A faction of renegade Democrats in New York’s state Senate says it wants to return to the Democratic fold, a move that would likely wrest Senate control away from Republicans.
Senate Co-Leader Jeff Klein said Wednesday that his four-member Independent Democratic Conference will work to form a new coalition with traditional Democrats in the Senate after the fall elections.
Klein’s group broke away from mainline Democrats and two years ago joined Senate Republicans to take control of the Senate away from Democrats. Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos dismissed Klein’s announcement as a political move forced on him by liberals who want to take over the Senate.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had pressured the breakaway Democrats to return.
Democrats already control the state Assembly.
(AP)
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In theory there are 33 Democrats and 30 Republicans in the New York Senate. Were it not for one of the most blatant gerrymanders in America it probably would be more like 40-23.
But one of the Democrats is Simcha Felder who caucuses with the Republicans.
Two others, John Sampson and Malcolm Smith, are under indictment. To their credit, the Democrats kicked both of them out of their caucus.
Two other Democrats, Terry Gipson and were elected to upstate seats that weren’t decided until all the absentee and provisional ballots were counted. In one the Conservative Party decided to punish a Republican who voted for same sex marriage and got a liberal Democrat, Terry Gipson, who supported same sex marriage; Gipson won by 1096 votes as the Conservative candidate got 17,300. In the other, Cecilia F. Tkaczyk won by just 18 votes only after months of counting absentee and provisional ballots; the Republican was actually sworn in and served for a few days until it was clear that he had lost.
And there are other opportunistic Democrats who have threatened to switch parties as well.
So the would-be return of Klein and his four comrades might end up being to a minority caucus after all.
The NY State Senate Democrats are extremely dysfunctional. Anyone remember the last time they tried to run things? It was a disaster. Keep the split with on house republican and one democrat and keep the state running fine