New York, NY –
New York’s last bastion of Republican control -- the State Senate -- has become a Democratic power base, along with the Assembly and Governorship. WNYC’s Fred Mogul has more.
Two long-serving Republicans lost, two vacant seats split, two other races remained too close to call, and the Democrats emerged with at least 32 out of 61 seats. That’s assuming a pair of incumbent Republicans retain their hold in tight races still being counted. If they don’t, the new Democratic majority would get even wider. City Councilman Joe Addabbo won his central Queens senate district with a well-financed campaign backed by Hillary and Bill Clinton, Sen. Schumer and Gov. Paterson.
ADDABBO: The onus and the burden is on the Democratic Party to do the work now. No more finger-pointing. We gotta roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Addabbo unseated Seraphin Maltese, a conservative Catholic and a former prosecutor, who was popular for bringing many projects and grants to the district over the last 20 years. Maltese told supporters it just wasn’t his year.
MALTESE: It's a district that's over 2-1 Democratic. It always is a difficult district to hold onto, and maybe it's a coming together of all these factors that led to my loss.
Senate Democrats now face a number of challenges. Politically, they must decide whether to put Queens Senator Malcolm Smith, the current minority leader, at the helm of the majority. A group of four conservative Democrats have bound themselves into a loose coalition could swing either way -– demanding plumb committee assignments or threatening to join Republicans and reverse the power shift. And then there’s governing: the new majority faces billions of dollars worth deficits and the need for steep budget cuts. For WNYC, I’m Fred Mogul.
Fred Mogul has been covering healthcare and medicine for WNYC since 2002. His beat takes him to hospitals, community clinics, doctors offices, health agencies, public schools and research labs across the metropolitan area. His work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, Time magazine and Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.
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