Some key Senate Democrats, shocked by the apparent victory of Republican David Storobin in last week’s special election in Brooklyn, are privately conceding they have little chance of retaking control of the Senate in November.
“I’m not optimistic, and what happened in Brooklyn, which is so heavily Democratic, suggests we just can’t get our act together,’’ was how one Senate insider put it.
Senate Democrats, who regained the majority in 2008 only to lose it two years later amid scandal and charges of incompetence, are heavily in debt, divided along racial and regional lines and, as of last week, more on the outs with Gov. Cuomo than ever.
And that’s just for starters.
They also face the virtual certainty that a renegade group of four Democrats known as the Independent Democratic Conference will vote for continued GOP control of the Senate if Democrats defy the odds and ultimately win a narrow majority in the November election.
“Call him, Deputy Majority Leader Klein,’’ quipped a prominent Democrat as he suggested the reward that Sen. Jeff Klein of The Bronx, the IDC leader, would likely receive for siding with the GOP.
Senate Minority Leader John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) last week inexplicably finished off any chance of receiving help from Cuomo in the elections when he called the governor’s Tier 6 pension-reform measure — backed by Mayor Bloomberg and many top Democrats — “an assault on working men and women of New York state.’’
“Sampson just traded the backing of Cuomo, who has a 70 percent approval rating, for public-employee union money, despite the fact that the polls show that even union households back the governor’s effort to rein in pension costs,’’ said a Cuomo administration insider.
And while Sampson has been opposing Cuomo’s efforts to cut the cost of runaway spending in New York, he’s also been championing a series of left-of-center priorities that have little chance of expanding Democratic support among upstate and suburban voters.
Storobin, a political novice and native of the old Soviet Union, is holding a slim, 118-vote lead over Democratic City Council member Lew Fidler in a seat that was vacated when longtime Democratic state Sen. Carl Kruger pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.
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Public employee unions like the United Federation of Teachers, the Civil Service Employees Association, DC 37 and New York State United Teachers may have lost their battle to stop Tier 6, but their millions of dollars in campaign contributions still buy enormous clout.
“It’s really hard for the public and even a lot of people on the inside to fully appreciate how much power the unions have in the Legislature, with both the [Republican] Senate and [Democratic] Assembly,’’ said a lobbyist.