Democrats easily held New York's competitive 37th State Senate District on Tuesday night, with Assemblywoman Shelley Mayer beating former Rye City Councilwoman Julie Killian by a wide 57-43 margin. Thanks to another win by Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda, who obliterated his opposition in a dark blue Bronx seat (the Republican candidate took 2 percent of the vote), and the recent reunification of the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference with the mainline Democratic caucus, Democrats now have a numerical 32 to 31 majority in the Senate.
But no matter—Republicans still control the chamber, because conservative Brooklyn Democrat Simcha Felder, who has caucused with the GOP from the moment he took office in 2013, says he'll continue to do so, making the cockamamie argument that it's his "obligation to prevent an unprecedented and uncertain late-session political battle that will only hurt my constituents and New Yorkers." Even Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn't buying it: In a letter to Felder, he urged him to return to the fold, warning that "the Democratic conference will not need you in November the way they need you now"—because, evidently, Cuomo expect Democrats to make gains this fall.
Of course, like the IDC deal, Cuomo's only doing this for appearance's sake—if he really cared about Democratic unity, he'd have pushed for Democratic control of the Senate long ago, and certainly before this year's state budget was complete. For Felder, meanwhile, Cuomo's apparent threat actually explains why he's more apt to stay put. Felder recognizes that his special status as the tipping-point senator will almost certainly come to an end after the midterm elections, so he has every incentive to maximize his influence for as long as he can Come next year, he'll just be a random (and probably scorned) backbencher no matter what he does now.
Meanwhile, Democrats also flipped a seat in the state Assembly with former Suffolk County Legislator Steve Stern's big 59-41 victory over attorney Janet Smitelli in the 10th District. While this Long Island seat went 52-45 for Clinton in 2016 and 51-48 for Obama in 2012, Republicans had represented it for 40 straight years.
There's also the curious matter of the 142nd Assembly District, in the Buffalo area. Teacher Erik Bohen, running on the Republican line, narrowly beat Democrat Patrick Burke, an Erie County legislator, 52-48, so technically this counts as a rare Democrat-to-Republican flip. However, Bohen is a registered Democrat (Buffalo politics are weird) and has promised to caucus with the Democrats and support the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Carl Heastie.
Democrats also narrowly fell short of flipping two more GOP-held Assembly seats in the 102nd and 107th Districts. Results from these and the other four contested special elections (none of which changed hands) are below:
AD-05: Doug Smith (R): 63, Deborah Slinkosky (D): 37
AD-17: John Mikulin (R): 64, Matthew Malin (D): 36
AD-74: Harvey Epstein (D): 91, Bryan Cooper (R): 5, Adrienne Craig-Williams (Green): 2, Juan Pagan (Reform): 2
AD-80: Nathalia Fernandez (D): 81, Gene DeFrancis (R): 19
AD-102: Christopher Tague (R): 46, Aidan O'Connor Jr. (D): 44, Wes Laraway (Best Choice): 10
AD-107: Jacob Ashby (R): 51, Cynthia Doran (D): 49
For a summary of these candidates' backgrounds, see here.
