State Sen. David Carlucci, who was a founder of the turncoat Independent Democratic Conference that voted to keep the GOP in control of the New York Senate, announced Monday that he would seek the Democratic nod to succeed retiring Rep. Nita Lowey. The 17th Congressional District, which includes much of Westchester County as well as all of nearby Rockland County, is reliably Democratic turf at 59-38 Clinton.
Carlucci was elected in 2010 to a Senate seat centered around Rockland County, which was the same year that the GOP retook control of the chamber. During Carlucci’s very first week in office he and three other Democratic senators announced that they were bolting from the Senate Democratic Conference and forming their own group, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC).
The new organization argued that they would cooperate with both the Republican majority and the mainline Democrats and “work to bring integrity back to this house and once again make government a tool to improve people's lives.” However, it didn’t take long for both parties to learn what the IDC was really about.
In 2012, despite a map the GOP had gerrymandered for their own advantage, Democrats won 33 of the 63 seats in the Senate. While conservative Democrat Simcha Felder outright caucused with the GOP, this state of affairs still should have been enough to give Team Blue a 32-31 majority in the chamber, which would have given them control for only the third time since World War II.
However, Carlucci and the rest of the IDC, which at this point included a total of five members, worked out a deal to keep the GOP minority in power. Among other things, that arrangement gave the IDC and GOP “joint and equal authority” over bills. IDC members also got committee chairmanships and vice chairmanships and the perks and increased salaries that came with them (IDC members in vice chair spots even got paid the same amount as they would have if they were full chairs).
The IDC and the GOP would remain allied for years to come. In April of 2018 the IDC announced that they'd finally rejoin the mainstream Democratic caucus, but their many detractors understandably were not appeased after years of dealing with the renegade senators and their pledges to reunify. That September, six of the eight senators who were in the IDC when it officially disbanded went down in defeat in the Democratic primaries. Carlucci, though, kept his seat by turning back his primary challenger 54-46.
Democrats recaptured the majority in November in a rout, and this time, there were no renegades to keep them from running the chamber. Party leaders also welcomed Carlucci and fellow IDC alum Diane Savino back into the fold even though they didn’t need their votes to pass long-delayed progressive legislation (Felder also became a full-fledged Democrat later in the year).
Carlucci played down his time in the IDC as he prepared to enter the race to succeed Lowey even though he’d spent the vast majority of his Senate career there. He insisted, “I’m aware there will be people attacking all day long about the past. I’ll be talking about the present and the future.”
However, one of his opponents in the June Democratic primary isn’t letting him off the hook. Attorney Mondaire Jones argued, “As someone who is gay, black, and a graduate of East Ramapo public schools, Sen. Carlucci’s betrayal of New Yorkers and the Democratic Party is personal for me.” Assemblyman David Buchwald is also running here, and other Democrats have expressed interest as well.
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