Election of Democrat hints at GOP’s changing fortunes

CAPITOL — Last week’s election of a Democratic senator, Darrel Aubertine, in the Watertown-Oswego area is seen by many as an indicator that Republicans could lose control of the state Senate this year, bringing an end to the long reign of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick.

That is not, of course, how Bruno and his fellow Republican senators profess to see it. At a news conference Wednesday, they said they are united and confident and looking forward to increasing their majority in November. The defeat of their Senate candidate, Will Barclay, was described by Bruno as “a wake-up call,” but one for voters, not for him and his fellow Republican leaders.

The fact that Republicans could not hold that 48th District seat, where there are 31,000 more Republicans than Democrats, could indicate they’ll have a hard time holding on in more Democratic districts, such as the 15th District in Queens. Democrats have a 40,000 registration advantage there, and the incumbent GOP senator, Serph Maltese, won in 2006 by just 896 votes.

The Republicans lost a Long Island Senate seat last year, in another special election, and a seat in Westchester County in the 2006 general election. A high proportion of Republican senators, including Bruno, Maltese and Sen. Hugh Farley, R-Niskayuna, are well past normal retirement age, and as they have grown older the state has become increasingly Democratic.

Enrolled Democrats now number 5,336,241, compared to 2,997,508 Republicans, according to the state Board of Elections. Ten years ago, there was a Republican governor, U.S. senator and attorney general. Now the Democrats hold all statewide offices, along with a comfortably veto-proof majority in the state Assembly.

And it would take just one more Republican loss or defection to leave the Senate evenly divided, 31-31, giving the potential tie-breaking vote to the Democratic lieutenant governor, David Paterson.

“I think it’s very likely” that Democrats will take the Senate this year, said Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton, a Democrat. Stratton declined to rule out challenging Farley, who said he intends to run for re-election.

Schenectady County Republican Chairman Tom Buchanan said Barclay’s defeat “is a wake-up call to us, as Republicans.” He criticized the GOP campaign for attacking the Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, on issues such as the “troopergate” scandal and his plan to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, rather than focusing on taxes and the economy.

The upset election has already led to one change: On Friday Ed Lurie, executive director of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, resigned after 18 years in the job. Pollster Neil Newhouse was given the task of finding a new political director for Senate Republicans.

buying into Business

Bruno did get some good news last week: Executives from Advanced Micro Devices met with him and local officials and moved forward with plans to start building a computer chip manufacturing plant next year in Saratoga County, in Bruno’s district. Plans for the AMD plant were announced in 2006, but the company has been in financial difficulty and has yet to make a final commitment, which caused some to question whether the plant will be built.

The public is paying out $1.3 billion to attract AMD, Bruno said in a speech last week to the state Conference of Mayors. Critics call that a wasteful subsidy of suburban sprawl, but Bruno made no apologies for that investment. He ascribes his region’s economic growth to the public investments he has sponsored, such as the redevelopment of Albany International Airport, where a bust of the Senate leader is now displayed.

Such local subsidies would likely diminish with Bruno’s departure as majority leader, but not necessarily disappear. At the same Conference of Mayors meeting, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, touted public investments his conference sponsored to create a nanotechnology center at the University at Albany.

Companies have come to expect public subsidies to make up for the high taxes and other disincentives that might keep businesses from locating upstate. The model of promoting growth by providing subsidies and cutting deals with companies has been followed by governors and legislative leaders from both parties in recent years. But across most of upstate, outside the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, growth has lagged far behind most of the United States.

Lowering taxes is a Senate priority, but in recent years, at least, lowering spending has not been. In fact, the Senate has proposed even higher spending than the Assembly under Spitzer. Both former Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, and Spitzer in recent years have proposed spending increases well above the rate of inflation, and have signed final budgets with significantly more spending than they proposed. And all the leaders have supported lower taxes along with much higher spending — which is seen as a contradiction by fiscal conservatives such as E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

The Senate has also vied with the Assembly in recent years in passing measures favorable to labor unions, although McMahon said the Assembly remains “more extreme” on issues such as extending the scope of prevailing wage laws. McMahon said a Democratic Senate would be likely to pass laws strengthening rent control in New York City and enhancing abortion rights, so that it does make a difference who controls the chamber.

On some issues, though, including abortion and private school tuition tax credits, the losing Republican Senate candidate Barclay took more liberal positions than the Democratic winner, Aubertine. The pro-choice, anti-voucher Barclay also had a slew of endorsements from the state’s major labor unions, which tend to support the majority parties.

Farley, who campaigned for Barclay on election day, said he heard from lots of people complaining that the Republican candidate was not pro-life.

GOP in trouble

Bruno, who became majority leader in late 1994, said it was a mistake for voters to elect Aubertine, because it means their representative will have less clout, being in the minority. But that’s only an effective argument if the Republicans hold their majority through November and beyond.

Stratton said that even if Farley is re-elected, a Senate shift would put him in the minority next year, which would reduce his ability to deliver public funds for the district.

Farley’s district is represented by three assemblymen, James Tedisco, George Amedore and Marc Butler, all of whom are in the Republican minority. However, Tedisco’s access to public funding has been reduced by the election of a Democratic governor, Spitzer. Pataki directed more member-item funding to Republican assemblymen, to make up for the lower shares they were granted by the Democratic majority. Spitzer yanked Tedisco’s funding last year, hurting Ballston Spa (which lost $90,000) and other communities in his district.

Sen. James Seward, R-Milford, whose district includes Saratoga County, said Republicans would try to articulate more effectively their themes of lower taxes, economic development, and tough anticrime measures including the death penalty for killers of police officers. But Seward said ideology doesn’t seem to have been a big factor in the 48th District race. Barclay and Aubertine were both assemblyman, and each carried his own Assembly district in the Senate race, Seward pointed out.