Those of us in the Empire State are seeing the immediate benefit of electing a Democratic governor. I'm sorry for people in those states, but it is coming at the immediate expense of the states of Ohio and Wisconsin with whom we have much in common. All because they voted to put Republicans in their governors' mansions.
Update: As noted in comments, this should have been titled "could gain".
As noted here, Republican governors-elect in Ohio and Wisconsin have decided to delight teabaggers by killing off big-ticket infrastructure projects, in their case nine-figure sums slated for upgrades to rail networks that would allow for high-speed rail.
Well, guess what. New York, where we'd already made some rail improvements along the Hudson as a way of preparing (the Hudson Line tracks have had concrete ties now for several years, just like the Northeast Corridor does in Massachusetts and Rhode Island where the Acela can reach full speed) had been allocated about $150 million of the $500 million it will take to upgrade the Empire Corridor to handle HSR, something that would be beneficial to many upstate communities if only by making them more accessible from downstate (With a high-speed line along the Hudson, it might actually be possible to commute between New York and Albany, much as some people use existing Amtrak service to commute from homes in northern Dutchess and Columbia counties to part-time or freelance work in the city).
But when John Kasich and Scott Walker decided they were too good for high-speed rail, Andrew Cuomo immediately moved to request that the $1.2 billion they turned down be redirected to New York.
What could we do with that money? Upgrade the track across the entire state, improve stations so they are no longer the glorified restrooms Amtrak had to build quickly in the early '70s (see the handsome new Albany station, for one, built with help from the administration of a Republican governor who knew how important this stuff was), possibly build new dedicated track on land CSX might be willing to donate or make available cheaply, upgrade or eliminate grade crossings, develop a connection to Toronto ... all the things on the wish list. Hell, I'd like to see a couple of new Acela sets built narrower and lighter.
Oh, and there would also be a lot of jobs to create.
I'm sure that, if this happens, when it comes to fruition and the benefits are obvious people will say oh, New York always gets its way. But I would hope that a portion of the electorate in at least two states realizes how much of it happened because they had the ball and didn't fumble it so much as drop it on purpose.