Wozniak Denounces Bill She Co-Sponsored

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Erie County Republicans have their Antoine Thompson, and her name is Angela Wozniak. 

In 2007, then-state Senator Antoine Thompson made statewide news in this particularly embarrassing way:

Senator Antoine M. Thompson of Buffalo, a freshman Democrat, made a fiery speech on the Senate floor last week, denouncing the bill to increase legislators’ salaries when it came up for a vote in his chamber. He cited the lack of raises for Buffalo city workers, police officers, teachers and sanitation workers, and said, “I can’t in good conscience vote for myself, or anyone else, a raise.”

That led Senator Frank Padavan, a Queens Republican, to pose a question:

“Why did your conscience allow you to be a sponsor of this bill?”

Indeed, all 29 Senate Democrats, including Mr. Thompson, had co-sponsored the bill days earlier, but, in a speedy turnabout, almost all of them ultimately voted against the measure, as the governor urged.

That made Thompson a local laughingstock pretty quickly, and that was before he had staffers pretending to be other people. 

Now, embattled ethical basketcase Assemblywoman Angela Wozniak (C-143), (see here, here, and here) took to the floor of the state Assembly to apparently speak out critically of a bill she sponsored. From the Daily News’ political blog, Wozniak

…raised eyebrows when she expressed fears during a floor debate last week that a bill to legalize mixed martial arts could open the door for sex offenders to prey on kids at MMA training schools.

The comments struck many on both sides of the aisle as odd given that Wozniak (R-Erie County) was not only listed as a co-sponsor of the MMA bill, but also recently was sanactioned by the Assembly for retaliating against a staffer with whom she had an extramarital affair.

“It made no logical sense what she was saying,” said one Democrat.

Wozniak during the debate on the bill raised concerns that legalizing mixed martial arts would somehow lead to registered sex offenders owning schools that teach amateur mixed martial arts to kids.

Pay special attention to the following passage: 

“We can’t be naïve to the fact that these people target these schools,” she said. “They know what they’re doing. They know that if they’re teaching a child they can put that child in a situation where they’re doing a maneuver perhaps to touch them in a way that that the child might not even realize they’re being touched or they can gain trust with that child and really harm that child.”

What is the pathology here where Wozniak assumes that anyone and everyone is out to sexually assault children? What is she talking about when she says that sex offenders would run MMA training facilities? What sort of a “maneuver” could lead to an MMA teacher touching a child in a way “that that the child might not even realize they’re being touched”? 

She urged passage of a separate MMA bill she introduced that would regulate the amateur levels of the sport.

Noting that much money had been spent on lobbying for passage of the legalization of professional mixed martial arts, Wozniak said “I really hope it isn’t just about the money. I think that’s deplorable.”

She then voted in favor of the bill.

So, blusterblusterbluster, assume everyone’s out to be weird with kids, and then vote the way you were going to vote anyway. All the while, you’ve just been sanctioned for sexual harassment. But that passage I highlighted above reminded me of what Wozniak told WGRZ’s Danny Spewak in December, when she appeared at a Lancaster School Board meeting to demagogue against a proposed LGBT anti-discrimination policy and displayed knowledge that was both an inch wide and an inch deep. She “explained” her position thusly, 

How is a child s’posed to feel safe and have dignity when they’re having to be forced into a situation where they’re having to be watched when they’re potentially naked in front of someone of the opposite sex who sexually prefers them. This is wrong, and this I think that’s why we have such a strong turnout of parents speaking out against it tonight.

Again: arglebargle and assume everyone wants to be weird with kids. It really deserves to be seen (start at 1:58): 

Wozniak seems preoccupied with all the sex offenders who are going to rush out to run amateur MMA training centers, and upset that the proposed bill doesn’t address that, but, (a) chances are pretty high that registered sex offenders whose crimes involved minors are already barred from having contact; and (b) the proposed bill involved the legalization of professional MMA bouts and had nothing to do with amateur MMA or the training of fighters. So, Wozniak got up to get some screen time during the debate on a bill likely to attract media attention, and looked ridiculous in the process. 

Astonishingly, it’s now been several weeks since Wozniak was admonished and censured for sexual harassment of a member of her staff, yet she’s still in Albany, she’s still running for re-election, and neither GOP chairman Nick Langworthy nor Conservative fusion Party Chairman Ralph Lorigo have publicly demanded her resignation or withdrawal from the race.