Despite somewhat mixed national results, New York voters moved state politics firmly into the deep blue as Democrats had a remarkably strong showing in last week\u2019s election.\u00a0 On the Congressional level, results were good for New York \u2013 a number of senior New York members of Congress will be moving up into powerful leadership posts, the U.S. Senate Minority leader is from New York, and the state has two elected officials, U.S. Senator Gillibrand and Governor Cuomo, who are mentioned as serious candidates for President in 2020.<\/p>\n
But it was at the state Capitol that the biggest changes occurred.\u00a0 While Democrats running for statewide office cruised to massive victories, Democrats surprised Republicans by picking up eight seats to give them a solid majority in control of the state Senate.\u00a0 This means for the first time in a decade, one party controls both houses of the Legislature and the governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
The election represents a sea change in the state Senate.\u00a0 A total of 16 new Senators were elected, with 14 of them Democrats.\u00a0 Those changes gave the Democrats the biggest Senate majority \u2013 of either political party \u2013 in decades.\u00a0 And while Democrats now have a solid majority, the composition of that conference will take time to coalesce.\u00a0 Fourteen of the Democrats are new, 14 Democrats are based outside of the City of New York, the leadership and its staff have not yet been tested, and the governor will play a big role.\u00a0 The governor not only had a huge electoral victory in his own right, he also played a powerful force in the success of Senate Democrats, thus giving him significant influence among members of their conference.<\/p>\n
With all of that being said, Democratic control of the state government will likely mean that the 2019 legislative session will see significant movement on policies.\u00a0 It appears that the governor and the two houses are in agreement over strengthening state laws dealing with abortion, gun control, voter registration and election law changes, additional legal rights for individuals who claim to have been abused as children, more money to fund New York City\u2019s crumbling mass transit system, state financial aid for undocumented college students, and changes in the rules for setting bail for criminal defendants.<\/p>\n
It is likely that additional issues will be at the forefront of the legislative debate, even if it\u2019s not yet clear whether there is a consensus for action.\u00a0 For example, the state\u2019s rent control law expires this year\u2014a major concern for tenants and the powerful landlord lobby. \u00a0\u00a0The real estate industry has always banked its strategies on the Senate Republican Majority.\u00a0 What happens now?<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s Health Department issued a report that appears to show support for decriminalizing the use of marijuana, coupled with legislative support.\u00a0 Will there be action?<\/p>\n
Corruption in state government has been an ongoing, serious problem.\u00a0 The governor has stated that he wants changes in ethics laws, yet his proposals have been vague.\u00a0 The incoming legislative leadership has been even vaguer on what they want.\u00a0 Will changes be made that actually reduce<\/em> the risk of corruption and establish meaningful independent oversight?<\/p>\n Lastly, there are other issues that were raised during the campaign that are expected to be hotly debated, even though it is unclear if there is sufficient support from leadership.\u00a0 For instance, while there is consensus that the state must protect its program that offers coverage to those who do not either qualify for health insurance from their employers or through state government programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, how the state will expand coverage for these New Yorkers is not at all clear.\u00a0 While the issue of \u201csingle payer\u201d health insurance has broad appeal within the Democratic Party, Governor Cuomo rejected the idea as too expensive.\u00a0 Even with the state facing a budget deficit this year, expect that the issue of expanding coverage to be near the top of the legislative debates during the budget.<\/p>\n Similarly, Democrats have long supported establishing a voluntary system of public financing for candidates running for elective office.\u00a0 Yet now that they are in the majority, the political leadership has not mentioned the idea among the items that they expect to tackle.\u00a0 However, New Yorkers will likely see action to close the campaign finance loophole that allows Limited Liability Companies to make contributions that far exceed the amount allowed for other businesses.<\/p>\n But whether the debate focuses on more fundamental changes \u2013 such as establishing a system of public financing \u2013 will turn on whether New Yorkers demand action to change a system described by the former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as a \u201ccauldron of corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n And what to do to protect the state\u2019s imperiled drinking water supplies, how to combat climate change, and how to dispose of mounting garbage?\u00a0 These issues were all but ignored during the campaigns and as a result have not been mentioned as top legislative action items by the state\u2019s political leadership.<\/p>\n Those issues will undoubtedly force their way onto the list of legislative action items at some point, but what will happen is, as of now, murky.<\/p>\n And, of course, there are many more issues that need to be addressed.<\/p>\n What is clear though is that the era of finger pointing and blaming the other<\/em> political party for inaction has passed.\u00a0 Democrats fought hard to achieve their electoral victories. \u00a0Now they must begin the hard work of actually solving New York\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite somewhat mixed national results, New York voters moved state politics firmly into the deep blue as Democrats had a remarkably strong showing in last week\u2019s election.\u00a0 On the Congressional level, results were good for New York \u2013 a number of senior New York members of Congress will be moving up into powerful leadership posts, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}