Here’s Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver taking a swipe at Ed Koch in response to the former NYC mayor’s recent remarks that his fellow Manhattan Democrat is an enemy of reform and a “bum” who should be ejected from office by the voters this fall.

“I’m not going to glorify his statements,” Silver told me during an interview this afternoon that will air in full this evening on Capital Tonight.

“I respect the elderly and I think it is, as my former congressman and my former mayor, someone who supported him many times, I respect his position in life now.”

(For the record: Koch is 85. Silver, by comparison, is a spring chicken at the ripe old age of 66. The two have exchanged verbal barbs several times now on the subject of the speaker’s refusal to sign the trio of reform pledges sent out by Koch’s NY Uprising PAC).

Koch is embarking on upstate tour next week to celebrate lawmakers and challengers deemed “heroes” of reform for their willingness to sign his pledges and slam the “enemies” who, like Silver and Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson, declined to do so.

He’s hitting Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, but has chosen to avoid Albany. Odd, particularly since the Legislature is expected to be in town for another extraordinary session – what better backdrop against which to engage in a little healthy lawmaker bashing?

This is Koch’s first campaign-like upstate swing since his failed 1982 gubernatorial bid during which his anti-upstate statements are now widely viwed as having cost him the primary race against Mario Cuomo.

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