DAYS OF KLEIN & ROSES OVER
GOP zaps perks of Dem flipper
Even in politics, divorce can be painful.
State Sen. Jeff Klein, a Democrat who teamed up with Republicans to enjoy the perks ladled out by the majority party for seven years, learned the hard way that political parting can be as tough as a marital split.
Now that he has returned to the Democratic fold, Klein’s former coalition partners have changed the locks on the doors to his spacious offices and yanked his government-supplied 2017 Ford Explorer.
“Senator Klein is being moved into space reserved for the Democratic minority,” Senate GOP spokesman Scott Reif said on Thursday.
Republicans forced Klein to return the black SUV and a special license plate that were provided to him as the co-leader of the Senate Majority Coalition.
He also lost his two Albany offices: one on the fourth floor of the Capitol and another, Room 913, in the Legislative Office Building, adjacent to Senate GOP Majority Leader John Flanagan.
Workers pulled Klein’s name plates and changed the locks, Senate sources said. And the Republicans reclaimed Klein’s space in their offices at 250 Broadway in lower Manhattan.
Klein’s banishment comes days after Gov. Cuomo brokered a deal that reunited the Bronx politician’s breakaway group of Democratic senators, the Independent Democratic Caucus, with the rest of the Democrats in the Senate. That brought an end to Klein’s controversial powersharing arrangement with the GOP, which began in 2011 and had become a growing political headache for Cuomo.
Now Klein’s longtime Senate nemesis, Democratic Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, will determine what office space and vehicle Klein gets to use, Republicans said.
Senate Democratic spokesman Mike Murphy said, “We’re working on the space issue” for Klein and other IDC members.
“Everyone will be taken care of,” he added.
The bloodletting began last week, when Flanagan stripped four former IDC members of their committee-chair positions.
The moves come as two special elections later this month could lay the groundwork for Democrats to reclaim the narrowly divided, 63-seat chamber.
Currently, there are 31 Republicans and 30 Democrats, with two vacant seats to be decided by elections set for April 24.
If Democrats win both races, they would have a 32-31 majority. But one other conservative Democrat, Brooklyn Sen. Simcha Felder, still caucuses with the Republicans. That makes him a kingmaker in determining which party controls the chamber for the remainder of the 2018 legislative session.
While Cuomo has lauded Albany’s bipartisan power split in the past, Klein’s IDC infuriated New York liberals and provided the governor’s primary challenger, Cynthia Nixon, an opening to attack him from the left.