New York – Back in Albany After Charges, State Senator Finds a Different World

New York – When his Democratic colleagues held their daily meeting on Monday, State Senator Carl Kruger stayed holed up in his office across the street from the Capitol. When he finally emerged, a woman who spotted him down the hallway gasped. And when Mr. Kruger walked onto the Senate floor, most of his colleagues acted as if he were invisible.

Four days after he surrendered to federal prosecutors on public corruption charges, Mr. Kruger, a Democrat from Brooklyn, returned on Monday to a world very different from the one he had inhabited for the past 17 years.

It was an awkward first day back in the Senate for Mr. Kruger, the former chairman of its Finance Committee, who is known for his ability to raise and distribute campaign money.

Mr. Kruger was never one to be spotted in crowds in Albany, often dining alone and never taking on the back-slapping image of some of his colleagues. And now, facing charges in what prosecutors called a “broad-based bribery racket,” Mr. Kruger clearly seemed to make some people uncomfortable by his presence.

And yet Mr. Kruger, reduced in a week’s time from a highly powerful lawmaker to a pay-to-play punch line, seemed undeterred.

“I am here to do my job,” he said, “and that’s what I’m doing today.”

Flanked by two aides, Mr. Kruger showed up at his office early in the afternoon, keeping his head down and declining to speak to a reporter. A fake-wood placard denoting Mr. Kruger’s post as the top Democrat on the Finance Committee – a post of which he was stripped last week – had been ripped down from its perch next to his office door. Only some sticky residue remained.

Mr. Kruger was originally expected to address his fellow Democratic senators on Monday, presumably to apologize to them for the distraction brought by his charges last week. But several lawmakers indicated they would not attend the Democrats’ meeting if Mr. Kruger was present, and so he relented.

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