ALBANY — It’s official: Democrats won a majority of state Senate seats last month.
But Republican Sen. Stephen Saland’s concession yesterday to challenger Terry Gipson in a close, three-way Poughkeepsie-area race is cold comfort to most Senate Democrats.
They’re being shut out of controlling the soon-to-be 63-seat chamber by an unprecedented ruling coalition of Republicans and six renegade Democrats.
Saland was one of four Republicans to support gay marriage last year, earning him Gov. Cuomo’s first-ever endorsement of a Republican.
Spoiler Neil DiCarlo — who nearly beat Saland in a GOP primary and got more than 17,000 general-election votes on the Conservative line — branded Mayor Bloomberg and other Saland backers “radical homosexualists” and called Gipson a “neo-marxist” to be booted out in 2014.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a former nurse from The Bronx who used to run a real-estate company, told The Post she thinks she can bring the dissidents back and head a Democratic majority.