There are no statewide TV campaign ads, no multimillion dollar fundraisers with rock stars, and little attention being paid to this fall’s New York state Senate races.
But if the last two years are any indication, who wins control of state Senate will have more effect on what happens — and what doesn’t happen — in Albany than any of the marquee statewide contests.
advertisement
The critical task of the next Legislature will be the redrawing of election district lines, a much criticized practice called reapportionment in which every 10 years, the parties in control of the Senate and Assembly design their chamber’s election districts. Traditionally, the districts are drawn in highly creative ways that make sure incumbents and parties hold power for at least the next decade.
Although the candidates for governor and even legislative leaders promise to reform the practice, it has withstood such attempts before and is the bedrock of legislative power in Albany.
“It’s the majorities picking their voters instead of the other way around,” said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group. He noted that since 1980, only 39 incumbents lost, in about 3,000 races.
This year could be different.
Voters in New York have, for decades, hated the Legislature, yet returned their local senator and Assembly member to office 95 percent of the time. This year’s throw-the-bums-out anger has voters, for the first time, including their own lawmaker. And Republicans and Democrats in part are campaigning on the big Albany issue — which party will control the Senate.
“Three quarters of voters think major changes needed to be made in Albany,” said Lee Miringoff of the Marist College poll. “There is a significant group who thinks it’s broken and can’t be repaired.”
The Assembly’s supermajority of Democrats faces no serious threat but the fight over the Senate’s volatile 32-30 Democratic majority, where 32 votes are needed to pass legislation, may be Albany’s most important contest. Each party believes two to four seats could flip this November, either handing power back to Republicans or solidifying the majority for Democrats.
The last two years in the Senate were known for partisan conflict, including a monthlong, gridlocking coup by a coalition of two Democrats joining Republicans. The two-year term also had some landmark legislation for Democrats including the end of the Rockefeller drug laws that will put more nonviolent drug addicts and low-level dealers into rehabilitation, rather than prison.
“Democracy happened,” said Senate Conference Leader John Sampson, a Brooklyn Democrat. He took over the Democratic majority after the summer 2009 coup and tried to manage the diverse group of 32, each of whom had de facto veto power on every piece of legislation. “It may not be pretty, what goes on in our conference, but it gets done.”
Republicans, who voted in a bloc against most major Democratic legislation including budget bills, see an opportunity.
“They broke their commitment,” said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos, a Nassau County Republican. “They said they wouldn’t raise taxes and spending went way up … They gave Democrats in Albany a chance, and they failed them.”
“The Democrats know they are in trouble,” said Sen. Thomas Libous of Broome County, in charge of the Republicans’ Senate campaign.
“They’ve been extremely dysfunctional,” Libous recently told YNN’s “Capital Tonight” program in Albany.
Sampson’s task is to persuade voters that two years of dramatic Democratic reign is better than the previous 40 years of regimented Republican rule that he said drove up spending that worsened the current fiscal crisis.
During that time of GOP rule, Republicans upstate and on Long Island ruled the Senate, and New York City schools and social service providers complained they were shortchanged. Now that New York City Democrats are in the majority, Republicans are worried upstate and Long Island will lose out if Democrats redraw the lines.
“They have selective amnesia,” Sampson said. “You have a business that’s been operating for 44 years. They controlled the books and also did the audit. As a result of that, all the problems were masked.
“Now that we have taken over, we have opened the books and we have seen the problems that exist,” Sampson said. “What we are doing now is we are making tough decisions, we are making smarter decisions. You may not like them, but you know that it has to be done. You may not like the manner in which it is being done, but at the end of the day, it’s about results. Don’t judge me on the rhetoric, judge me on the results.”
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
Tags: Albany, featured, Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Senate
