GOP ‘Walmart’ boost
Retail family’s big $$ in Senate race
The billionaire heirs to the Walmart fortune have thrown in $1 million to help embattled Republicans maintain control of the state Senate, new campaign filings show.
Alice and Jim Walton each donated $500,000 to New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, a pro-charterschool group spending massive sums to help Republican candidate Julie Killian defeat Democratic Assemblywoman Shelley Mayer in a special election Tuesday to fill the vacant seat in Westchester’s 37th Senate district.
The seat was previously held by Democrat George Latimer, who last fall was elected Westchester County executive.
Latimer in 2016 easily won re- election to his Senate seat over Killian, by 55-44 percent out of 131,280 votes cast in a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by some 27,000.
If Killian defeats Mayer, Republicans would maintain their 32-to-31 majority in the 63-seat Senate.
If Mayer wins, Democrats would have a 32-seat numerical majority — but would be able to control the chamber only if conservative Brooklyn Democratic Sen. Simcha Felder, who has been caucusing with the GOP, switches sides.
The financial intervention by the Waltons reveals the stakes in the closely watched election.
Campaign cash has poured into the race, topping $3.6 million, according to state Board of Elections figures on Wednesday, a dollar amount sure to rise before next week’s vote. Roughly two-thirds has been spent on TV and radio ads.
Killian has been endorsed by former GOP Gov. George Pataki, and has said she would work to control Westchester’s steep property taxes and to fight substance abuse.
Gov. Cuomo and Senate Democratic Leader Andrea StewartCousins back Mayer, who also called for keeping property taxes under control and has compared Killian to President Trump.
The Senate GOP majority has staunchly supported privately managed and publicly funded charter schools, at a time when Mayor de Blasio has sought to limit their expansion in the city.
The Waltons have contributed millions of dollars to the charterschool movement.
Westchester has the chance to send a clear message in Tuesday’s special election for state Senate District 37: Say no to Albany business-as-usual by voting for Rye City Councilwoman Julie Killian.
A Republican and mother of five, Killian has worked as a chemical engineer, on Wall Street and as a small-businesswoman. On the Rye council, she’s proved to be a nonideological problem-solver.
That hands-on work in local government is the sort of experience the Legislature needs. By contrast, her opponent, Democrat Shelley Mayer, is something of an Albany lifer: She was a Senate staffer before winning an Assembly seat herself.
Indeed, she was chief counsel to the Senate Democrats when they last controlled that chamber under Sens. Malcolm Smith and John Sampson (who were both later convicted of serious crimes). And she now faces charges that as chief counsel she was slow to act on harassment complaints.
Killian has been outspoken about ending Albany’s culture of pay-to-play corruption and sexual harassment. She also wants the state cap on property-tax hikes made permanent and favors rollback of the onerous regulations and high taxes choking New York.
A Mayer victory would make Democrats the theoretical majority in the Senate — except that Brooklyn’s Simcha Felder caucuses with the GOP.
Gov. Cuomo, busy rushing left to hold off Cynthia Nixon’s progressive challenge, is pushing hard to win this race and force Felder into line, so that a Democratic Senate can push through a Nixonesque agenda in the remainder of the legislative session.
Westchester would be far better served by sending an outsider to Albany — which badly needs shaking up.