Tom Suozzi was one of the first elected officials to arrive at Sen. Hillary’s Clinton’s Super Tuesday celebration. He stood toward the front, chatting and clapping, primely positioned in front of the podium.

Eventually, others started pouring in, including Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan), New York City Comptroller William Thompson and Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Not long after, they poured back out again, tugged by staffers to the press room to crow about the Clinton victories in front of the cameras and microphones.

Suozzi stayed put.

Two years after he launched his insurgent primary challenge to Spitzer, the man once seen as a rising star in his party found himself in a difficult political position at the beginning of this year. After two wins for Nassau County executive, questions are swirling about how he might fare in a bid for a third term, or whether he will even seek one. All the statewide offices are now held by Democrats, leaving him no clear path to Albany or Washington. And the rumors that he might make a run for the seat of State Sen. Carl Marcellino (R-Suffolk/Nassau) have dissipated, helped along by Suozzi’s adamant denials of interest in running a race this year.

For Suozzi, 2008 and what lie beyond were not shaping out very well.

Then, on Jan. 7, he got a call. Spitzer wanted to meet with him the next morning in Albany, he was told, right before the State of the State. And then, presuming the meeting went well, Spitzer wanted to name Suozzi head of his new property tax commission.

Suozzi quickly accepted.

A vocal proponent of property tax reform since his first run for county executive, Suozzi made the issue central to his 2006 challenge to Spitzer. During the campaign, Suozzi’s push for a property tax cap was a major point of disagreement between the two.

“When he signed the executive order creating the commission,” Suozzi recalled, “the governor said, ‘Some people have criticized him for this.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you!’”

In their appearances together to promote the commission, they have turned that old tension between them into a running joke.

At the Nassau Chamber of Commerce in January, Spitzer introduced Suozzi as “a friend, somebody who has done a spectacular job running Nassau County, and made the tough decisions, and is fun to travel with across the state.”

Suozzi went for the laugh line.

“It really isn’t that much fun—it’s a small plane, very cramped,” he said.

Spitzer parried, teasing his old opponent about the win.

“I don’t want to show you the big plane,” he said.

Many in the audience laughed. Suozzi did not.

Eager to keep the attention focused on the need for reform, rather than on himself, Suozzi was reluctant to say that his role as the commission head would lead the group to make any specific recommendations that it otherwise might not.

“There’s no question in my mind that people are better educated than I am in the State Legislature and think tanks on the issue of property tax reform,” he said, explaining that his mandate to the members and staff so far has been simply to get as broad a perspective as possible by reviewing legislation passed and debated in other states.

He does not, he insisted, have any sense of what the commission members will ultimately glean from this information, or what this will lead them to recommend for New York.

“I don’t know what the right answer is yet,” he said. “I just know that the problem is very clearly that property taxes are crushing people throughout the state, especially outside New York City.”

Now Suozzi will spend the next year embroiled in the debate, while simultaneously making constant appeals to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) to be open to the commission’s recommendations when those are announced. Their frustration over not having representatives on the panel, he said, is something which can be overcome.

“I don’t think anyone would defend the current system as being sustainable,” he said, “and I know that to fashion a solution, it’s going to require a broad consensus.”

He said he was well suited to appeal to both Silver and Bruno, as well as other Democrats and Republicans across the state.
Some might see the role on the commission as a way for Suozzi to resuscitate his political prospects. Political consultant Norm Adler, who has worked for Democrats as well as for Marcellino and other GOP State Senate candidates on Long Island, was skeptical.

Adler called Suozzi an unlikely pick to be appointed to the Senate if Clinton wins the White House, and a bid for Congress would mean a primary against popular Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Nassau), who seems unlikely to retire soon. If Andrew Cuomo (D) runs a primary against Spitzer in 2010 and leaves the attorney general race open, Suozzi could make that campaign, Adler said, but otherwise, his options are limited.

“Timing is everything, and it’s just that at this particular juncture, at least, it appears that when he finishes his term, there’s nowhere else in public life for him to go,” Adler said.

The only hope for Suozzi’s political career, Adler said, would be to get appointed to a position in the second Clinton administration, if the New York senator is able to win the White House. Outside of that, Adler said, Suozzi is likely to join the long list of once promising politicians who quietly disappear.

“I think this rising star is about to fall into a black hole,” Adler said.

But Suozzi says he is not worried. Recent political comebacks in New York and in the White House races give him solace.

“You never know what’s going to happen. You can be Hillary Clinton before New Hampshire, and you can be Hillary Clinton after New Hampshire. You can be John McCain in the summer of 2007 and you can be John McCain in the winter of 2008. There’s a big difference. You can be Andrew Cuomo after 2002,” he said. “You just never know what’s going to happen.”

For now, he said he is upbeat, insisting that he is optimistic about his future, though for the first time in his political career, he is unsure of the next step.

“I did see a show on television the other night where people say they’re most depressed when they’re 44 years old. And after that, it’s all uphill,” he said.

He laughed.

“Well,” he said, “I was 44 when I ran for governor.”