Jared Abbruzzese

Today, Joe Bruno is expected to be re-elected by Senate Republicans as their Majority Leader, despite an FBI probe into his business dealing with a lobbyist.

The lone dissenting vote is expected to come from John Bonacic of New Paltz, who told his colleagues the conference needs a new leader.

I chatted with Bonacic a couple of days ago and he said, "I had no endgame. I was not planning a coup. I didn't call a lot of members saying 'join me.'"

The inevitable retribution for his impertinence seems like a high price to pay for a gesture. But he said he had his reasons.

The FBI is looking into $500,000 in member items Bruno steered to a lobbyist he has private business with, Jared Abbruzzese. Bruno also runs a consulting company whose clients and transactions are not well-known.

"I never knew that he had a consulting company," Bonacic told me "This was disturbing to me. It's not right what I saw happening. For me, with my own standards, its time for new leadership, I'm hoping."

He also said, "I didn't go on tour with newspapers and tv and radio. I wrote a confidential member to my colleagues why we need new leadership. I can't do more than that."

When I asked how his letter got publicized, Bonancic said, "My office did not leak it. If other people did, than we have personal agendas going on. But its not my agenda. I came to Albany to serve the people, not a leader."

-- Azi Paybarah

The Joe Bruno story is rapidly oozing outward. Capitol Confidential picks up and runs with an AP item that says lobbyist James Featherstonhaugh recently turned over to investigators documents related to a 1990s real estate project in which Bruno was an investor. The lobbyist says there was nothing untoward about the deal, and that the real estate development was a financial boondoggle. (As Hillary Clinton could tell Bruno, that may not make the questions go away.) Among the other people involved in the deal: Bruno's brother Peter, Jared Abbruzzese, and Abbruzzese's wife. Bruno's son Ken and some of his friends also bought plots of land from the venture. Ken, of course, quit his own job as a high-priced lobbyist about a year ago, amid many questions about his activities.

The most unlikely wrinkle: Featherstonhaugh's partner on the deal was Douglas Rutnik, another Albany lobbyist and the father of newly elected Democratic Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. The incumbent Gillibrand defeated, Republican John Sweeney, made an issue of her father's background during the last election, saying she could hardly call him a tool of special interests when her old man was a lobbyist himself. You think Sweeney wishes this story came out before the election?

-- Andrew Rice