By almost every measure, poll numbers showing the regard of voters for most legislative institutions is dismal. In late August, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked on NBC's “Meet the Press” about recent Gallup Polls that showed Congress, even before the financials meltdown, to have an approval rating of just 14 percent and a disapproval rating of 75 percent.

A Siena College Poll in early September, after the Legislature was called back to Albany to make additional budget cuts, but before the drops on Wall Street, showed that those polled felt that New York's fiscal condition was “fair” (41 percent) and “poor” with (41 percent). Of those polled, 37 percent thought the state was headed in the “wrong direction.”

With these combined negatives you would think that members of Congress and the New York state Legislature would be shaking in their proverbial boots as Election Day approaches. They are not. They know that even when voters give their institutions high negatives, they still have a near lock on re-election, unless they foul up big time (i.e. get caught in a scandal of an ethical, financial or personal nature).

Why?

The answer is that most voters approve of their own legislator and don't connect them with the ills of the institutions they are part of, to the consternation of challengers who try again and again to identify their opponent as a symptom of an overall broken system.

They love that their legislator is accessible. That they take care of their major and minor constituent service problems with Albany and Washington. That they send them mailings. That they show up at events and say the right things on the issues that have local import, but often don't jibe with their legislative votes #- often because the press can't or doesn't try to pin them down. In essence their legislator is one of them, not the “big bad” Congress or Albany.

They don't connect their legislator for the failures in preventing the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the lack of accessible health care or out of control spending that has a national debt surpassing $10 trillion or a state facing a $1.2 billion budget gap for this year.

So the end result is that despite the controversial $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, laden with pork and a drawn out war in Iraq, Congress will have very few incumbents lose in 11 days. Despite a state on the brink of fiscal insolvency and in real fiscal crisis, the Legislature will have a near perfect re-election rate, reminiscent of the old Soviet Politburo.

Why?

Because voters don't connect the faults of the institutions with the sum of their parts - Assembly members, representatives and Senators.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com