By Tom deignan

AS we make our way towards Memorial Day weekend, the political scene usually cools off. Politicians retreat from Washington or Albany, and the big issues of the day tend fade into the background as we all turn our attention to summer fun, such as how on earth we’re going to keep filling those gas tanks!

But if you are an Irish American politician, it seems these are the days when things are heating up.

Let’s start in New York City where one of Mike Bloomberg’s top aides — the son of Irish immigrants — has become engaged in a power struggle within the administration.

According to Ben Smith in the New York Daily News, Patrick Brennan is being touted as the new leader at the obscure but influential Community Assistance Unit. Brennan, whose mother was born in Mohill, Co. Leitrim and whose father was born in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, is being supported by Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey.

However, others within Camp Bloomberg have said they want to expand the administration’s diversity and want to hire an African American for the job.

Either way, this shows that since joining the Bloomberg team during last year’s election, Brennan has become a valued aide. A native of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Brennan worked in the New York City public school system before getting involved in politics.

In 1998 he worked for Chuck Schumer’s Senate campaign and later held senior posts with organized labor. Why would an Irish union man work for a billionaire Republican? As Brennan told “Sidewalks” last year, he thinks Bloomberg is the man to give New York’s working class a shot at the American Dream.

Meanwhile, a number of Irish Americans are already battling for the crucial 2006 congressional elections. Perhaps the most surprising name in this context is upstate Congressman John Sweeney.

What is surprising is that Sweeney (like Brennan, a Republican who comes out of an Irish American union background) is being targeted as vulnerable.

Democrats are pointing to President George W. Bush’s bad poll numbers in Sweeney’s upstate district and are hoping Sweeney will sink along with the president.

Earlier this month a New York Times analysis said that Sweeney was “on the defensive.”

This comes a few months after Sweeney was involved in a nasty feud with Governor George Pataki loyalist Patrick McCarthy. According to the Albany rumor mill, Sweeney believes McCarthy was assisting his Democratic opponent Kirsten Gillibrand.

Why would these Irish Republicans be at each other’s throats? Well, Sweeney has never been afraid to attack New York’s Republican leadership.

“We face a disaster in 2006,” Sweeney was quoted as saying last year. This and other comments have been taken as not-so-veiled swipes at Governor Pataki and other New York State GOP leaders.

The allegations of aiding the Democratic enemy even led one New York Republican to write a letter demanding that McCarthy be punished for backstabbing Sweeney.

All of this infighting only assists the Democrats. They have targeted Northeast Republican seats such as Sweeney’s as the key to turning 2006 into their 1994 — that is, the year they convincingly swept to victory in the House of Represent-atives, as Republicans did that year, led by Newt Gingrich.

Syracuse Republican James Walsh, also a familiar name to many Irish Americans thanks to his Walsh visa program and chairmanship of the Friends of Ireland committee in Congress, is another incumbent who has been targeted by Democrats as vulnerable.

If Democratic strategy pans out, then come November, you will know the name of Chris Murphy.

As The Times noted earlier this month, “The Democrats’ strategy is on prominent display in Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District, where the Democratic challenger, Christopher S. Murphy, 32, a state senator, has accused the 12-term Republican incumbent, Representative Nancy L. Johnson, of playing a leading role in helping advance the agenda of President Bush and conservative House leaders on issues including the war in Iraq and health care.”

It’s a long way to go, of course, before those 2006 elections. In the meantime, you can also keep your eye on the attorney general’s race here in New York State, where Buffalo’s Denise O’Donnell, from a large working class Irish Buffalo family, as well as Sean Patrick Maloney are among those fighting an uphill battle for the Democratic nomination.

As for reading, well, maybe you’ll want to take former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey’s new book about his declaration that he is a “gay American” to the beach.

Or maybe you’re better off sticking to politics outside of the bedroom.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)