Democrat Sean Ryan, now an Assembly member, will on Jan. 1 join the state Senate after his victory on Tuesday.
ALBANY — The Buffalo and Rochester areas will gain new political strength in the state Senate after victories were declared by three Democrats who will join the ruling Democratic majority party conference, a group of powerful lawmakers that has skewed heavily towards downstate interests the past two years.
But across the state, Senate Democrats, who have controlled the 63-member chamber since their takeover in 2018, fear they will lose several seats they now hold after strong in-person voting showings by Republican candidates on Long Island, Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.
In Buffalo, Democrat Sean Ryan, now an Assembly member, will on Jan. 1 join the state Senate after his victory on Tuesday. In the Rochester area, Democrats Samra Brouk and Jeremy Cooney are leading their GOP opponents — before the paper ballot count — and have declared victory.
Currently, there are only three Democratic senators, including Buffalo’s Tim Kennedy, between Buffalo and Albany. Tuesday’s unofficial results would appear to give that area of upstate a total of six, and Democrats are confident that John Mannion, a school teacher running for a Senate seat in Syracuse, will be able to defeat Republican Angi Renna when all the paper ballots are counted.
“Upstate seems poised to exert a lot more control in New York State and that’s certainly good for the Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse regions," Ryan said Wednesday morning.
“It’s simple math. We went from three seats at the table to six and maybe more," the Buffalo Democrat said in an interview.
There is no chance — nor was there — that the Democrats will be ousted from their power post that puts them, along with Assembly Democrats and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, as the decision-makers in Albany on major policy and fiscal matters that affect all New Yorkers.
But the Senate Democrats’ chief goal — gaining a supermajority status, giving them theoretically more leverage in matters at the Capitol as well as certain control over the 2022 Senate boundary redrawing process called redistricting — appears elusive now and it’s quite possible they will have fewer members in their conference than the current 40 senators. They needed to pick up two seats to gain a supermajority.
Much is up in the air because of the tens of thousands of absentee paper ballots in each of those contested Senate races that won’t even be opened until next week. Then, the election lawyers get their shot at the whole thing in a process that can take weeks or months to decide a race.
“We’re on uncharted waters with so many pieces of paper," Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, said of what turned out to be more than 1 million paper ballots returned by New Yorkers in this Covid era that made many feel safer to send in their votes via paper instead of standing on voting lines.
Gianaris told The Buffalo News that he is confident a number of Senate Democratic candidates who are trailing in the in-person voting tallies will make up the ground and win when all votes are counted.
“Patience is what I would counsel. We knew this was going to happen when we saw the large volume of absentees coming in. We need to view Election Day as the beginning of determining the winner, not the end," said Gianaris, the Deputy Majority Leader and chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee that coordinated and heavily funded the Democrat campaigns across the state.
Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, a North Tonawanda Republican in his first year overseeing the political operations for the Senate Republicans, sounded a different theme than some Democrats. “We feel very confident we’re going to take all those Long Island seats," he said of the ones where Republicans are currently leading in the in-person voting.
In an interview Wednesday morning, Ortt said the GOP already has its legal operation in place “to make sure all votes are counted … and that those elections don’t get unduly taken away from our candidates.”
The GOP leader, elected by his colleagues to be the top Senate Republican in June, said he doesn’t know the exact number yet — that will play out in the weeks and months ahead — but he predicted there will be more Republicans in the Senate in 2021 than there are now.
Democrats also faced something else in their races: presidential politics. Hillary Clinton scored a higher percentage among New York voters in 2016 against President Trump than Joe Biden did on Tuesday. Paper absentee ballots in that Trump vs. Biden race also won’t be counted in New York until next week.
Republicans and various special interests, including law enforcement groups, charged ahead against downstate Democrats, especially on Long Island, for any number of controversial votes the Democrats took the past two years in the Senate when the chamber — and all of Albany — moved decidedly to the political left. One main issue: the approval of a bill relaxing bail requirements for people charged with crimes. It was the topic of billboards, robo calls, direct mail and ads in many of the key Senate races on Tuesday.
The chief targets of the Republican effort: marginal, freshman senators who represent districts that were formerly held by Republican senators.
Ortt, who said Democrats took the state too far to the left the past two years on any host of policy and fiscal matters, said of Republican showings: “The voters clearly sent a message.”
Democrats tried to pick up Senate District 1 — on the eastern end of Long Island — after a veteran Republican announced his retirement. Republicans lead that seat with Anthony Palumbo.
In other Long Island campaigns, the Senate 3rd has freshman Democratic Sen. Monica Martinez trailing Republican Alexis Weik in unofficial results that will be a challenge for Democrats to overturn with the paper ballot count.
In the Senate 5th, freshman Democratic Sen. James Gaughran is losing to Edmund Smith after the in-person votes were counted Tuesday night. In the Senate 6th, freshman Kevin Thomas is behind in votes to Republican Dennis Dunne Sr. Democrats have expressed confidence the paper ballots will put Thomas over the top.
In Brooklyn, freshman Democratic Sen. Andrew Gounardes is slightly behind Republican Vito Bruno in the in-person voting.
In Westchester, freshman Democratic Sen. Peter Harckham is trailing Rob Astorino, the GOP candidate for governor in 2014, though not all the in-person votes have been counted as of this morning. This is a race Democrats believe will also pivot to their column after the paper ballots are factored in.
In the Hudson Valley, freshman Democratic Sen. Jen Metzger is trailing Republican Mike Martucci, with some in-person votes still outstanding. “We expect the process of counting absentees to be an orderly process that will take several weeks, and we will patiently await the final results,’’ Metzger said Tuesday night.
As upstate Republicans have done for decades, they used their 2020 campaigns to try to portray upstate Democratic incumbents as too beholden to New York City political interests that, by the numbers, dominate the state Capitol’s work.
Martucci this morning declared victory, saying Metzger would have to win — by a 3-1 margin — every third party and non-affiliated vote cast via absentee ballot in the Senate contest. That, he said, is “a mathematical impossibility,’’ and he said voters embraced his stances, including “investing in our district instead of pouring endless resources into New York City.’’
Republicans beat back an effort by Democrats to take several upstate Senate seats now held by Republicans or previously held by GOP senators, including in the North Country, Mid-Hudson Valley and elsewhere.
In the Senate 46th, Republican Rich Amedure, a former state trooper, is ahead of Michelle Hinchey to represent a sprawling, oddly shaped district that crosses five different counties from Montomery to Ulster counties and features two major river systems. Democrats think the paper ballots could make Hinchey the final winner.
Keep up on the latest in national and local politics as Election 2020 comes into focus.
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