The NYS Senate is currently controlled by the Democratic Party 32-30. The Democrats can afford a net loss of one seat and remain in control due to the pending election of Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo’s tandem running mate, Rochester Mayor Bob Duffy will be empowered to cast the tie breaking vote in favor of the Democrats organizing the majority. This is important as the majority party of each chamber redraws the district lines in their respective bodies. The Assembly is under super Democratic majority of 108-42. Even a dozen seat loss will still leave that chamber under a very large blue team majority.
More after the jump
The Siena Research Institute conducted a poll of three endangered Democratic seats and one open Republican seat. The link is below with crosstabs
http://www.siena.edu/sri
Unfortunately my local freshman Senator Brian Foley is heading for defeat down 16 points. Darryl Aubertine is within the margin of error in SD48 down only four points. Tim Kennedy who defeated an incumbent Democrat in the primaries now leads his Buffalo based 58th SD by six points. In the open race SD40, the Republican has a five point lead. What is interesting is that in the LI 3rd and the Buffalo 58th, the voters are almost swinging opposite their intended Governor vote! Cuomo is winning the 3rd against Carl Palladino 57%-33% while Zeldin is up over Foley 53%-47%. In Palladino home turf of Buffalo he runs ahead of Cuomo 58%-30% while Kennedy the Democrat is up 45%-39%.
If these polls hold the Democrats will be in a 32-30 minority come January. They need to pick up one seat and that may happen in one of four relatively unpolled races including the 41st SD where Didi Barret is running a spirited race against Republican Stephen Saland. This district like others in the Mid-Hudson Valley has been trending Democratic with an 8,000 Democratic registration advantage. The open 38th that has a 40,000 Democratic advantage in registration where a fine young Democratic candidate David Carlucci is facing off against Scott Vanderhoef a local County Executive. This may be the Democrats best pickup opportunity for the tie Senate seat. In Queens the 11th SD where incumbent Frank Padavan was re-elected by only a few hundred votes faces stiff challenge from City Councilmember Tony Avella in a district that has three times as many registered Democrats than Republicans.
There are some other spirited challenges in the Monroe County and Erie County regions but I feel these may be our best chance to keep the majority Blue! What do you think?
UPDATE
I just returned from a GOTV canvass out of the Foley Patchogue HQ. I spoke with his top managers who had this to say about the Siena Poll
Notice that the Siena Cross-tabs dropped Race from the poll. In a district that is the most diversified on LI with roughly one in three residents Latino and African American, not to poll for race, not to include cell phones, to show that males will outnumber females on election day??? The Foley internals show Brian up by three points and we got a hold of the Zeldin internals that also show Foley up by two points
I said to them, and we were alone, listen, I am here for the ride if we were down fifty points, just don’t blow smoke up my butt if we are really this far back.
Their response
If we were that far back our staff would have been pulled out into the upstate close races for the final push, instead we have four hundred workers hitting the streets for the final GOTV not including organized labor and we have enough supporters identified to win the race if we just get them to the polls. The 6th Assembly seat which is heavily minority and is a third of the State Senate District has a trained GOTV by Assemblyman Ramos staff and we are leaving nobody home
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this is where I fault Cuomo, I have not seen him campaign with vulnerable democrats. He knows he is going to win, so why not help someone else out ?
is leading by 5 points?! Dear god. As if Albany didn’t have enough crooks and misfits, we need to a woman abuser to the mix. Then again we had that one senator who slashed his girlfriend and dragged her out of his apartment so its not like Ball is setting precedent here.
that Foley was down 16 points?
If it makes you feel any better, I plan to vote for him.
would that make a gerrymander impossible? Would the tie breaking vote just get to vote on organizing the Senate or would he also vote in legislation?
Cuomo has a failsafe: he can just veto the redistricting plans. Yes, that will piss off incumbent Democrats, but he can do it under the guise of establishing an independent commission, which he’s apparently already signed on for. There’s no way the Republicans hold the Senate in 2012 without their current designer gerrymander.
For most of the past 70 years, New York’s state legislature has been split between Republicans and Democrats. The Assembly is Democratic and the Senate is Republican. This means that when reapportionment comes around, the two sides come up with a “compromise” plan which is set up for incumbent protection. In particular, each house of the legislature is grossly gerrymandered toward its majority party. This means that political decisions in New York were basically worked out in a room with the governor, the Senate majority leader, and the Speaker of the House. In 2008, the Democrats gained slim control of the Senate, which has become nearly impossible to gerrymander to maintain a Republican majority due to the lack of Republicans in most of New York City. If they maintain it, the state will shift to one-party rule for the foreseeable future, since the Republicans are unlikely to be even close to control in a Senate apportioned by Democrats. This has its own set of problems, but it may be better than the current setup.
Some thoughts on NY:
1) I got NINE pieces of campaign mail today, a pace which has kept up for the last week. Most of them are either Foley’s or a mixture of Foley and Cuomo. Some by unions, some by the state democrats. I’ve also gotten stuff from Schumer, nothing from Gillibrand, and a few random GOP ones.
I’ve also been visited by Foley canvassers, and this is a swing precint (Obama 52-48) so at least they some field work. This is all anecdotal though. Foley has been brutalized on the airwaves though, so I think he will probably lose, or hang on very, very, narrowly.
2) Something about Cuomo just doesn’t….sit right with me. I can’t put my finger on it, sort of a hint of the worst part of Clintonian dirty tricks. I feel like he would turn his back on progressives in a second if he had the chance.
I think I’ll either vote Cuomo on the WFP line, or vote Green.