Last night's endorsement by the labor-dominated Working Families Party of Andrew Cuomo, a governor who helped to engineer a Republican controlled New York Senate despite the fact that voters had elected 33 Democrats and 30 Republicans to that body, and who had earlier also signed on to one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in America that was designed to maintain Republican control of the New York Senate for the next decade. But this isn't about Cuomo, this is about the fact that the New York State AFL-CIO would seem to have had as much to play in this as Cuomo. Details below the fold:
In the 2012 general election, the New York AFL-CIO made many endorsements for the New York Assembly and Senate races. Here is a list:
http://www.wnypapers.com/...
I would like to present the ten AFL-CIO endorsed Republican Senate candidates, all of whom won, along with the partisan lean of the district based on Obama's 2012 vote fraction, obtained from this wonderful diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Sen. District Candidate Obama %
1 Kenneth P. LaValle (R-C-I) 51.5
6 Kemp Hannon (R-C-I) 55.3
8 Charles Fuschillo, Jr. (R-C-I) 56.3
9 Dean G. Skelos (R) 54
24 Andrew J. Lanza (R-C-I) 40.7
51 James Seward (R-C-I) 51.2
52 Thomas Libous (R-C-I) 50.3
54 Michael Nozzolio (R-C-I) 50.6
56 Joseph Robach (R-C-I) 61
62 George D. Maziarz (R-C-I) 48.5
(Since then, one of the Republicans, Charles Fuschillo, has resigned, and the vacancy has not been filled.)
As you can see, eight of the ten districts were actually carried by Barack Obama, and in one of the other two Obama got 48.5% of the vote. Only Andrew Lanza's south Staten Island district is a truly red district and Lanza is indeed as good as you will ever get out of that area. (I predict that Lanza will run for Congress for Grimm's seat as soon as the Rethugs or the Dems bounce Grimm and he will be a tough candidate for us to beat.) But the rest? This is nine seats; had they gone D there would be 34 Democrats in the Democratic caucus for a 63 member body assuming none of them defected to the IDC.
True, none of these ten are teabaggers and all of them are sane. But lets get real about what a Republican New York Senate means: No progressive legislation and Andrew Cuomo gets his austerity budgets enacted.
I would love to hear someone from the New York AFL-CIO respond either in a comment or a diary.