By all accounts, 2006 was a great victory for Democrats. We pulled out victories that seemed very unlikely, took control of a bunch of state houses (including some very impressive work in New Hampshire and Iowa), and picked up the House and the Senate.
We won Delay's old seat in Texas. We won victories in Montana, Virginia, Indiana, Florida--pretty much everywhere.
But as I was watching the returns on Tuesday, and looking at the results, something irked me. More on the flip.
You see, earlier this year I realized that a wave was coming, and I got excited. New York state, for all of our liberalness and Democratic registration advantage, has a solid
Republican State Senate. A lot of it has to do with gerrymandering, but there are any number of State Senate seats that could be picked off with adequate attention and financing.
It's particularly irksome because the State Senate has successfully blocked important legislation for years. I spend some time at my college's chapter of NYPIRG (New York's PIRG), and I learned that our Assembly, which is rightly heavily Democratic, passes very good legislation year after year after year that fails to get hearings in the Senate.
For instance, it took a sustained, multi-year campaign to get an increase in our minimum wage, despite higher than 80% support for an increase state-wide.
So this year, I thought, with top-of-the-ticket Democrats who would win in landslides, we could finally make some progress in the Senate. If we couldn't outright win it back (and I had some hope that we could), maybe we could pick off some vulnerable seats (Marty Golden, a Republican from a conservative part of Brooklyn seemed like a solid target to me).
So on Tuesday night, I looked at the local results websites, expecting to find some news about the State Senate. But no matter how hard I looked, there was nothing. It was perplexing. Nobody seemed to care how Democrats were faring in our State Senate.
After a lot of searching I realized why. Democrats didn't care how we were doing in the State Senate. As it stands now, we either gained no seats or picked up 1. That's absurd.
I feel seriously let down by my state party. They squandered an opportunity to make gains in a body that has been stymieing their efforts for years. And for what? I can't quite figure out what the state party was doing this year. They sure weren't needed in our Governor or Senate races. They weren't around for our Congressional races (where we lost two House races by under 3%).
The solution, in my humble opinion, is to create a Democratic blogosphere in the great Blue state of New York. By focusing on the State Senate, we might actually be able to get some traction for '08. But we need to start now.
Who's with me?
UPDATE: My professional line of work is web development. Consider this a standing offer to help develop a state of the art website for helping get Democrats elected in New York. I have some great ideas for political websites that I explored in 2003/2004 at the height of the Dean wave. I'm happy to lend my expertise to the cause of electing Democrats. Comment below or email me at wycats@gmail.com