, the process, who say
it's a dirtier game than I found it to be," Mr. Simmons said.

On Mr. Bruno, whom he described on "The Charlie Rose Show" as his idea of a
grown-up: "He's sincere about his opinions; very much committed to what is
right." On Mr. Silver: "I agree with, on a lot of political and social
issues, Shelly Silver." On Mr. Pataki: "More willing to compromise,
probably, than both of them. He worked hard to be the glue."

He remains loyal to Mr. Pataki, partly because he agrees with the
stance Mr. Pataki has taken on the issue. The governor's belief in
harsher penalties for the most violent and predatory drug dealers,
drug kingpins, drug traffickers who used guns or children to sell
drugs and those who sold drugs over the Internet is in line with Mr.
Simmons's.

Some said he had been gullible or worse. Deborah P. Small, of the Drug
Policy Alliance, who has stopped advising him on the issue, had a
different take, saying he "allowed himself to be convinced that the
governor's position was more representative of the communities of
color than the position of the Assembly and the advocacy community,
which I think is the most absurd thing I've ever heard him say."

Mr. Simmons said he was not naive. He said he knew that politicians
were driven by opinion polls and would avoid commitment if an
apathetic electorate let them off the hook.

Still, he said, he was confounded at times by the inability of the
Albany leaders to close a deal, as he often had to, working for so
long in the corporate world as founder of Def Jam records and Phat
Farm clothing.

"In business we have to close," he said. "We have to compromise, if
necessary, and be creative, and we have to make deals where everybody
is happy."

But this was Albany, where political brinkmanship is a way of
life.

"I think he galloped in and thought he would save the day," said
Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist who is the dean of the college
of liberal arts and sciences at the State University of New York in
New Paltz. "He wanted to do the right thing, and he came into a world
with which he was not familiar, and at the end of the day did not
produce a result because he did not know that world."

Mr. Simmons, who has succeeded in numerous complex business deals, and
who has assets of about $300 million, remains optimistic. On Thursday,
he was in Chicago, still insisting he had a deal, still taking the
long view, telling how his Phat Farm clothing line lost money for six
straight years before it turned a profit.

While in Chicago, he told his friend, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the
Nation of Islam, that he was still working on the Rockefeller reform
effort. And both critics and admirers say he is indeed keeping the
issue alive.

The three men who run Albany from a room? Mr. Simmons said they would
not be able to hide from him or the people he represents. "They've
come together," he said. "They actually made a deal. We'll try to make
them live up to that deal."

He said none of the three leaders wanted to be viewed as insensitive
on the issue. Then he paused, before speaking from the world he comes
from.

"These guys are not even famous," he said. "They could become famous."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake