CAUSES FOR CELEBRATION
Senate Dems’ deal brings renegades into fold
ALBANY — Fractured state Senate Democrats on Wednesday ended their longstanding hostilities by reunifying ahead of a high-stakes election season.
Eight breakaway Senate Dems who have been aligned with the GOP since 2011 agreed to immediately dissolve their independent conference and return to the mainline Democrats.
Under an agreement pushed by Gov. Cuomo and hashed out during a meeting Tuesday with state Senate Democratic leaders, Rep. Joseph Crowley (DQueens) and influential labor unions, Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeffrey Klein of the Bronx will no longer be co-leader of the chamber.
Instead, he will become Senate Democratic Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins’ top deputy, replacing Sen. Michael Gianaris, the Queens Dem who also heads the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. Gianaris is expected to keep that role.
If the Democrats win the majority, Stewart-Cousins — who complained about being frozen out of the recent budget talks and negotiations over an anti-sexual harassment package — stands to become the state’s first black woman to lead a legislative conference.
But in order to have the 32 Democrats needed for a majority, the party has to win two special Senate elections on April 24 and a ninth breakaway Democrat, Sen. Simcha Felder of Brooklyn, would have to agree to return to the fold.
Even then, Cuomo and Klein spoke of the need to win more seats in November to guarantee a “functioning majority” in which one member can’t hold issues hostage like Felder did during the budget talks.
Felder, who has been caucusing with the GOP, wouldn’t tip his hand Wednesday about what he might do.
“I’m only loyal to God, my wife, my constituents and New Yorkers,” he said in a statement. “I don’t care about political parties and more and more New Yorkers feel the same way.”
Cuomo, at a late-afternoon press conference Wednesday with Stewart-Cousins and Klein, said the reunification stemmed from a need for Democratic unity to fight back against a Washington agenda he said is aimed at hurting New York.
“I think that reality in many ways trumps everything else,” Cuomo said. “It trumps individual rationales. It trumps factions. It trumps personal aspirations. It trumps personal disagreements.”
The IDC has been under increased pressure since the election of President Trump to break its coalition with the Republicans. The group’s members, including Klein, are facing primary challenges from the left.
Cuomo, too, has been under pressure to reunite the two warring sides from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party who feel he has emboldened the Senate GOP by not doing enough to bring intraparty peace in the chamber. He is facing a primary challenge from the left by actress Cynthia Nixon (below).
Nixon said Cuomo’s actions are “too little too late” after emboldening the Republicans to control the Senate since taking office in 2011.
“If you’ve set your own house on fire and watched it burn for eight years, finally turning on a hose doesn’t make you a hero,” she said.
Nixon’s good friend and Cuomo political foe Mayor de Blasio said the deal is a result of “the chickens have come home to roost, with more and more progressive energy over the past few years.”
De Blasio charged that Cuomo “aided and abetted the IDC from the beginning. It’s one of the reasons the IDC exists, one of the reasons that we have (had) a de facto Republican government in the state Senate for a long time — just a fact.”
The Senate Republicans blasted Cuomo for putting politics ahead of governing in a bipartisan manner as has been done since 2011.
“Let’s be honest — the only reason that any of this is happening now is because Andrew Cuomo WITH THE fractured state Senate Democrats agreeing to reunify, the party is close to capturing a majority that could open the door for a flood of progressive initiatives long blocked by the GOP. Among them: • The Child Victims Act that would give survivors of child sex abuse more time to seek justice as adults. • Gun control measures such as the banning of bump-stock devices and a longer waiting period to purchase firearms. • A strengthening of the state’s abortion laws. • Electoral reforms such as early voting. • Creation of a state DREAM Act to give the undocumented kids of immigrants who illegally brought them to the U.S. access to public financial aid programs. • Criminal justice reforms such as the elimination of bail on all misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. is scared to death of Cynthia Nixon,” said Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif.
The Dems agreed to work together on the coming special election races. They also agreed not to back primaries against each others’ members. But the leftist Democrats challenging IDC members say they are undeterred and will still move forward with their primaries.